Five affordable homes in San Luis Obispo county in California are going to be built with a solar electrical system. The photovoltaic cells could provide up to 90% of energy needs for these homes. The installation will be done through a partnership of two non-profit organizations and students from Cal Poly. The home owners will not have to pay extra for the solar power, but are expected to help with the work.
Funding comes from the state’s California Solar Initiative Single-family Affordable Solar Homes program, which started in 2004. Since that time more than 600 affordable homes have been equipped with solar energy systems. I found this article interesting because generally solar energy is not used in residential housing, especially affordable housing. My question was if it's so effective and easy to install, why isn't used more often in other places. My guess is that you have to find the right organizations and funding, as well as people to make it possible.
Article: http://www.theadobepress.com/articles/2011/01/28/news/featurednews/news01.txt
I think it depends on the region of your house and what direction your roof points. I think it's also because of the cost of the panels and how easily they are damaged if not taken care of, like if you have them in Texas where in the winter, hail the size of golf balls and bigger fall and make huge dents in cars that are left unsheltered would be a bad investment.
ReplyDeleteI remember PGE and the city of Portland was paying owners who have solar panels, if they hook up the panels to the grid, what ever energy that they don't use, gets sent back into the grid and the check is in the amount of how much energy was sent back in
I forgot to mention that the city of Portland was also giving a $500 reimbursement check to owners for installing panels
ReplyDeleteAnother consideration is the number of years it takes to start seeing a return on investment. Solar power systems are expensive. It can take a long time to make up for the cost of the installation.
ReplyDeleteWay to expensive! Most people cant afford to spend thousands of dollars all at once that it takes to setup on of these syatems. They have the funding in place and are also using volunteers to provide the necessary labor.
ReplyDeleteSince emission of green house gas has been quite important subjects. Article you gave us was really astonishing. I heard that In Japan near future, all houses have to be 0 emisson houses.I wish cars became 0 emission,gas is too expensive these days....
ReplyDeleteThank you for great information.