Solar Power

Uncle has just done the same. They cost £12k, he'll get smaller bills, and he's getting paid for what he puts back into the grid.

He reckons it's a 10 year return on investment, and at current interest rates better than leaving the money in the bank. He had them on his last two houses as well, so must have been solar for 15-20 years now, so he knows what benefits have or haven't materialised.

I'd also like to see some reasoning behind the claim that solar panels are a waste of time.

If everybody had them we'd be drawing 50% less power as a nation from the grid. Whatever you think the positive benefits are/aren't, how can that be a negative?

They're not necessarily a waste of time from a personal economic standpoint. With the levels of subsidy that were on offer they were quite tempting....

However if you think you're saving the planet, dream on! With a bit of luck the Global Warming Scam will properly fall apart in the near future and the truth will come out that CO2 has pretty much naff all effect on climate.

As for saving next doors cat.... I'd need more data on the cat...

Sits back waits for reaction.....

Originally Posted by LankyIanB

the truth will come out that CO2 has pretty much naff all effect on climate.

Sits back waits for reaction.....

You know what I'm going to ask for don't you

What's your evidence that CO2 has no effect on the climate?

This is a nice little starter overview - some useful links to follow to more detailed info especially on the solar effects on climate.

The whole site is quite a mine of information. It's a well known "denier" site but well worth a read.

Note that I didn't say CO2 has "no" effect, I said " pretty much naff all effect" there is most likely an effect but it's no way as significant as it's been hyped up to be.

The data on this page sums it up quite nicely - http://wattsupwiththat.com/widget/ CO2 continuing to rise, temperature stable, starting to decline...? And that's just since 1979.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/3...lobal-warming/ is also quite a good read

enjoy!

Slightly off topic, but do any of you remember when the government was extolling the virtues of the diesel car and how much cheaper diesel was in conparison* to petrol ?

Now, what's the price of diesel ?

Just saying.

*intentional misspell.

[pookie]

I personally want to see those polar bears we're saving.. did you go for a local company or a national ?

[Paul the 6th]

I can't remember the exact figures, but I ran the AV on a conference about 'heritage buildings' in York a few months back, and one of the speakers on the conference was asked a question about PV (the 'in the know' name for solar panels = photo voltaic) panels - he errupted and started spouting about the amount of energy required/carbon generated to produce one domestic sized PV panel will take 50* years the the carbon to be offest by the 'green energy' generated from the PV..

Bit like building a nice hybrid car which doesn't give out CO or CO2 but the production process for the car's giant battery produced 10x* more carbon than the entire footprint of a conventional fossil fuelled car..

*= again, these are just numbers for postings sake, not actual facts or figures from teh internet..

[yorkie_chris]

You're better off running about in a mark 3 land rover than a prius


Though I am suspicious of "amount of carbon", my mate had too much time on his hands once over and worked one of these statistics out compared to the actual price of oil or coal... they are either getting cheaper than market price or someones lying.

[Paul the 6th]

Yeah there's the 'dust to dust' research publish a few years ago in whatcar magazine and it turned out that a jeep wrangler had a lower life time carbon footprint from production to scrapping, than a prius/generic hybrid, simply because the jeep used simple panels pressed in aluminium and a simple petrol engine with simple components, where the hybrid had this superduper electric cell and was really heavy so used more tyres.. And what about in 10 years when the warrranty on the prius battery expires? Watch those hybrid prices plummet!

Anywho back on topic. Congrats on your PV's..

[flymo]

I have to admit, I don't give too much of a fuss about carbon footprint saving. I do however care greatly about my electricity bill and the apparent uncontrollable trend upwards in the cost of the energy.

On a good sunny day I'm now generating about double what we actually use which is fantastic. The numbers are real, despite the various doubts over long term viability, there's nothing imaginary about my electricity meter whizzing backwards.

I've been logging energy meter readings weekly since before we installed PV, sad perhaps but really the only way to properly compare before and after. What I see is a huge reduction in energy consumption since installation, obviously slowed down during the winter months but already turning positive again.