Whatever source of energy we develop and use, it'll never be enough due to the way we (humans) squander it. I've often thought that if we were ever to develop a source of inexhaustible 'free' energy, it would spell disaster for much of the life on this planet. We'd simply waste it to process every natural resource available and for monkey-brain beguiling friviolities and in doing so spoil the natural world even faster and further. Not that I'm a misanthrope
Am Yisrael Chai
Aye up.
There's coil int pits
Just need opaning
Here we go again...
since the thread we bought a land, demolished the old crappy house that was sitting on it, built a new one instead, and installed PV panels, like 6 months ago.
A total of 29 x 315kWp panels, theoretical max peak power 9135 kWp, 15 East side and 14 West side. With this direction they of course produce less than south, but they produce more at the time we use it, morning and evening.
Cost: ca 10500 eur (I live in Germany).
feed-in tarif: 10.64 ct/kWh
sold energy to the grid: 8.3 kWh/day (average mid-Dec to mid-June)
own use: 2.4 kWh/day (average mid-Dec to mid-June)
cost of buying electric from the grid: 0.32 ct/kWh
With these numbers, by the end of their 20yr lifespan I will be at a small financial LOSS. Even excluding the 1.91% interest I'm paying for the loan. All in all still happy we are reducing our carbon footprint.
I considered getting a battery installed. The only quotation I got so far is a 5kWh battery with 10yr guarantee.
Of these 5kWh I expect I would be using only 2.6kWh/day (there are days that we produce less than 5kWh, so it doesn't get fully charged, and there are days we buy less than 5kWh from the grid).
So for every 1kWh of batter we buy 1kWh less from the grid, but we also sell 1kWh less to it.
So in 10yr lifespan we would "save"
10 x 365 x 2.6 x (0.32-0.1064) = approx. 2000 eur.
let's suppose the battery lasts 20yr, twice as long as the guarantee (many say they do, of course nobody measured this as today's battery were not around 20yr ago), this becomes 4000eur.
So brutally speaking, if the battery cost LESS than 4000eur it's a financial win. Otherwise it's a loss.
The price I was quoted is 7000eur. Go figure. Of course there are probably smaller batteries around, better suited to us, but I still expect they are too expensive...
Any opinion?
Cheers,
Why not supplement with air or ground source heat pump?
Simon Blease
Monmouth
Good that you mention heatpump.
When "we built" our house, we were made to choose between gas heating or heatpump. In a nutshell: heatpump use electric to move heat from outdoor to indoor, are much more efficient, are much better x the environment. But although inexpensive to buy, they are very expensive to install. The most economical (water-to-air, the least efficient) would have added 17k to the cost of building our house. The "best" (water-to-ground, the most efficient), 30k.
Based only on financial aspect, we decided at the time to heat with gas. I now regret it but so it is.
We did inquire about replacing our gas heating with a heatpump now. Every plumber told us not to: the gas heating is new <1yr old, the house is already extremely well insulated, and the labor cost would be astronomical.
Any comment on photovoltaic battery?
I bought some panels about 10 years ago. At the time it was a 'no-brainer-investment' for those who had the spare cash and it seemed then that this was the right thing to do environmentally. I'm less sure now about the environmental benefit.
You might have heard of Michael Moore's 'free' Youtube film, which was initially censored at the insistence of a range of left-leaning/Extinction Rebellion pressure groups, but seems to have been reinstated again. Here's a shorter version of it if you're interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ0utEg7vkg
It remains highly controversial, like Michael Moore himself,and has majorly upset the Green Industry, but provides some food for thought, especially if you're thinking of investing in green tech. It'll be of no interest to you if your hold to the view that the whole issue is some grand conspiracy and the world is essentially just going through natural cycles of climate change.
Up here in the north of England we also have our own 'controversial' character, an academic called Jem Bendel, based at the University of Cumbria, whose ideas are being hotly debated globally at present (no pun intended) See for example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAZJtFZZYmM
Blendell's view is that it's too late and we're certain to have near term climate disaster, so we'd better get to thinking about the fall out (those of us who are still alive) and how we're going to at least cope with the emotional impact of the tragedy. All a bit 'the end is nigh', so not easy listening to, or to read regarding his paper on Deep Adaptation.
Am Yisrael Chai
Fusion will be enough. In practice it is unlimited.Originally Posted by Mossdog
Whatever source of energy we develop and use, it'll never be enough due to the way we (humans) squander it. I've often thought that if we were ever to develop a source of inexhaustible 'free' energy, it would spell disaster for much of the life on this planet. We'd simply waste it to process every natural resource available and for monkey-brain beguiling friviolities and in doing so spoil the natural world even faster and further. Not that I'm a misanthrope
Jem is very interesting - and the pandemic will probably reinforce his "the catastrophe is happening" ideas. If you are worried about wind power vs coal, or vegan vs carnivore, or electric car vs petrol - he thinks we need to decide what weapon we are going to use to kill those who break in to steal our family's food.I bought some panels about 10 years ago. At the time it was a 'no-brainer-investment' for those who had the spare cash and it seemed then that this was the right thing to do environmentally. I'm less sure now about the environmental benefit.
You might have heard of Michael Moore's 'free' Youtube film, which was initially censored at the insistence of a range of left-leaning/Extinction Rebellion pressure groups, but seems to have been reinstated again. Here's a shorter version of it if you're interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ0utEg7vkg
It remains highly controversial, like Michael Moore himself,and has majorly upset the Green Industry, but provides some food for thought, especially if you're thinking of investing in green tech. It'll be of no interest to you if your hold to the view that the whole issue is some grand conspiracy and the world is essentially just going through natural cycles of climate change.
Up here in the north of England we also have our own 'controversial' character, an academic called Jem Bendel, based at the University of Cumbria, whose ideas are being hotly debated globally at present (no pun intended
Blendell's view is that it's too late and we're certain to have near term climate disaster, so we'd better get to thinking about the fall out (those of us who are still alive) and how we're going to at least cope with the emotional impact of the tragedy. All a bit 'the end is nigh', so not easy listening to, or to read regarding his paper on Deep Adaptation.
Fusion of course exists - it is called the sun. Think of all the space available in places like Australia for solar panels. But the trouble is we just keep using more and more power. Any increase in efficiency just means we get more appliances and use them more often. Mike Berners-Lee in "There is no Planet B" makes a big point of this.
But fusion is many orders of magnitude bigger: as a result it will allow very cheap food production. The by product is inert helium. Solar panels are not a panacea. They are short lived in useful life on human scale let alone geological scale, and they use up substantial resources in mfr. With magnetic materials and fields on Moore’s law type exponential growth, it is only a matter of when with fusion.
Last edited by Oracle; 17-06-2020 at 08:34 PM.
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