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Thread ID: 143074	2016-11-15 19:46:00	Energywise and Solar	pctek (84)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1428793	2016-11-15 19:46:00	That ad, so I went and had a look at the calculator. Estimated years to get your money back More than 25 Years This is how long it would take to pay off your solar investment from a loan or savings, through electricity cost savings. Estimated total earnings over 25 years -$3,400(money lost) This is how much money you would lose or gain from installing and running a solar system in your home, over a 25 year period expressed in today’s dollars. A solar system can be expected to last 25 years or more although you may need to replace an inverter during this time. Hmmm. in 25 years husband will be dead. And I'll be either really ancient or also dead. There appliance use calculators were interesting though, monitors use bugger all. In fact even my dryer use is bugger all ( I guess cause you don't run it for long). The biggest power bill problem is heating. Plugin or heat pumps.	pctek (84)
1428794	2016-11-15 20:13:00	I mentioned that calculator in the other solar thread, mine comes out as 14-18 years depending how I pay for it and how generous I am with my numbers. Just had a $100 power bill, my lowest in ages and I put down to the mild temperatures. My heat pump hasn't been turned on in ages but I haven't done anything else different.	dugimodo (138)
1428795	2016-11-15 21:08:00	I meant to ask this in the other thread, but perhaps this is the better thread for it - what has happened to the scheme whereby any excess energy you created was bought from you by your power supplier? If that arrangement still exists, is that accounted for in the above calculations?	John H (8)
1428796	2016-11-15 21:25:00	It does still exist John but the payments are getting less	gary67 (56)
1428797	2016-11-15 21:31:00	Thanks Gary - I thought I recalled some recent changes.	John H (8)
1428798	2016-11-15 22:07:00	It's 7 or 8 cents a kW depending on the power company This is a max of either 5 or 10 kW a day, also depending which power company So if you get a good deal, you will make a whopping 80 cents a day (on days that you are generating excess power)	bevy121 (117)
1428799	2016-11-15 22:34:00	Another very good example of why privatization of public utilities is a bad thing. Not going to say any more it's self-evident to anyone with half a brain.	zqwerty (97)
1428800	2016-11-19 09:45:00	Extremely long term viewer( I can remember the little pictures and text on the RH side ) 80's? Anyway I'm interested in solar and though I might put my 2cents worth in the mix. From what I have researched I conclude solar is not quite there at the moment. The electricity system is not geared up to cope, and has a reactionary response by minimising its payback for unused power generated by the user to discouraged uptake of solar. Their long term problem is, as consumption increases costs will rise, led lights,insulation and more efficient appliances will be wide spread but, population will increase etc. NZ basically gets most of its power from hydro, other ways of generation are much more expensive, a rise in prices seems inevitable in the long term. On the other hand the boffins are discovering increase efficiencies in solar panel generation almost at a daily rate. The problem is storage, conventional storage lead/acid, lithium batteries are still too expensive, and inefficient to become totally off grid compared to our present system. There seems to be some big breakthroughs being made in cheap deep storage batteries which will probably come through the system reasonably fast. So here's hoping. One consequence of this new tech is your power supplier will probably be caught trying to operate at high prices in a market relying more and more on petroleum products and only to willing to pay quite a lot more for your solar power than previously, to help keep market share.(and save on imported fuel). The logical conclusion would be for the power companies to sell solar systems at a good(a little above cost) price to their customers, and offer to buy excess generation also for a good price. In addition off peak power would probably would drop pretty fast in an effort to compete with battery storage. Here's Hoping!	Laggard (17509)
1428801	2016-11-19 11:39:00	There's no logic in the power companies doing that for quite some time. The population will need to grow quite a bit before they exhaust existing power generation capabilities and options. The reason they pay so little for excess power is because they have no need of it and it's at exactly the wrong time of day to be much use even if they did. Honestly I'm surprised they buy it back at all and that they used to pay more for it. Why sell solar systems to people so they can generate their own power, currently that's just reducing their income by reducing customers dependency on them. It might pay off going off grid now, but it's a gamble that depends largely on power prices going up faster than expected and batteries lasting long enough to save back their purchase price. As you say solar keeps getting cheaper and other battery technologies are in the works, maybe sometime soon it'll be worth doing.	dugimodo (138)
1428802	2016-11-19 22:00:00	I think the change over point will come quicker than we realise. There is a huge amount of research going on into cheap energy storage and production, both big scale and small. Just looking through the fist few pages of New Atlas/Gizmag produced these links: newatlas.com newatlas.com newatlas.com newatlas.com These discoveries probably need future development to find possible "bugs" that would inhibit widespread use, production for the most part seems would be based on present day type production methods. There are likely to be many more similar products being developed	Laggard (17509)
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