Updated: 13 Aug., 2006

Cost Effective Solar Energy For The Home

The tree huggers would have us believe that we all should be using solar panels to obtain our electricity. The liberal LA Times recently reported on a house that used solar energy and the owner claimed to have "free electricity after 2 years". All I can say is the owner was either very bad at math, a liar or smoking crack. In LA any of the above would have the same probability of being true. I took my Southern California Edison Electricity use bill for a non peak month, and saw that I used 816 KWH of electricity (816,000 watt-hours). Then I went shopping for solar panels for residential use. A reliable brand with a good life was required, in order to depreciate the cost of the solar installation over the life of the product. The longer the life, the lower the cost. The guarantee period for the solar panels was used for the "life", and on most good models this was 25 years. However, I was cautioned, that while the solar panels are guaranteed for 25 years, the switchgear and electronic components have a shorter life of around 5 years. These are necessary, because solar panels convert light energy into electrical energy, in the form of Direct Current (DC). We use alternating current in our homes and businesses, so a frequency inverter is utilized to convert DC to AC current, and these and the associated electrical gear (electric meter, monitoring hardware) cost in addition to the solar panels, but they typically only have a 1-2 year guarantee, and have to be replaced over the life of the panels. The costs for Solar Power. The solar panel array required to meet daily peak usage came to $36,000. Another $20,000 for meters, inverter and switchgear. Then there is installation, hooking everything into the electrical grid, putting the panels on the roof to take maximum advantage of the sun, etc. This came to $29,000. And finally maintenance, I was told this could average $1,000 to $2,000 per year over the life of the panels. I took the lower figure of $1,000 per year, for a total of 25 years, this is $25,000. Since the present day value of $1000 paid over 25 years is not $25,000, a present value of anuities formula was used to give the present day value of annual maintenance costs, which is $14,093. This gives a total cost of $99,093. Over the 25 year life of the system this amounts to $3,964/year, or $330 per month. Using 816 KWH/month, this comes out to a cost per kilowatt hour of $0.404 for using solar panels. Now for good old expensive Southern California Edison. From my utility bill, my average cost per kilowatt hour is $0.21. So, even using high priced California Electricity, it is still 48% cheaper to use power generated from gas and oil than from solar. In the State of Kentucky, where the lowest average cost of electricity is found ($0.06/KWH), it would be 566% more expensive to use solar panels and they get about half the sunlight that we do, so it would not work nearly as well. This is just an example of who gets shafted when ignorant tree hugger environmentalists are allowed to make and influence legislation that WE pay for. We always end up getting the shaft, due to their ill conceived ideas, and biased or simply bad scientific knowledge. We, for those that can not guess, is the taxpayers. So you do your own analysis and decide if you want to pay for more bad science and bad ideas, or perhaps you would actually like to keep your money that would be wasted on bad ideas, and spend it on good ideas. Since current solar panels are only 15% efficient, there is great room for improvement, and I do not doubt that in 20-50 years the technology will be developed by our bright engineers and scientists, to make solar power very cost effective. The bottom line is, it is far from that point today. That is not what one would be led to believe from reading glorious articles about it in the press or the electronic media (television, movies, etc.). This is due to the fact that this industry is predominantly slanted towards the left and they historically embrace most bad ideas that come along, and then they want to force us to pay for them. I say if an individual wants to install a inefficient method of power generation, that is much more costly than the power generating industry, spend your own money and do it. That is your right. Do not, however, attempt to push legislation through the legislative bodies to force me or the rest of the nation to do so, because this is not in my or their best interest.

But that's just my opinion. Charles Kubach 13 Aug, 2006 Mine-Engineer.Com Return To Mining Information Page