While Steven and I are doing all this work to our house to bring it from 1925 to 2007, we would love to make the place more green. We'd be willing to spend 10% of all we are putting in, say $5k, on solar panels, a wind generator...anything that harnesses the power of the earth and uses it. But it is all so damned expensive, still. Five thousand will buy us nothing.
Announcement to the manufacturing demi-monde: I want affordable solar and wind collectors, NOT a flatscreen TV for less than $1k. Could you please offer that to me? I'll look out for your email.
Why can't feathering our nest be less sticks and mud, and more photovalics and silicon surfaces? Why does updating our house feel closer to 1925--at least in terms of technology--than to 2007?
I just read this report, and it really makes me wish we could do something. The US is so far behind in this area. Why are we so resistant to letting technology help us in this area? It seems every company offering tech here considers tech to be the latest ipod or gas-guzzling gadget machine, NOT improving the energy hogs that our nests still are. Look people, "the entire city of Reykjavik, Iceland, is powered by geothermal waters." Why can't we get away from coal and the fossil fuels? Why don't we realize what a huge growth area for business this could become?
Does anyone know if that Sharp system is available on the market? I just googled it and came up with nada, except for vague media plants like the article i'm referencing here. The article says the lowest installed cost is $31,500, which is too bad. It's a sad reflection of our culture that giant flatscreens can be had by the bundles of 30 vs. one tiny solar energy collector.
Do any of you have any green characteristics built into your homes?
3 comments:
This is a good article on a solar/fuel cell project up in New Jersey. It's a complete off-grid house, complete with solar for summers and hydrogen-powered fuel cells for winter. A neat idea and the house consumes zero commercially-produced electric.
The problem? The prototype cost $500K, but they estimate individual re-fits/updates to run in the $100K area.
If your electric runs you $1500 a year then the project would pay itself off in a measly 66 years, 34 weeks, 4 days, 16 hours.
*sigh* Well, at least I have a heat pump, and 4 brand new skylights, harnessing some of nature's power (without making too much of a mess). Maybe by the time we are in our golden years the tech will progress to a point that it is affordable and mass marketted. Maybe.
Nice to see some others thinking about this. Hold tight friend, new tech is coming down the pipeline well before your golden years. The efficincy of the inverters is one of the largest problems with solar installation costs. There are researchers at Virginia Tech that have a new inverter soon to come on the market that will need 1/3rd of the panels that are currently required. I am personally getting ready to do an install on a 4,000 sq. ft. house with a preproduction unit of this inverter. I will post how well this works and more details(providing the homeowner has no objections)over the next couple of months. http://independentfreeman.blogspot.com/
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