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I'm glad to see that this thread has turned in the right direction - CONSERVATION
that is where we can make the biggest impact on global warming and consumption of our natural resources. I still dont buy into the "Man made" cause, but we have been conservation minded for years, with the exception of the Truck, want/need to pull the Fifth wheel. When we settle down and retire, our house will be "Stand alone". Solar, wind, DC lighting, grey water system and rain water gathering. Cost will not Equal savings as it will cost about $80K more in the construction, and that is ALOT of gas and electricity, but we will not be reliant on any "public Utilities". Very helpful when the nearest grid is 10 miles away.....
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"I'll keep my Freedom, my Guns, and my Money, you can keep THE CHANGE"
Cost will not Equal savings as it will cost about $80K more in the construction, and that is ALOT of gas and electricity, but we will not be reliant on any "public Utilities". Very helpful when the nearest grid is 10 miles away.....
Doesn't that depend how long it's spread over? The life of your system?
In our case my wife arranged a sort of "mortgage" over the guaranteed life of the system. The monthly repayment is what is being balanced. It's about break-even, but I prefer paying for solar instead of power-plant. Our cost was about $50,000.
__________________
............Kim.
"Change has come to America!" Barack H. Obama. President Elect - Nov 4th, 2008.
I'm glad to see that this thread has turned in the right direction - CONSERVATION
that is where we can make the biggest impact on global warming and consumption of our natural resources. I still dont buy into the "Man made" cause, but we have been conservation minded for years, with the exception of the Truck, want/need to pull the Fifth wheel. When we settle down and retire, our house will be "Stand alone". Solar, wind, DC lighting, grey water system and rain water gathering. Cost will not Equal savings as it will cost about $80K more in the construction, and that is ALOT of gas and electricity, but we will not be reliant on any "public Utilities". Very helpful when the nearest grid is 10 miles away.....
see i agree with this. i don't buy the total "man made" cause either, but i am all for conservation as well.
Good to see the issue of conservation not only coming to the forefront but one with which folks of different persuasions can agree.
I was reminded recently while watching Ken Burns documentary about World War II ("The War") about the stories my parents told us about conservation efforts at home during that global conflict. In retrospect I still find it impressive the way Americans (and I'm sure folks from all countries affected by that conflict) rose to the occasion, made sacrifices, recycled and practiced energy conservation to support the war effort.
It would be wonderful if we today could approach the issue of global warming in the same way.
The level of energy waste in most people's lives (and I include myself, despite efforts to conserve) is amazing. In another lifetime I used to be the energy conservation engineer for a major aerospace firm here in SoCal. I prepared educational materials for our employees and for other business (through an environmental forum my boss and I ran each month through the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce).
One of the graphics we presented was a representation of the per capita energy use by citizens of various industrialized countries. Each figure was dressed in clothing representative of their country, and the sizes of the individuals (height/weight) was proportional to their per capita energy use. It was so obvious from that graphic that Americans used a highly disproportionate amount of energy compared to the rest of the world. Of course things have probably improved a bit since then (the mid 70's).
Back then I proposed savings in the multi-million dollar per year range to the Vice President. After my presentation (which my very pro-business boss approved and was supportive of), the V.P. took me aside and said. "Bill, your ideas are good and would save our company a lot of money. However, our government contracts are on a "cost plus" basis." The implication was that not only did the government contracts (and we US citizens as taxpayers) pay for that bloated energy use, we also paid a percentage sum on top of those costs as the "plus" part. I hope things have changed since then... but I'm not overly optimistic.
Doesn't that depend how long it's spread over? The life of your system?
In our case my wife arranged a sort of "mortgage" over the guaranteed life of the system. The monthly repayment is what is being balanced. It's about break-even, but I prefer paying for solar instead of power-plant. Our cost was about $50,000.
If you manage to get 12 yrs..(10-12 is about the Maintenance "Free" period) your $50,000 equates to $347 a mo. Then at that point you start replacing Batteries, PV cells, Controlers, Signal generators, relays....then the wind turbine needs bearings and other service......it's really not at a break even cost yet. You can get there if you start being a minimalist, no Sat TV, no Microwave, less light usage(which really wont save you much if you have LED lighting) and lower the energy you need to generate.
BUT, you are supplying your OWN energy, that is hard to put a price tag on. To me, it's priceless! We will pay more, pumping water out of the ground takes power...but the wife and I want a self sufficient home/ranch with modern luxuries. We have just added the rain water system to our plans. Did you know if you have 1000sqft. of roof and it rains 1 inch, you gather 600 gal. of h20? Grey water systems in the average US home would be enough to supply water to irrigate your close-in landscaping(minus the lawn).
I'm not into passing new laws and regulations SURPRISE! but, I would go along with passive solar hot water systems being required on new construction. It makes sence. I would like to have one to heat the pool in the winter.......why not, smoke detectors have now become pretty much required in most states these days.
__________________
"I'll keep my Freedom, my Guns, and my Money, you can keep THE CHANGE"
If you manage to get 12 yrs..(10-12 is about the Maintenance "Free" period) your $50,000 equates to $347 a mo.
Ah.....we don't have any of the wind turbine type stuff - just solar. That's not going to need so much maintenance AFAIK. We don't use batteries either. When we are producing more than we need it goes back into the grid and the electric company pays us for it. At night we use their power, but that's basically taking back what we gave them during the day. But your above cost estimate is actually close to what our electricity/gas saving is - and just over what we are paying - it's about $300, so you're pretty close. (Government subsidized about 10% of the cost)
Personally I think it would be a very good idea to mandate things like this in new buildings. Here's an interesting article about the German approach - whole towns......community solar....
__________________
............Kim.
"Change has come to America!" Barack H. Obama. President Elect - Nov 4th, 2008.
The world is warming and everyone's efforts to help reduce the rate of warming are commendable. One thing I dont' understand though...with the economic situation in the world today....emerging economies in Asia that will require lots of oil and or coal to fuel it, it's likely the warming trend will continue despite American or European efforts, BUT, why is everyone so sure that warming is a bad thing? Other than I'll lose my beach lot up on San Pedro....There are some postives. The major concern is food production. The world has to eat. A warmer overal climate could be a positive in that regard with year round production in the temperate zones. All I hear is doom and gloom associated with warming. Why?
I know we're chin deep in global warming rhetoric now, but can we talk about whether CO2 makes any difference at all? I haven't seen much concrete evidence of how much CO2 contributes to the "greenhouse effect". Computer models that predict warming do not model the atmosphere physically based on properties of CO2 and predict energy flow, they simply have a number that is typed in that is a scientist's best "guess" as to the relationship between CO2 concentration and warming.
CO2 has a very narrow absorption band, so it can only absorb about 8% of the blackbody radiation sent out from the atmosphere and Earth's surface no matter how much of it is there. Also, it absorbs completely within the atmosphere at those narrow absorbtion bands, so there is no IR "escaping" right now that would be held in the atmosphere longer by more CO2.
There's also the view that atmospheric CO2 is rising because of slightly higher ocean temps, which in turn dissolve less CO2.
The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II
A warmer overal climate could be a positive in that regard with year round production in the temperate zones. All I hear is doom and gloom associated with warming. Why?
Well.....not everyone lives in the temperate zones, and I hardly expect they'll give the increased production away!
One of the warming problems apart from sea-level rise is desertification. This normally affects those who can handle it the least - often subsistence farmers in the first place who suddenly can't grow squat, or maintain livestock. In the past stuff like this started whole population migrations. Now were talkin millions of people though that might suddenly need somewhere new to live.
Hmmmmmmm..............
__________________
............Kim.
"Change has come to America!" Barack H. Obama. President Elect - Nov 4th, 2008.
............Kim. 
