[ExI] The Futurism of Elon Musk

[spike at rainier66.com]

…> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Futurism of Elon Musk

 

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.

 

 

By all means Adrian do let me be the first to agree, if the engineering is done right and the right products are purchased, then rooftop solar power does make sense.  If you have home storage and a means of dumping your own power into your own hotwatt, it makes even more sense: you don’t need to buy the load-leveling service the power company provides for every watt you dump into that car.

 

The problem I see currently with rooftop solar is that in too many cases the customer wants to do the engineering for the company, and too often do it wrong.  They make absurd demands, they buy the wrong equipment, they just do everything unlike the way I can easily envision you doing that, which is to listen to what the solar company says and have enough brains to see what makes the most sense for your house.  

 

If you have enough room in your backyard for a sun tracker mount for instance, then there is a high-efficiency panel that costs more but is worth a lot more.  But in Mountain View, if your back yard is big enough for that, then, well… you have a lotta money and can afford to do stuff that doesn’t really pencil out.  If you have south facing exposure, a lot of it, your roof peak goes east/west, then there is a particular type of flush mount panel (guessing that is what you have) that does make sense.  If your roof peak runs north/south, then you must choose if you want to make power in the morning or in the evening, and there are panels tuned for each.

 

I see the real problem is that one size doesn’t fit all.  Rooftop solar really does make sense if you buy the lower-end Chinese-made panels, the ones I call the Trabi panels.  Depending on how your house is oriented and the trees around it, and the tax incentive and the power company incentives, those do make sense, even though they are lower efficiency.

 

It is so true in rooftop solar: everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.

 

spike

 

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