[ExI] The Futurism of Elon Musk

Tue Sep 8 16:55:44 UTC 2020

Counterpoint: my house was the first residential install of solar in
Mountain View, back around 2000; I think this might have been early enough
the subsidies weren't there yet.  Our solar power system has more than paid
for itself by now.

On Tue, Sep 8, 2020 at 9:00 AM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> +1.   This post is a great summary of caveat emptor around solar.  I'm
> also not knocking it, but like many green initiatives, it doesn't make
> sense without heavy subsidies out of the tax payer's pocket.   I bought a
> hybrid around the time of cash for clunkers because we had a junker we got
> paid a ton for under that wasteful program, plus a very large federal
> incentive at the time for green vehicles that put the cost of the hybrid
> below the cost of the internal combustion only.   Putting aside the
> politics of taxpayers being forced to subsidize green technologies, I
> haven't found many of them make financial sense without it.
>
> On Tue, Sep 8, 2020 at 11:48 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
>> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] The Futurism of Elon Musk
>>
>>
>>
>> >…So, Spike, rather than use your generator, why not put solar cells on
>> your roof?  You are a cheapo like me and in the long run you will save
>> $$$.  Probably could not run a compressor?
>>
>>
>>
>> bill w
>>
>>
>>
>> BillW if I had enough money to buy rooftop solar panels, I wouldn’t spend
>> it on that.
>>
>>
>>
>> I would spend that on additional efficiency upgrades on my house, such as
>> full attic ventilation (which I may do anyway) and window upgrades.
>> Reason: I am good with a spreadsheet.
>>
>>
>>
>> Plenty of people around here went for rooftop solar when the power
>> company and state government were offering incentives that added up to
>> nearly half the cost for some consumers, but those incentives expire (no
>> surprises, they told us the expiration dates.)  People who know how to do a
>> spreadsheet did spreadsheets and recognized that rooftop solar is only a
>> payback under certain not all that common conditions: you have a lot of
>> south-facing roof area for instance where there is little risk from trees
>> growing into your sun path and low risk of the trees dropping stuff on your
>> panels, all the real-world limitations, and after all that… if someone does
>> the spreadsheets, it becomes clear that to make it pencil out, one must
>> choose the less reliable, shorter-lived, lower efficiency but much lower
>> cost panels.  Hmmm, damn.  (There’s a reason for all this, available on
>> request.)
>>
>>
>>
>> Well… the power company knows this too, as well as these local companies
>> who work deals to do the installation free, the panels are free, your
>> maintenance and equipment (such as inverters) are actually rented, so all
>> of it costs the homeowner nothing up front, and the company pays a monthly
>> fee (a pittance of course) but there it is: no upfront cost to the
>> homeowner and she gets a check for allll thaaaat power she generates on the
>> roof, oh how green it is.
>>
>>
>>
>> Well, so it would seem, but… those “free” panels are relatively low
>> efficiency and (in accordance with the contract) the homeowner may not
>> remove those panels if they go to sell the house and part of the buying
>> public doesn’t want a house with those up there.  Then the homeowner has to
>> pay the solar power company to come out and take their panels down and buy
>> her way out of what amounts to a 20 year lease on their own roof.
>>
>>
>>
>> Meanwhile… some people did buy their own panels, pay to have them
>> installed, only to find out… they don’t generate as much power as the
>> glossy pamphlets claimed they would, which spawned a new industry: these
>> fellers come out, take those panels off your house, free!  They keep the
>> panels of course, but now you have your roof back, ready for repairs from
>> where the panels were mounted.  These fellers will even buy your inverter
>> and take those copper cables off your hands, and evem give you a few
>> hundred bucks.  So you get five cents on the dollar back from your rooftop
>> solar misadventure.
>>
>>
>>
>> But before I go on, sounding as if I am disparaging all rooftop solar, I
>> am not.  I am disparaging it when the engineering is done incorrectly.  But
>> there are a few cases where it does pay and does make sense.  It will make
>> sense if the cost of power triples.  For now, not really in most cases.
>> Suburban roofs aren’t usually enough area, it is too tree-ey down in there
>> and most roofs are not oriented optimally.  A few are.  A few homeowners
>> know how to do the calcs, and of course some of those will recognize an
>> even greener solution: rooftop water heating, which is extremely green but
>> is even uglier than rooftop solar.
>>
>>
>>
>> Conclusion: if you hire people to install rooftop anything, they will
>> sell you a system which maximizes profit to them, not to you.  If so, there
>> is a very good chance you will be paying again to hire guys to take it back
>> down within a decade.  We are not there yet on suburban green energy.
>>
>>
>>
>> spike
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