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Over $20 of my bill is just "grid tie" (Helco service fees), which wouldn't go away if I was on solar. It might actually go up. So our actual electrical usage is less than $80/month. When we crunched the numbers, nobody would install a rooftop system for less than what we are currently paying for grid electricity. We asked, they passed on doing business with us unless we wanted our monthly payments to go up in exchange for the possibility for cheaper power 20 years from now.
No thanks. I'm sure technological advances will give us a better option in the future. In the meantime, we are saving money. Line drying our clothes only takes a few minutes per day.
In the meantime, we are saving money. Line drying our clothes only takes a few minutes per day.
Wow! Line drying clothes, that's 'old school'! My mom put the clothes out to dry on the lines 50 to 60 years ago. The clothes always felt stiff. Sometimes it would rain on the clothes, and they weren't as clean. Sometimes a neighbor would burn wood or barbecue, and the washed and lined dried clothes would smell. Later, my parents could afford a natural gas drier and didn't have to line dry clothes, put up with all that hassle, stiff and sometimes smelly clothes.
When I drive around where I live, I never see anyone line drying clothes. We used to have a neighbor line dry their clothes when we lived in a different suburb 20 years ago, but that was probably the only person in that entire suburb that lined dried clothes. We think of line drying clothes as a relic in the past, long forgotten, replaced my modern technology. I never think about the cost to run the drier. If electricity was triple the cost, I'd have a PV system installed, if I could have it installed, it made economic sense, and if I planned on living in that location for years. I guess I don't feel like living in the past or living like a hermit in a dark tiny house. I'd rather just work a little harder and make more money to live at a higher standard of living.
Wow! Line drying clothes, that's 'old school'! My mom put the clothes out to dry on the lines 50 to 60 years ago.
Well - I can't remember line drying either since I lived in SF and I could see them doing it in Chinatown from my office and that was several years ago. A star energy saver dryer is going to be cents per load (as in well under a dollar). I haven't seen line drying in Hawaii personally.
Regardless, if you can't get a solar place to reduce a $100 monthly bill that's a function of the BI not what solar can save.
Nothing wrong with line drying clothes. If you enjoy doing it and have the free time it doesn't matter what technological advancements in clothes drying exist.
As for technological advancements in solar... I've been hearing that for the last 15-20 years. It's pretty much gone no where when compared to the vast majority of "tech" except for marginal improvements in solar module efficiency (i.e. smaller roof for same output) and inverter efficiency. Everyone talks about breakthroughs but nothing has happened... so there is no reason to believe it will happen anytime soon.
But as for price, I remember paying $600 for a 75 watt Siemens (previously Arco Solar) solar panel back in 1999. Today it's the exact same technology (literally nothing has changed) but the price is 90%+ lower. With silicon prices at almost zero and every other solar module manufacturer going out of business, it's a clear sign that we have reached the bottom for module pricing. If I was thinking of going solar, now is the best time. Govt incentives aren't going to get any better (in fact they will be phased out soon) and it's not like you're going to get lower priced electricians and labor in the future. I read somewhere that over 90% of the solar installers on Oahu have either gone bankrupt, closed shop or moved back to the mainland. So on top of everything, the small handful of viable and financially solvent PV companies still around aren't making a killing on their installs... they are likely just trying to survive a 70-90% drop in work from the last couple years.
A lot of folks hang their clothes in the sunshine to have them fresher.
But folks still line dry. My neighbor line drys his clothes. I'll line dry jeans, blankets and towels and then toss them in the dryer on 'fluff' mode to soften them up before folding. Heavy things that will take a lot of gas to dry are good candidates for line drying. We used to line dry more often but haven't been 100% line dry for the past several years. Clothes last longer if they are line dried, there's less wear and tear on them than in a dryer.
In many cases yes, and it saves the atmosphere too.
Many people are choosing solar mostly for the environmental benefits, as fewer seem comfortable with burning pollutant and CO2 spewing diesel fuel for their electricity these days. Yup, that's right. Most of Hawaii's electricity is generated by oil shipped from the mainland.
Line dried clothes? You bet. I even do this in Alaska, where we have hydro power that's much cheaper than grid power in Hawaii. Problem is, it works only in summer when the sun is out- which is rare.
Interesting article on costs of solar. The costs of the panels has come down a lot (but are now flattening out), but ...“soft costs”–which include signing up customers, installation, and maintenance–remain relatively high, especially when you compare the U.S. with other leading markets, including Germany and Australia. “Soft costs comprise about 67% of a total [U.S.] residential system price...".
I think terracore is up against the lower limit of what's profitable for the solar installation companies. They have fixed overhead (and extra marketing costs as mysticaltyger rightfully points out) and permit costs, so smaller systems just don't make financial sense with their prices, especially since your electric bill is low already. You could go for a larger system and charge an electric car, then you are offsetting electric and gasoline expenses with your solar investment.
Two other options: don't pay monthly because that includes interest of some sort. If you pay it all up front, it is cheaper overall, so your return is better. Sure, you need the cash, but you could consider it like any other retirement investment. The other option is to DIY as a smaller system. You can buy the parts locally, pull your own permits, and find an electrician to install it for an hourly rate. You can even help with the roof installation if you're up for it. It's more work overall but cheaper that way.
As for hanging clothes, it's fairly common here in Hawaii. We do it under a covered lanai, and I see people hanging clothes in carports in my neighborhood. Given the cost of propane or electricity here, it's a no-brainer way to save. It's pointless for a mainlander to write 2 paragraphs about how they don't hang clothes or would theoretically not do it.
And Blind Cleric is spot on: some people feel that spewing easily avoided greenhouse gases is an inconsciensious thing to do these days.
As for cold weather line drying, my high school science teacher liked to tell how his grandmother in Scandinavia used to line dry all winter. The water in wet clothes will freeze and then sublime (evaporate directly from ice to vapor) in the cold dry air, so clothes get dry eventually.
Last edited by KauaiHiker; 07-04-2017 at 04:09 PM..
Rooftop solar is a mixed bag when you add in the peripheral expenses like system maintenance, eventual roof coating/replacement, power company fees, etc. Yes, the ROI in places like HI is short enough to make an obvious case, but for my specific situation here in sunny AZ, it would take 12+ years to break even on roof top solar and at my age that really doesn't make sense.
Instead we decided to make incremental changes on the demand side like LED lighting and A/C load shifting to reduce our peak electrical demand and take advantage of the much lower off-peak rates offered by the utility company.
Incremental changes are always good. The new lights use almost no power at all. I think they gave a Nobel Peace prize to the person who invented them because the lesser demand for oil to power regular lights would help world peace.
Electric costs in Hawaii have pretty much always been high so folks already have the curly bulb & LED lights. There's very little A/C in Hawaii because of the high electric rates. Also it doesn't get as stinking hot in the summer like it does in some other areas. The ocean around us is a huge heat sink and keeps things at pretty much a relatively even temperature all year round. Folks use propane (no natural gas in Hawaii) for water heaters if they don't have that on solar already as well as for stoves because it's less expensive than electric. Once all those lower use strategies are in place, our electric bills are still high enough to make a payback time for big roof top solar less than five years.
With a grid tie system, there's virtually no maintenance. Roof coating/replacement is about every twenty to thirty years although our roof was installed in '52 and it's still good. (Aluminum 'tin' roofing) The $20 per month charged by the electric company to be a grid tie more than makes up for the battery bank and generator we don't have to keep on hand.
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