1. The difference is that the tax write-off is voluntary avoidance of taxation for private energy generation while you are advocating government funding of an industrial process.
2. Again I would not be using tax dollars but spending the money in an important and emerging private sector that I would otherwise be paying to the government to waste.
3. My main reason against choosing a wind turbine is that TVA will only pay me three cents over retail while solar pays twelve. Since it’s a vacation cabin and I’m not there about 300 days per year they will be paying me most of the time.
4. Using food resources for fuel is a bad idea for the reasons mentioned earlier, whether for ethanol or biodiesel.
5. It’s a moot point on why big facilities are sited. The fact is that on-site generation saves distribution costs.
7. Collective costs don’t matter because individuals can do most of the maintenance themselves in their spare time.
8. But TVA will pay me nearly double the retail rate for the power, so the system will pay for itself very quickly, then begin to make me money. At least that’s that way it appears on a preliminary basis. I’ll be doing the math on it after I figure out the allowable federal and state tax incentives. I already took maximum energy tax credits for upgrading my heat pumps at my main home, so I’m not sure if I can avoid taxes a second time.
9. I think the problem that you are having with this is that you are looking at it from a national perspective- ‘does it make sense for governments and utilities to adopt these policies?’ My perspective is different. They already adopted these policies and there’s nothing that I can do to have them retracted, so within these new rules, what can I do to save or possibly make money?
1: Yea, welfare whores have all kinds of ways of justifying soaking tax payers for their benefit.
2: It a waste of money. Solar never pays for itself.
3: See 2.
4: I already said using food is stupid. Not all oil producing plants are used for food. Several can be used for bio diesel and have the added advantage of being able to grow in areas that are not economically viable for food production.
5: No, it is not moot. The lower expense of operating a single large facility over a bunch of smaller local facilties more than compensates for transmission losses. If this were not so, energy companies would be building small, local facilities instead of big remote ones. This does not mean individuals - if they can afford it - should not be installing their own point sources. It DOES mean subsidizing individuals to do so is not an efficient method of moving toward energy independence.
7: See 6. Individuals can do what they want - just don't do it on the public dime.
8: It does not matter what TVA pays you, solar does NOT pay for itself. The numbers are totally against you. First, you are looking at a 1.5 KW panel at a cost of about $12,000. Assuming that includes installation, grid hookup, etc, what you will end up with is a system that will output a net of about 1.2 KW after parasitic losses. Of course, that 1.2 rating is only when the sun is hitting the panel as best angle, which is only a small part of the total daylight period. Lower angles yields lower output. The standard integral results in a yield of approximately .3488 X average output over a 12 hour day. Another rule of thumb calculation is you get about the equivalent of 4 hours best-angle sunlight over a 12 hour daylight period. That gives you about 5 KWH/day. That's about $0.60/day at 12 cents per KWH. According to the weather almanac, you area gets about 216 sunny or partly sunny (we'll give full credit for party sunny) days per year, giving you a net of $129.60/yr. Divide that into the 10% of the $12,000 initial outlay, and you'll take over 9 years just to break even. Except, of course, a 5 year old panel loses about 10% efficiency, a 10 year old panel puts out under 70% of its rated capacity, etc. And these figures are from the newer panels. (Older panels produced in the 90s were outputting under 50% capacity by the time they are 10 years old.) Bottom line, by the time your panel has paid even your 10% of its cost, it will be time to replace it. Not to mention, getting the full rated output at all times assumes you are there, pretty much daily, cleaning it of dust and debris. (you'd be surprised how little dust it takes to reduce output by 10% or more. Got trees around your cabin, plan on a 20% reduction over rating unless you're out there brushing leaves off as your main occupation.) Sorry to bust your bubble, but solar just isn't worth the effort at current costs.
9: Of
COURSE I am talking about government policies. How many times have I said exactly that? Individuals can do what they want. If they want to be stupid, let them buy a bunch of solar panels and be wedded to them like a farmer to his milk cow. But keep government subsidy out of it. It's a waste of limited resources. And, unless you don't vote, you CAN do something about government policies. You just claim helplessness like a welfare mom because you see their policies as to your personal benefit, andd fuck whether it actually does anything positive for the nation.
Also, the title of this thread is "
Times are bad, what is the solution" (which somehow got focused on energy policy), not "
times are bad, how can this damned yankee take advantage of stupid liberal energy policies?
