[Restrain]

You get a call. Hi, we want to lease you a solar system, blah, blah. 20 year lease, solar company gets the solar credit. Want to buy? Return on investment will exceed that same 20 years not to mention maintenance, etc.

But MIT has come up with a new material. Allows for a more efficient solar cell system, much lower cost, can generate much more power. Estimated commercial roll-out is 5 years.

So just cool your jets on solar, let FPL, etc spend their big bucks building the commercially viable solar plants. Then when the better technology rolls out, then look at individual solar. Money saved now vs money wasted when you are crying about your lease payment vs your neighbors costs.

Example is a man in Dallas that spent $40K putting CAT5 throughout his home, hard-wiring in switches to remotely control appliances, lights, etc. less than 10 years later, everything is wireless and the entire system could be done for less than a thousand.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/mit...ect-solar-cell

[StarfishKey]

It's nice to jump on a new technology but I find that waiting until the second generation makes a huge difference.

Case in point, the Prius Gen I was a great idea but had kinks to work out. I bought a Gen II, and used by only a few years so it didn't cost me that much versus a new one, and it has given me no problems for 5 solid years now! Plus, now it looks more sporty, whereas when I first bought it it was still ahead of its time and looked like an alien car. It looks like brand new and so far has been working like it, no expensive fixes beyond replacing the tires in all this time.

I wanted to buy a solar generator, and a propane outboard. However, when you read reviews it seems these start well, but still have some things to work out. The solar battery can give out too early and need replacing, and the propane can stop working or have trouble being started. Plus, first generation models are expensive for all those kinks - about $2000 for the solar generator for only a 1200, and about $2000 for a 4HP outboard. I am not one to wait forever for the ultimate model, but I find with ANY technology - phones, computers, etc. included - waiting until at least the 2nd release results in a smoother model and often a bit lower price. Again, even more so if you can buy it used from a reliable source.

I hope to be able to buy these items in 2 or 3 years when they have been improved - unless of course something radically better gets invented that is worth a longer wait.

One could always say better technology comes along if you just wait - like in 1998 if I had just waited to buy a phone for 10 years I could have gotten one with a touch screen that I could carry in my pocket... yeah, but I wanted a phone THEN! Or comparing what computers can do if one only waits 10 years. For each individual, there is also a potential savings depending on how much they use their new item, and a peace of mind for many years. Maybe buying solar early saves that person in your example 15k in electricity bills over 10 years, to help offset the cost. Plus maybe they feel better about themselves and their life for a whole 10 years than if they had waited and even felt negative feelings about still being on the grid. It is an individual decision, there is no right or wrong for each person.

Maybe someday I'll learn how to convert my car to vegetable oil. That would be great, but in the meantime I can't say it's a major loss that I haven't done it yet because it's not a huge priority to me yet. But for someone else, maybe they did it 10 years ago already and have been very happy with the savings and personal satisfaction it gave them. It just depends on one's priorities.

The best we can do if we must wait for better technology to help with our environmental usage, is to try to curb the current harm we create by being mindful of the energy and water we use, learning to use fewer chemicals in our lives, recycling, composting, planting native, etc. etc. If you're not on solar yet for instance, you can at least try to lower your impact on the environment, as well as on your own wallet, in other ways, until solar becomes the right option for you.

My main concern with solar panels thus far is how much you pay for such an extremely fragile piece of equipment. I am on waterfront property, so don't have much protection in storms. Solar absolutely makes sense for Florida, but if we can't make panels that are reasonably hurricane-proof, the technology just hasn't matched the need yet. Having said that, I think it is disgraceful that Florida is not at the forefront of studying and perfecting this technology so that adequate and affordable panels could have been made available to use by now. Other than for the interest of big corporations, there is no reason to have dragged our feet on this - efficient and sturdy solar can be helpful to our environment, our monthly bills as residents, and can also be a huge source of jobs in the state of Florida, from manual to technical/IT and design, to upper management. It is bad for our state not to have made this a focus of major investment.

[chopchop0]

Good points in the OP.

[AES328]

Never buy first gen. That pretty much goes for any technology.

[vaughanwilliams]

Can't happen soon enough. I hope I live long enough to see Duke go belly up.

[lvoc]

Originally Posted by Restrain

You get a call. Hi, we want to lease you a solar system, blah, blah. 20 year lease, solar company gets the solar credit. Want to buy? Return on investment will exceed that same 20 years not to mention maintenance, etc.

But MIT has come up with a new material. Allows for a more efficient solar cell system, much lower cost, can generate much more power. Estimated commercial roll-out is 5 years.

So just cool your jets on solar, let FPL, etc spend their big bucks building the commercially viable solar plants. Then when the better technology rolls out, then look at individual solar. Money saved now vs money wasted when you are crying about your lease payment vs your neighbors costs.

Example is a man in Dallas that spent $40K putting CAT5 throughout his home, hard-wiring in switches to remotely control appliances, lights, etc. less than 10 years later, everything is wireless and the entire system could be done for less than a thousand.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/mit...ect-solar-cell

Cost of the silicon is down to about $0.75 per watt. But installed cost of an array and support is around $4.00. So the cost of the silicon is less important than the increase in efficiency.

I would expect that this technology will simply feed into the development process of the solar panel industry and will simply maintain the ongoing decline in overall price.

I would think 2016 remains the critical year. That is when the subsidy may well end. So a very large increase in cost as the subsidy goes away.

CAT5 even in a large house does not cost anywhere near $40K...that would be pricing for an ultimate home automation system. The price of such a system is in the electronics and the operating devices.

wifi does not nearly equal the performance of a properly done wired system. 5X to 10X performance difference.

[Restrain]

The example was at the earliest Gen 1 of home wired networking. Even made the news at the time. Equal to Gen 1 solar for the cost/benefit ratios. Yes Cat5 is faster, but unless you are really pushing the bandwidth, wireless will work fine for most home applications, as well as many office applications. The same with solar. An early adopter will pay out the gazoonga for solar (I have seen whole house operations cost over $60K). A few years will change the technology, make it much more viable.

[Zaba]

A lot of municipalities are sorely lacking in up to date solar statutes and regulations.

To put it another way, in some FL counties, there are no provisions for it whatsoever meaning that installing it is a code violation since the codes are worded specifically for habitable structures being hooked up to power services.

[lvoc]

Originally Posted by Restrain

The example was at the earliest Gen 1 of home wired networking. Even made the news at the time. Equal to Gen 1 solar for the cost/benefit ratios. Yes Cat5 is faster, but unless you are really pushing the bandwidth, wireless will work fine for most home applications, as well as many office applications. The same with solar. An early adopter will pay out the gazoonga for solar (I have seen whole house operations cost over $60K). A few years will change the technology, make it much more viable.

I worked at Xerox when the original coax ethernet was developed. EVen that could not have gotten to 40K on any reasonable house. Maybe 5K above that you were being scammed.

One could get to 40K but that was with things like 2K for drape openers and such.

I would agree that wireless works fine with the exception that it does not do well if you are shoving around big file...generally video and such or if you are trying to be secure.

I suggest still the subsidy is very important and if it goes away the best year in the next 6 or 7 will likely be 2016. And the early adapters are done. That really went away when the chinese broke the price line.

[smarino]

Solar is always going to be a tough one in Florida due to the high humidity and the need for large A/C units. Uses up a lot of juice. Places like Hawaii (where the Big Island has been very successful w/ the current technology), or New Mexico are much better suited for solar. In New Mexico, all you need is a swamp cooler, and in Hawaii you don't need anything, just good ventilation, shade, and fans. An adobe house is a very efficient design for high temperature, low humidity areas, something Florida is not. Of course w/ global warming, we'll see what happens down the road. Now if you want to install a hybrid system that feeds into the existent electrical grid, that may work, to a point, but I never understood the attraction of those things. The goal is to be off the grid and get away from the big electrical crooks, not get in bed w/ them. Those systems are much more complicated and expensive than straight solar as well. You can save quite a bit of money down the road by simply installing a solar water heating system. Foolproof design, and essentially maintenance free. Guess who is behind all this push to hook solar up to the existing electric grids.....the electric companies! What a coincidence.

I think wireless, unless you have to have it for some reason or another, is a nutty idea too. I've always gone w/ wired and never had one bit of trouble w/ it. Much more secure, much cheaper, much simpler. Ditto w/ electric cars. The internal combustion engine has been around for over 100 years now. Due to constant design and engineering refinements, they're very reliable and efficient. I spent many decades repairing and maintaining autos at various high end dealerships, and trust me, a straight E car is so much simpler to build and maintain than a hybrid car it's not even funny. The whole idea of new technology is to improve and supersede older less advanced technology, not partner w/ it. Or, to give a good example, Edison didn't try to improve gas lamps for lighting w/ his electric light bulb, he set out to replace them w/ something better.

Best bets: straight solar for your home, hard wired electronic systems, and a compressed air or natural gas engine for your vehicle. But then I ride regular and electric bikes, and shoot film instead of digital. Film has higher image quality, there's no chance of losing your images due to equipment crashes, and I make my own photographs using paper, film and cameras that I make myself. The word "photograph" literally means "drawing with light". It doesn't mean image capture to a silicon sensor, and then printed by an inkjet printer.