[ale] OT Just bought my 1st & 2nd "lighting-class" LED bulbs

[agcarver+ale at acarver.net (Alex Carver)]

On 7/23/2013 17:17, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:

> Mike W, and all,
>
> I've studied solar quite a bit.  I have a subscription to Home Power
> magazine.  I like the idea but getting payback in any good time frame
> is hard, in the South East, even if the wife problem were fixable.
> Big problem is heating, cooling, and dehumidifying.  I tell people I
> could solarize my house for the price of the house.  A 15 KW array,
> for about $ 150,000 would do nicely.

Where did you get that number?  Solar power has been below the $3/Watt 
mark for a while now.  The mythical figure from the solar cell research 
arena was $1/Watt and they're close to that now.  I just checked and 
good Kyocera panels are running at a bit north of $2.10/Watt.  Your 15KW 
array would only be $32k not $150k.  Even if you factor shipping (about 
$2k) and the grid tie inverter (about $23k for a 15kW unit), you're 
still below $60k for the whole system.

To take into account solar angles, you could add about $5k to the system 
for tilt control which will let you optimize the tilt angle for summer 
and winter conditions.  Go all out with a sun tracker for maybe $20k and 
you're still less than what you claim.