I think that a solar panel on every house would be much safer,
but we need to make them more efficient before that's an option.
Agreed that decentralization is preferable, but living in california, and having spoken with two solar companies in the past year, it's obvious that the entire situation in motivated by desire to keep money exchanging hands rather than any desire to actually solve problems.
* $20,000 worth of solar panels can provide roughly one third of the power needs for my primary residence.
* There are all sorts of government subsidies and endorsements as well as various programs to rent rather than buy panels. With one program, for example, if we install solar, the company doing the installation immediately gets a large cash incentive from the government. They take that in lieu of installation costs, and we "rent" the panels in the form of paying them directly for the electricity they produce. However, the panels won't generate enough to completely power the house, so we pay two electrical bills per month, one to edison, and one to the panel company, and the way the numbers work out, our actual monthly total works out to about the same as it is right now: about $200-$250/mo. But we get to "feel good" about being "green." At least, 1/3 green.
* Given wind conditions in the area, a single $1500 wind turbine could provide more than 100% of the required power roughly 8 months out of the year, and more than 80% the other 4 months. For anyone paying less than $200/mo for power, that single $1500 turbine would provide
all of their electricity, year-round.
* County law prohibits wind turbines on properties smaller than 5 acres
Such situations presumably result from the very issues we've discussed: our society is not motivated by desire to solve or simplify our problems so much as by desire to keep the money flowing. In my area, most private residences could have their electrical needs completely provided for, for a quarter what the state is willing to pay for solar. California solar rebates are
complicated, but the number I've been given is that they'll pay "about a third" of installation costs. So, about $6600 in our case. And that's for panels that generate a third of our power and won't reduce our monthly bill at all. Yet despite the state being willing to pay $6600 to keep us paying the same monthly bill, law prohibits us from paying $1500 ourselves to reduce our monthly payments almost to zero?
For $1500 our electric bill could be almost entirely wiped out, and I suspect that most of my neighbors use much less electricity than we do. It's not unreasonable to think that for much less money than the state pays in subsidies, the majority of all residential electrical use could be completely provided with no monthly payment. Instead of paying $6000 in subsidies to solar companies to install then rent panels that only generate a third of our power, doesn't it make much more sense to make it standard practice to install $1500 turbines on every new house? Rather than having massive centralized power generation facilities and transferring power across the state, requiring thousands of miles of cabling, installers, maintenance crews, technicians, billing departments, accountants and companies like SCE, SDG&E and PGE, wouldn't it make much more sense to simply start installing wind turbines on all new construction?
But we don't do that. Because more pieces of green paper get to move around if we don't. More money is moved around and more people are employed by $20,000 solar panels plus $200/mo forever in electric bills than a single $1500 wind generator that typically lasts
20-25 years.