My roof, the southerly facing side, measures roughly 800 square feet. That's about 75 square meters. According to the formula in the title, it calculates to 225 kilowatt hours per day. And that's a modest view of the potential of solar power on my rooftop, and yours, and everyone's. Just in New England. In Florida and New Mexico it's almost twice as much.
My house, one in which power is used moderately by American standards, consumes an average of 20 kilowatt hours per day. No electric heat, average range of appliances, lights used one or two rooms at a time, cooking done mostly with microwaves, air conditioning used very sparingly. Twenty kilowatt hours needed, 225 kilowatt hours potential from roof insolation. Twenty needed, 225 available. Twenty, two hundred twenty five. And your roof? And your neighbor's? And a three-family apartment house? And a row of condominiums? Same figures, depending upon roof orientation. And more, usually, as you move south and west, outside New England and our famously changeable weather.
How, then, to collect it? And store it? And share it with other users in the vicinity who have changing needs? It costs about sixty thousand pre-rebate dollars to put panels on the roof, install an inverter and tie it to the grid. Your share would be app. 38,000 dollars, financeable via home equity, low interest loan, or cash if you deal drugs. Or have equity left in your house. Or if you qualify for a low-interest government-backed loan. And then only if you own your home. And the capacity of that expensive photovoltaic system will be only a fraction of the potential of your roof's solar energy load, Less than half. And your daily contribution to the grid will be most of your home's power usage. Only most.
It's a dim picture, but not dark. The tax credits and rebates do not yet put photovoltaic power in the reach of average Americans of average means. And the contractors are charging princely sums for their systems, and the paperwork for the Clean Energy Fund's credits is burdensome, and the systems tend to pay back at a rate that I, for one, won't live to see, and the panels last thirty years in sunlight by a meximum estimate, twenty is a more conservative figure, and the grid doesn't store the energy, it just distributes it among all connected customers.
So many things are not yet quite right about our approach to solar power. But we've begun. and demand does eventually affect supply, and the storage problem will be addressed, and there will be panels on most/every/many/your roof. Soon enough to save the planet? Sooner would be better, don't you think? More next time.
My house, one in which power is used moderately by American standards, consumes an average of 20 kilowatt hours per day. No electric heat, average range of appliances, lights used one or two rooms at a time, cooking done mostly with microwaves, air conditioning used very sparingly. Twenty kilowatt hours needed, 225 kilowatt hours potential from roof insolation. Twenty needed, 225 available. Twenty, two hundred twenty five. And your roof? And your neighbor's? And a three-family apartment house? And a row of condominiums? Same figures, depending upon roof orientation. And more, usually, as you move south and west, outside New England and our famously changeable weather.
How, then, to collect it? And store it? And share it with other users in the vicinity who have changing needs? It costs about sixty thousand pre-rebate dollars to put panels on the roof, install an inverter and tie it to the grid. Your share would be app. 38,000 dollars, financeable via home equity, low interest loan, or cash if you deal drugs. Or have equity left in your house. Or if you qualify for a low-interest government-backed loan. And then only if you own your home. And the capacity of that expensive photovoltaic system will be only a fraction of the potential of your roof's solar energy load, Less than half. And your daily contribution to the grid will be most of your home's power usage. Only most.
It's a dim picture, but not dark. The tax credits and rebates do not yet put photovoltaic power in the reach of average Americans of average means. And the contractors are charging princely sums for their systems, and the paperwork for the Clean Energy Fund's credits is burdensome, and the systems tend to pay back at a rate that I, for one, won't live to see, and the panels last thirty years in sunlight by a meximum estimate, twenty is a more conservative figure, and the grid doesn't store the energy, it just distributes it among all connected customers.
So many things are not yet quite right about our approach to solar power. But we've begun. and demand does eventually affect supply, and the storage problem will be addressed, and there will be panels on most/every/many/your roof. Soon enough to save the planet? Sooner would be better, don't you think? More next time.
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