Quote:
Originally Posted by Robaroni
Dablack,
I'm not sure. For me there are a lot of, let's say, hidden variables. Tomorrow the grid goes down, which is entirely possible in this country, and we don't know when it will be back up. Now the ROI goes out the window. Then there's funding people who want to kill us, I'm not especially keen on that. I think there's also the satisfaction factor of seeing meters spin backwards.
Also here's something I never expected, before I got my free intertie I had a strictly off grid backup system in. Well, a couple of years ago Outback modified (for free) my off grid inverters to offgrid/intertie. Now I have the best of both worlds and I'm selling 50 to 60 KWHs back to the grid during the summer. In fact I'm so far ahead I'm using electric heat in some of the winter months. And if the grid goes down I have backup, in fact, so much that a year or so ago we had severe flooding and lost power for a week. I loaned my genset out because I didn't need it!
Sure, when I design a circuit I use ohms law and Fast Fourier Transforms but sometime intuition and gut feelings work really well too!
Rob
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Rob,
You are 100% right. But those are personal decisions. It is tough for me to tell someone posting online about that their build or insulation choices that they made the wrong choice because their meter won't turn backwards or that the grid is going to go down and then they will be sorry. Those are the things where we follow our heart (gut feelings). Going on gut is fine but that is what it is. No REAL numbers to back it up. Someone on this thread got slammed because he questioned the need for insulation that would not ever pay for itself. If someone wants to go past ROI on insulation, that is fine but we have to remember that it was a gut feeling that causes some of us to do that. For some of us, this is a hobby. We enjoy chasing that last kw, that last air leak, that last bit of waste. Will all that chasing pay back? Maybe......
Someone coming in and saying, that too much insulation won't pay back shouldn't be slammed. Without the governments using tax payers money, solar would be a tough sell. Even with the governments tax money it is questionable if it will ever really pay for itself compaired to other investments. With all that said, I'm very interested in solar for gut reasons.
Sorry for the long post. Lets keep it civil around here. Speaking of civil, mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets. HA!