Solar Panels as alternative energy sources or not?
Now I mentioned below that we’re doing renovations on our house and we’re trying to make it more up to date technologically. I guess it was by accident but we saw one very nice house on discovery channel that was made with “futuristic environmental design in mind”. Now we didn’t plan to go that far but anyway it was good idea to check out what the “architects of the future” had in mind.
Using Solar Panels as alternative source of energy is a really nice idea. This house had its whole roof made of solar cells and the excess energy collected during the day was stored for night use. Very intelligent and energy efficient environmentally clean design, with hopes to be used as standard in near future. In reality, at this point in time, this design is not that efficient and not even close to affordable. A single solar panel system that can power a 4 member family household costs around $160,000 – this includes the power needed for two fridges, one laundry washer, two TVs, a computer (or maybe two), and few other utilities. Now the California government offers up to 50% solar panel rebate but only thru the end of this year and we’re nowhere close to have the budget to invest that large amount of money to replace our $100 per month grid bill.
What happened to our alternative energy source idea? Nothing, we just postponed it for “near” future when solar panels are going to be more affordable and we can actually be able to pay for them and hopefully save some money. Currently the panels are not even close to energy efficient and they don’t even payoff by the estimated energy production in their lifecycle (independent research by non-government organization requested by the President Bush himself in support of the solar energy rebate program that actually killed it instead of supporting it).
It happened that only multi-million dollar corporations that can afford to lose massive amounts of money can only use solar panels energy. Yes companies like Google that built the largest “private” solar panel array in the world had their checks bounced in April because no money in their corporate account! Heh! I don’t plan on going in bankruptcy in order to save the world (I’m not that crazy).
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