We have been pursuing our renewable energy (RE) business for over two years now. We have had some nice solar PV jobs and also sold some components to offgrid families. While the interest in RE has grown due to the current administration's push to get off oil and the gross oil spill in the Gulf, individuals have been cautious about spending the money. The economic slowdown had come at the worst time for us to start the change.
Our personal plan was to put one 1800 watt grid tie array at our house. We had already put in a solar hot water system in the year prior. The solar hot water delivered the heat equivalent of 2.5 MWh (megawatt-hours) or 2500 kWh (kilowatt-hours) in one year of operation. This cut down on our grid use by over 25%. And for the last two years we have tackled numerous energy drains by replacing bulbs with CFLs and modifying our habits. Once we had reduced the majority of our wasteful use, we decided to invest the money in a PV array. Well, that one array turned into two because of an overstock of unsold modules.
As of June 8th we were officially net metering with the grid. Its quite exciting to see your meter read less than the day before. We hope to generate excess credits to use this winter when the sun is dim and we demand more power.
The decision to invest the money in RE is not based on economics but the feeling we had to get started on the road to carbon free energy. PV modules can last up to 60 years and the microinverters are rated at 331 years in mean time between failures (MTBF). My grandkids may one day be thankful that it was installed. I wonder what the electric rates will be in 2070?
RE is expensive, but so is a SUV, power boat, or some other neat toy. It came down to a matter of priorities, we will never have a big new gas hog. We are quite happy with our '02 Jetta TDI.
Hey (I'm Bob's wife), so I have participated in this growing awareness of ways to be green that become habits. One thing Bob did that really made a difference was to measure our power use, and that extra information and feedback provided positive reinforcement for making green choices. It made the process more fun - more like a game. And when our whole society is pushing and dragging us into being mindless consumers, every little bit of weight on the green side is appreciated.
ReplyDeleteThere may be others, but what we used was TED,The Energy Detective http://www.theenergydetective.com/. Not great software, but newer models may be better.