Google Knows Your Roof's Solar Potential

Fuck Google. They seem to want to know everything about everyone and I'm sick of them spying on us. I want nothing to do with anything this shower of shit dream up, thank you very much.

Great, now the government can tax it.

Hopefully the app will offer the result with and without those "local incentives" as well as the federal ones. Then everyone can see that it's not economical, unless everyone paying everyone else is economical.

But aside from PVs it would probably make sense to have a solar water heater panel on the roof. That would seem to have some benefit for practically any house.

Taxing potential sounds like a promising new frontier in taxation science.

--sp

Hey that's great idea: tax the people who don't get it to pay the tax credits for the people who do.

And how long will it be until solar installers are knocking on your door? Is "connects" voluntary?

Governments already use GoogleEarth to update their tax roles.

Early this spring a friend of my had a chicken coup on his properly used for commercial birds, populated with PV's. I talked to him last week and he tells me he is having issues with the utilities because they won't credit him for the full amount of enery he is producing..

On a good day, his system is doing ~ 30kW. He tells me that he has been battery shopping. After doing some calculations he figures he can get enough energy to maintain his home at night and his small place he sevices on the same property for his aging father inlaw, virtually free during the summer months..

The power company lead him on believing that they were willing to credit him for every watt of extra power he didn't use. He found out that just isn't so, they claim to have a cap on it and since they split up the billing so that now there is a charge for Service and one for delivery, they win either way.

Tonight we had a bad flood storm and it knocked out a major chunk of power in my area, he is not to far from me, I'd be willing to bet he had plenty of power :)

Jamie

I wonder if he's doing the calculations properly, including the opportunity cost of the money spent on the batteries, and allowing for the fact that they'll probably need to be replaced within a decade at most.

Perhaps, but only if his inverter is willing to run when there's no grid power, which they're usually not.

Sylvia.

Do any grid-tied systems work off-grid? I thought there were safety issues that prevented such an installation.

Yes. These require either a DC coupled or AC coupled storage system. Home Power Magazine has and article on the topic in the current issue: The article covers and managed to muddle the differences and compromises involved in both DC and AC coupled systems. DC coupling is where the battery pile replaces the voltage supplied by the solar panels when the sun goes away. AC coupling is where the battery pile runs an inverter, that produces AC power, which replaces the utility power when grid power goes away for whatever reason.

t I haven't been able to tell if they are fair in not crediting the distribution or transmission charges. That power is being delivered to someone locally who is most likely paying for generation, transmission and distribution charges. So is the power company committing fraud by billing for a charge that isn't being paid for? Or do they spread the savings in transmission costs across all bills?

I once got mail from a company wanting to put PV on my roof. But it was a deal where you pay for the equipment and they buy the power. The deal seemed to be that they got their bucks up front for installation and you took all the risk, both on the equipment working and on the price for the generated power. Seemed more like a scam than an opportunity.

"Sorry, Project Sunroof hasn't reached this address yet." :(

Google may know how well the sun can hit your roof when it shines but unfortunately those pictures are pointed the wrong way to tell anything about the clouds above that is block the sun

boB

When I ran the numbers a while back, for my place in Sydney, Australia, solar hot water seemed marginal even with the subsidies, at least compared with off-peak electric water heating[*]. My existing hot water system was on its way out. If it had still been working, the cost of writing it off would have to have been included as well, thus making the proposition even more marginal, or negative.

In the event, it turned out that I'd need to get planning permission[**] to install solar hot water, which I considered to be more trouble that it was worth, so I just replaced the existing system instead.

Sylvia

Heating water with electricity is sort of crazy. You don't have gas, I guess.

That seems a bit of an odd statement from you. You have posted several times about how many energy saving efforts aren't worthwhile for you because you don't use a lot of energy. My electric hot water heater uses around $20-$30 a month. How much should I spend to save on that?

Relatively few homes have gas while virtually all of them have electricity.

Are you 'sum kinda marroon'??? She's talking about this: