I'm super excited about the promise of solar panels, because my house has unobstructed exposure to the sun, and I live in the Bay Area, so we get sunshine 300+ days per year.<p>However, every time I revisit the math, it never works out. Even if I purchase it myself, the payoff times are never less than around 17-20 years, depending on how aggressive I project the rise in electricity rates. Given that solar panels have a serviceable life about 20 years, it still isn't cost effective yet.<p>But I'm getting more and more optimistic that in the next few years, we'll reach a level where solar panels make sense.
<i>Britain isn’t known for an abundance of sunshine, but Hanergy’s solar panels are designed to generate electricity from ultraviolet rays rather than sunlight.</i><p>Seems to me that these solar panels are designed to generate government subsidies more than anything else...
The problem is that this is a tax dodge for rich middle class people - at one time selling your solar energy back to the grid you got 8% return for 20 years guaranteed by the government.<p>Even after the scheme was amended its a nice little subsidy for richer people it's the poor sods on key/coin meters that are paying for this.
It doesn't sound like it is sustainable to have these subsidies for very long:<p><i>- At current rates the Feed-in Tariff pays you 14.9p for every kWh you produce, whether you use it or not. The Feed-in Tariff is TAX FREE and RPI Linked.</i><p><i>- Export your excess electricity to the grid and earn an additional 4.6p/kWh.</i><p>(<a href="http://www.hanergy.co.uk/why-solar/feed-in-tariff" rel="nofollow">http://www.hanergy.co.uk/why-solar/feed-in-tariff</a>)
I find this article bit too skeptical. Solar panels improved a lot in recent years, and you can break even with investment even in UK without subsidies.<p>My friend in Czech Republic is a software developer. He works from home and his house is not connected to grid. He has 12-volt house grid with dozen car batteries. His office has 2 LED screens. Everything is powered by solar energy, except once a week he runs a generator for one hour to do a laundry. Heating and cooking is done by solid fuels and gas. Investment into solar panels and grid was about 6000 euro.
IKEA has a bizarre complex business setup which ends up with IKEA being the world's largest (and nearly least generous) charity. (<a href="http://www.economist.com/node/6919139/print?story_id=6919139" rel="nofollow">http://www.economist.com/node/6919139/print?story_id=6919139</a>)
Tangental observation: it's interesting that a large number of people are really enthusiastic about changing to solar, moving away from carbon-producing energy sources, etc. But when it comes down to it, even for those people the response is usually "the math just doesn't work" for solar. I wonder if in surveys how many people would say they would pay a little extra for clean energy, until it's actually time to shell out?
I'm a bit surprised that China has produced too many panels. People keep talking about the coming eco-apocalypse from countries like India and China becoming more developed and needing more electricity, and not having the capacity to generate that cleanly.<p>Chinese mining has a lousy safety record, even for a dangerous industry. (15 people PER DAY dying just from volatile gases, in 2010) Anything that offloads electricity generation from dangerous mining for coal powered stations is a good thing for China. So I'm not sure why they're not just putting these solar panels on every roof.<p>(<a href="http://www.wvcoalmining.com/coal-news/reducing-chinese-coal-mining-deaths-new-technology.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.wvcoalmining.com/coal-news/reducing-chinese-coal-...</a>)<p>(<a href="http://www.mining.com/coal-mining-deaths-in-china-lead-to-more-imports/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mining.com/coal-mining-deaths-in-china-lead-to-mo...</a>)<p>(<a href="http://www.scanimetrics.com/condition-monitoring-news/13-equipment-failures/82-coal-mining-deaths-in-china-linked-to-equipment-problems" rel="nofollow">http://www.scanimetrics.com/condition-monitoring-news/13-equ...</a>)
> Photovoltaic panel systems costing £5,200 ($9,212)<p>With the exchange rate at 1.62 USD to the GBP, I can't imagine how they got that dollar figure. Remember that UK prices include sales tax @20%, so that puts the retail price at about USD$7000 pre-tax.
I have the means and the property (albeit small) to do this but.. no chance. The main payback (ignoring the environmentalism externality) is dependent upon a government subsidy rather than actual savings or efficiency gains and as soon as it suits them, the government can yank the benefit away and you're sat with an expensive piece of plastic on your roof that'll take 20 or more years to pay for itself. (I seem to recall the government encouraging the use of diesel in the 80s and LPG in the 00s through reduced duties, yet both are now in the same sky high ballpark as petrol once their respective efficiencies are taken into account.)
If they put as much effort into this as they did in the kitchen cabinet software they built I expect to see a lot of people using this.<p>IKEA has a knack for packaging things in such a way that works for people.
Does anyone know if this includes the inverter?<p>I just built an office which has 4x3m of roof on which I could easily put panels (fit them myself, I don't need someone to do that). But the cost of the inverter has put me off, and there doesn't seem to be any alternative way to power computers from it. Ideally I'd have a battery and 12V supply just to power the computers and gadgets, I don't need full mains voltage, nor do I need to feed back into the grid.
You can get a 6.5kW system from wholesalesolar (with inverter and gridtie kit) for almost exactly the same price.
I don't know what the ikea system is rated for, but I'm guessing less than that. 6.5kW should do for pretty much any domestic residence, clouds or no, assuming you have the room for 24 panels. I'll be picking one of these up once prices dip down to $1/W all costs included (it's about $1.50 right now, with racking still extra)
KB Homes makes solar panels an option
<a href="http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2011/03/kb-home-solar-standard-green-feature/1#.Ukw2nFIo5oI" rel="nofollow">http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2011...</a>
<i>yawn</i> Nothing much to see here.<p>Do something about the labor and permitting costs of a solar install in the developed world and I'll actually be impressed.