The price before rebate is totally not worth it. Your payback time would be longer than the system would last by many years. With the state picking up 2/3rds the cost the idea looks a lot better.

The reason I like wind (if it blows where you live) is because large mills cost around a dollar per watt. A one megawatt mill cost around a million bucks. My house is in a depression (on the lake) so not much wind is available in spite of living in a class 3/4 wind area. They say the best thing I could do is conserve by tightening up on the leaky house and eventually getting a ground coupled heat pump.

 

We have a roof-mounted 3kW solar electric system that provides about 85% of our annual need. Like Charlie, we're grid-tied, so excess power goes onto the grid (and spins the meter backwards) and we draw from the grid at night (spinning the meter forward). It's called net metering because we pay based on the net change of the meter at the end of the year.

In 2003, CA had a 50% rebate and tax incentive, so our $25K system cost us $13K. The payback will be 10-12 years, not including the value increase to the house from the panels. Our annual electric bill is about $75.

Two other families in town have seen the system and gotten their own.

Mike

 

Now that is what I'm talkin about! Very cool, sometimes I wish I lived in CA. The hybrids they sell there polute less and have a killer warranty. Some of those beaches are not too hard on the eyes as well.

 

MD has a solar credit, something like 20%/up to $2k for residential electric. Only a few takers here. Rule of thumb from BP and local installers is about $10K/KW installed. Roof area is about 100ft^2 per KW, assuming SW exposure at a good angle. Piece parts are about $3K/KW...if you're handy (and comfortable working on a roof), the only part you need professional help with would be tieing the inverter to the main panel and getting net metering set up with the power company.

Home Depot sells the kits in NY and some other states.

 

Hey Solar Dad, the other thing to keep in mind is that you should be able to write off the $13k you paid as a capital improvement to the home. Seeing that you're in California, what that means is it raises the threshold for your tax basis when you sell your home. If your gain is over $500k (which may be possible depending on what you own and where) then at least you get to raise the effective purchase price of your home by the $13k you spent on the solar array. Save your receipts!

 

That's true, thanks. Another neat feature of CA law is that solar improvements don't cause a revaluation of the house for property tax purposes. It's a "free" improvement as far as taxes go.

BTW, CA also has a "Solar Rights Act" that says homeowner associations, condo boards, municipalities, etc. can't prevent you from installing an approved solar collection system.

My favorite is the "Solar Shade Control Act," which "prohibits any tree or shrub occurring subsequent to the installation of the solar system on another property from casting a shadow greater than 10% over the solar colletor area between the hours of 10am and 2pm Standard Time"

Mike

 

New info as of 8-26-2005:

http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php...rticle&sid=1481

Quote:
A NASA news release (3-30-05) states: "zero point energy", a potentially bottomless sea of invisible, ultra-powerful energy in the vacuum of space. Work involving the science and technology relating to this new energy source has surfaced in Germany, India, Japan, the U.K., Australia, and Russia, as well as the United States. Our company, Magnetic Power Incorporated (MPI), based in Sebastopol, California, is one of several developing technology that converts Zero Point Energy (ZPE) to electricity. NASA data suggests that ZPE can provide far more than 20 times the power available from solar energy, at any point on earth, 24/7. ZPE is an unlimited, renewable, largely unrecognized, power source.

A 1 kW (1,000 watt) generator, such as MPI is developing for homes and emergency power, could eliminate the need to plug-in a rechargeable hybrid. This would provide all the advantages without needing to plug-in to the utility grid. The result will be the first step toward driving automobiles, trucks and busses, without any need for gas or oil whatsoever.

One MPI objective, anticipated during 2006, is production of 1 kW Modules by our Strategic Partner. One of these Modules, installed in a hybrid car, would eliminate any need to plug-in, and allow up to 50 miles of driving at freeway speeds. The first example of this breakthrough MPI automotive power system could be on the road before the end of next year.

 

Zero Point Energy is fascinating, and it's actually something that is more realistic than a hydrogen economy, yet it gets ridiculed as "perpetual motion machines" and basically laughed at and ignored. One man in the 60's and 70's had a working prototype motor ready to be installed into a car when the DA office busted in and stole all his equipment and tried to charge him with fraud. None of his investors would persue the charges, so that was eventually dropped but his equipment was never returned to him. He started over from scratch but they came down on him again, finally killing him. It would have been the most disruptive technology the country had ever seen, so I can understand why, but it's sad that REAL innovation gets snuffed out in favor of the status quo.

Read about the E.V. Gray motor:
http://www.keelynet.com/evgray/evgray1.htm
http://www.keelynet.com/evgray/evgray2.htm

Article about the DA ordeal:
http://free-energy.ws/images/WorldsFirst1.jpg
http://free-energy.ws/images/WorldsFirst2.jpg

More: http://free-energy.ws/gray.html

Some of the prototypes have been recovered and are slowly being restored. The patents are in the hands of a company that still wants to commercialize it (Gray's family has shares in it) and may still come about once Zero Point technology becomes a bit more accepted in society.

 

You Canadians are funny. Erick, I bet you think "the feds" also busted into the home of the inventor of the 100mpg carburator, stole the prototypes, blueprints, and had the guy assassinated, right? It might be though, I know there's no way a Canadian could ever be smart enough to come up with such an idea as a 100mpg carb or ZPE generator. All the smart people are in the USA, so it's too bad our government keeps stealing their designs and assassinating them.

 

I haven't read anything about "the 100mpg carburator" so I have no idea, other than hearing something about a 'vapor carb', but it's failure had to do with private investors pulling out from manufacturing at the last minute and nothing to do with your federal government. Most of the breakthrough inventions go uncommercialized because of lack of funding. Large investors aren't interested in anything that's too cutting edge and risky, so they have to convince many smaller investors, thus usually failing to get enough capital to do anything useful. Most of EV Gray's investment came from farmers and some independent oil producers that were running out of domestic oil to pump, but had a lot of cash to invest into the next generation of automotive technology. I don't know if it was the feds that took the initiative on Gray or if it was a private company that filed a complaint or something, but they effectively put his project in limbo for quite a while. Business is a complex thing, there are millions of reasons for them to fail that have nothing to do with the validity of the invention. That's capitalism.