Solar Energy. Yes, everyone talks about producing electricity from the sun. “The Sunlight is free, so the electricity should cost virtually nothing.” That’s the standard thought but look again. Photo voltaic panels, those dark panels that make electricity from sunlight are expensive and they do not last forever. Currently, if you take the cost of the panels,  the expected lifetime of the panels, the amount of daily sunlight on average, and do the calculations, your cost of electricity is about 7X more than current fossil fuel electricity. So say your current utility bill is normally $100 per month. Your new bill if you used all solar would be $700 per month or 7X. This is a little simplistic and perhaps overstated, since your main costs are upfront and your ongoing costs are nothing during daylight, but for all purposes, true in spirit.

Why are solar panels so costly? We’ve been hearing for over 20 years that, “As solar panels become more popular, the price will drop to a reasonable level.” Solar panels are pretty popular now. Price hasn’t dropped yet. Not sure if it ever will. Typical installation cost for a home are still in the $35000 plus price range and this puts the cost per Kilowatt hour over the life of the system at about 7X the current cost of electricity.  Now with government rebates, which we all pay for, the costs are reduced slightly but taxpayers are paying one way or another.

Don’t mistake the negativity above with not liking solar. Love solar. But we have to live in reality. If it is too expensive, then it will not happen. To date, no real drop in solar panel prices have occurred to the end consumer.

There are some solar projects that produce electricity inexpensively, but they are Grid attached projects.  These involve Stirling Engines or  steam production with solar energy. Our push is in the direction of decentralized power supply. Research on solar electricity production without using photo voltaic panels on a home is not easily found.  Until costs for photo voltaic panels decreases or using the sun in another less expensive manner, then Solar Power is not something that will become mainstream. NoGridUSA wants solutions that everyone can get on board with, i.e. mainstream solutions. Perhaps if the government stopped subsidizing photo voltaic panels and it was Sink or Swim time,  the cost might drop considerably? Just a thought.

http://solarpowerauthority.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-install-solar-on-an-average-us-house/

http://greenecon.net/understanding-the-cost-of-solar-energy/energy_economics.html

Bookmarking links

Furl –    del.icio.us –    Technorati –    BlinkList -

Digg –    Google –    StumbleUpon –    My Yahoo