Heating and AC , You're screwed

[Jarlaxle]

All of which lack either power, reliability, or cost effectiveness.

Solar is very expensive and you depend on nice sunny days to get enough power to run your home. It's a bad investment that will never pay off. Same with wind. It's a very expensive investment and offers no real return. By the time you create enough electricity to break even on the investment, the thing breaks down and it's very costly to repair. And again, unreliable since it only works when it's windy, and if you have too much wind, it shuts down in effort to protect it from being damaged.

Electric cars? What's the point? It takes fossil fuels tho create the electricity to run it. If you need a charge overnight, and the power goes off, you are going to piss off your boss trying to explain why you can't get to work. If your car is low on electricity, and you end up sitting in a traffic jam for a couple of hours with the AC or heat blowing, your car is just going to stop working and you're going to need a tow.

You can get an 850W solar system for about $10K. And there are many utility companies that will subsidize your install costs up to 50%. Payback time is about 8 years.

Wind turbine set ups start at 2KW and cost anywhere from $10 - $70K. The approximate payback time is about 6 years.

Granted, the systems are still a little pricey, but once they reach their payback dates, you don't pay anymore utility bills, ever. Or your bills are very small, if the systems periodically go down from time to time. If you reduce your carbon footprint, that should be enough to meet your energy needs.

As far as cars, you can plan your route ahead of time and I doubt you would run out of power over night, unless there was a blackout, which don't happen all that often.

Not really because solar panels do not last forever. They need to be replaced as well. Up north, you are not going to break even ever. In most winters, the roofs are covered with snow so no sun hits the panels. They're worthless unless it's not snowing. Roof shingles will react to sun and melt the snow eventually. Solar panels will not do that.

Yes, they will. My mother has solar panels, and snow melts off them faster than it does the shingles.

My electric bill is about $50.00 per month. If I invested this 10K in solar panels, it would take me almost 17 years to break even, and that's if I never used one watt of electricity from the electric company and not had any repair or replacement issues with the panels. But as others have pointed out, you're not going to get the energy you need from 10K in panels.

Your electric bill is incredibly low...I suspect you use gas for heat, hot water, cooking, and the dryer, anbd life where electric rates are low. If you do not, the bill will be higher. My mother's is usually 4x that...electric dryer, well pump, forced-air heat, electric oven. Before she ditched the electric water heater, it cost over $100/month just to run THAT!

 

[Markle]

Who wants a hole in their roof? If firefighters can get water through your roof, then your roof isn't up to code. You can also market the house as being able to live off the grid, with no electric bills to pay.

Funniest thing about fires, they actually burn through a roof! I KNOW! Who knew?

With edge to edge solar panels, the water can't get through.

They're ugly, the ones I have listed sold for less than market value without the panels. Comments from prospective customers included, "I don't want a hobby, they're ugly, so if the roof starts to leak, they all have to be removed and then reinstalled?"

Living off the grid, so to speak, isn't realistic since people in our area, where there is some sun, want AC and lights at night too. Go figure!

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

All of which lack either power, reliability, or cost effectiveness.

Solar is very expensive and you depend on nice sunny days to get enough power to run your home. It's a bad investment that will never pay off. Same with wind. It's a very expensive investment and offers no real return. By the time you create enough electricity to break even on the investment, the thing breaks down and it's very costly to repair. And again, unreliable since it only works when it's windy, and if you have too much wind, it shuts down in effort to protect it from being damaged.

Electric cars? What's the point? It takes fossil fuels tho create the electricity to run it. If you need a charge overnight, and the power goes off, you are going to piss off your boss trying to explain why you can't get to work. If your car is low on electricity, and you end up sitting in a traffic jam for a couple of hours with the AC or heat blowing, your car is just going to stop working and you're going to need a tow.

You can get an 850W solar system for about $10K. And there are many utility companies that will subsidize your install costs up to 50%. Payback time is about 8 years.

Wind turbine set ups start at 2KW and cost anywhere from $10 - $70K. The approximate payback time is about 6 years.

Granted, the systems are still a little pricey, but once they reach their payback dates, you don't pay anymore utility bills, ever. Or your bills are very small, if the systems periodically go down from time to time. If you reduce your carbon footprint, that should be enough to meet your energy needs.

As far as cars, you can plan your route ahead of time and I doubt you would run out of power over night, unless there was a blackout, which don't happen all that often.

Not really because solar panels do not last forever. They need to be replaced as well. Up north, you are not going to break even ever. In most winters, the roofs are covered with snow so no sun hits the panels. They're worthless unless it's not snowing. Roof shingles will react to sun and melt the snow eventually. Solar panels will not do that.

Yes, they will. My mother has solar panels, and snow melts off them faster than it does the shingles.

My electric bill is about $50.00 per month. If I invested this 10K in solar panels, it would take me almost 17 years to break even, and that's if I never used one watt of electricity from the electric company and not had any repair or replacement issues with the panels. But as others have pointed out, you're not going to get the energy you need from 10K in panels.

Your electric bill is incredibly low...I suspect you use gas for heat, hot water, cooking, and the dryer, anbd life where electric rates are low. If you do not, the bill will be higher. My mother's is usually 4x that...electric dryer, well pump, forced-air heat, electric oven. Before she ditched the electric water heater, it cost over $100/month just to run THAT!

I would never dream of an all electric house. Much too inefficient. My budget for natural gas is $50.00 a month and I have a couple of hundred dollars extra in that account. So between my electric and gas, it's a little less than $100.00 a month to run everything.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Not an all-electric house...heat is oil. (But the blower, which runs any time the furnace runs, is a substantial power draw.) There is no gas in the area, so the dryer MUST be electric. There is propane for the stove and (tankless) water heater...but if there is no gas, most houses will have electric stoves and water heaters! (As built, the house had electric stove and hot water.)

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Not an all-electric house...heat is oil. (But the blower, which runs any time the furnace runs, is a substantial power draw.) There is no gas in the area, so the dryer MUST be electric. There is propane for the stove and (tankless) water heater...but if there is no gas, most houses will have electric stoves and water heaters! (As built, the house had electric stove and hot water.)

Then maybe the solution is to work on getting gas lines to those areas that don't have natural gas. They are even making electricity using natural gas. Thanks to fracking, natural gas is at an all time low. Furnace blowers are used for all heat systems be they natural gas, oil, and even electric heat. I notice about a ten to fifteen dollar difference on my electric bill when I use my furnace in the winter.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Sure...couldn't cost more than a couple trillion dollars! I used to heat with oil, because I lived 10 MILES from the nearest gas line. (Not terminal, not distribution center, the end of the gas line!) In many areas, multiply that distance by ten or more. Rural areas do not have piped-in gas, because it simply isn't practical.

 

[P@triot]

Arguing against climate change, is as stupid as arguing gravity plays no role in plane crashes.

All of the actual science says you are the stupid ones, Billo...

A study in the journal Nature Climate Change reviewed 117 climate predictions and found that 97.4% never materialized.

• Biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted in the 1970s that: “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” and that “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

• In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”

• In January 2006 Al Gore predicted that we had ten years left before the planet turned into a “total frying pan.” We made it.

• In 2008, a segment aired on ABC News predicted that NYC would be under water by June 2015.

• In 1970, ecologist Kenneth E.F. Wattpredicted that “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000, This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.”

• In 2008, Al Gore predicted that there is a 75% chance that the entire north polar ice cap would be completely melted within 5-7 years. He at least hedged that prediction by giving himself “75%” certainty. By 2014 - the polar ice cap had expanded over 60% (more than 900,000 sq miles)

• On May 13th 2014 France’s foreign minister said that we only have 500 days to stop “climate chaos.” The recent Paris climate summit met 565 days after his remark.

• In 2009, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center head James Wassen warned that Obama only had four years left to save the earth.

• On the first Earth Day its sponsor warned that “in 25 years, somewhere between 75% and 80% of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”

• And another Earth Day prediction from Kenneth Watt: “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”

Top 10 Climate Change Predictions Gone Spectacularly Wrong; This Is EPIC!