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In Vegas?
Do you have a roof? I know some condo's only have ceilings and someone else has a roof, and I love condo living. I assume your association pays for ourdoor lighting. The issue with Vegas is your juice is SO CHEAP that solar does not pay. Solar will cost about .20/.23 cents a kilowatt hour to produce (over 20 years). You are probably paying .12? So solar makes no sense. There are people in California paying .52 a kilowatt hour for extremely large homes so solar makes plenty of sense for them.
Make the cats purr and harness the vibrations for energy. :wink:
No, these are townhouses. A townhouse is a single or two story unit that shares 2 common walls with the adjacent units. So, yes, I have a roof but CC&Rs preclude modification. I never thought of our rate as cheap but you made me look and you are right. Of course, my LED bulbs have a long payoff rate also but I like to be "greenish" if not "green".
Newer construction offers Energy Star homes but all the new houses are in BFE and I'm a inner city type. I live in walking distance of UNLV and the CC Library. This area, "East Las Vegas" was built out from the 60s through the 90s.
My unit is 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, 2 story, 1220 SF. I also own and rent 8 other units in the same complex, smallest 1048 SF.
I also replaced my windows with dual pane gas filled more because of noise (I'm in a perimeter unit) than power but it helps.
If you have a set budget for a house, you either chose 1 foot thick poured concrete walls, geo-thermal heat and cooling, triple pained windows, solar panels, and air-tight construction - or a BIGGER "conventionally built" house that has none of the above.
That's the choices. No debate on that.
I'm not asking if things can be done that are more energy efficient. That's a given.
But it's not the question.
Carry on please. :mrgreen::2wave:
Great Idea and I am all for using existing roof tops rather than bull dozing deserts for massive solar farms.
The wind tower is my favorite. Are you doing the underground "feeder" as well?Where you dig a long trench and bury a big clay pipe with a shady inlet that comes in at the bottom of the house. Air is drawn in and cooled by the 62(?) underground temp by the wind tunnel. I've seen a setup where they had no underground but set up passive swamp cooling at floor level using the wind tower air draw. Worked pretty good for only the small water pump power.
Dual pane windows are a huge energy saver and probably the most efficient bang for the buck upgrade anyone can do. I have heard about the gas filled thing but don't know enough about that to have an opinion.
...I will be given approximately $500 for the next 25 years. After that time, the panels will belong to me.
I don't want to disappoint you but the lifespan of those photo-voltaic panels is about 25 years, so probably they won't last much longer than that.
Dual pane windows are a huge energy saver and probably the most efficient bang for the buck upgrade anyone can do. I have heard about the gas filled thing but don't know enough about that to have an opinion.
I don't want to disappoint you but the lifespan of those photo-voltaic panels is about 25 years, so probably they won't last much longer than that.
Well right now we bulldozer massive parts of the desert for coal that is used to power steam plants for electricity- I'd rather more solar farms than massive pits in the ground with their massive mounds of waste.
That said I never liked the all or nothing approach- be it the method of powering the production to location of production. Having houses that help reduce the need for power shipped in from afar sounds great, but so does a few massive solar/wind farms. There is a tipping point between economy of scale and lost in transmission. One thing that was tested and seemed to work out here is co-gen. The local drywall plant gives off massive amounts of steam as part of the process. The local electric company fought for years but finally now accepts electricity made from the waste steam into the grid. by no means a solution to the energy problem but I think part of our problem is we don't see a need to be efficient.
I think that is what President Obama meant by making power cost more- when something is dear we tend to economize as well as look to less spectacular solutions. Scavenging power from waste isn't glamorous, but could be a lot more profitable than bigger and deeper holes in the desert for coal.
And aren't likely to pay for themselves over than lifetime. It isn't just an environmental issue. It is also an economic one.
I would vote for a home such as mentioned in the OP. A word of caution, however. Don't forget that corpgov rules the nation. If you think for a moment that power companies are going to let you benefit without kissing their ring, think again. We live in a corprotacracy. Big business always gets its cut anymore in America and if you think you'll be able to slide away from corpgov's control scott-free you are wrong. When corporations see that they might lose the upper hand they write laws and force policy changes that benefit them.
You would think that everyone in Arizona would have solar energy. We have more sun that the sun. Solar conversion costs more than it used to. You don't get the tax breaks you once did here in Arizona and now this:
Arizona Public Service Co. is proposing charging customers who install rooftop solar panels $50 to $100 or more a month to cover the cost of maintaining the power grid.
What? Yep. At the present this is a proposal. :roll: Yeah, right. And my butt ain't Irish pink. Arizona is a GOP/Tea Party state and that means big business pretty much gets whatever it wants. Will the proposed monthly increases be charged to solar power users who are connected to the grid? Bet on it.
What a load of BS.
What, you don't think the electrical grid needs to be maintained? You don't think those union linemen need to be paid?
Who do you think is going to pay for all the green energy solar panels and wind turbines?
I would vote for a home such as mentioned in the OP. A word of caution, however. Don't forget that corpgov rules the nation. If you think for a moment that power companies are going to let you benefit without kissing their ring, think again. We live in a corprotacracy. Big business always gets its cut anymore in America and if you think you'll be able to slide away from corpgov's control scott-free you are wrong. When corporations see that they might lose the upper hand they write laws and force policy changes that benefit them.
You would think that everyone in Arizona would have solar energy. We have more sun that the sun. Solar conversion costs more than it used to. You don't get the tax breaks you once did here in Arizona and now this:
Arizona Public Service Co. is proposing charging customers who install rooftop solar panels $50 to $100 or more a month to cover the cost of maintaining the power grid.
What? Yep. At the present this is a proposal. :roll: Yeah, right. And my butt ain't Irish pink. Arizona is a GOP/Tea Party state and that means big business pretty much gets whatever it wants. Will the proposed monthly increases be charged to solar power users who are connected to the grid? Bet on it.
Ahhh, gee I don't know. Let me take a wild guess and say consumers of grid produced energy. :roll:
And that would be those who can see streets at night, or appreciate the safety provided by stop lights as well as other electrified public wonders.
Do you think drivers of electric vehicles charged with power generated exclusively by their own renewable energy sources are going to escape big registration fees one day?
Do you think gasoline taxes aren't going to double or quadruple when average fuel economy reaches 50 mpg?
I guess you would see all that as some big right wing corporatacracy conspiracy.
Good point as to why holier than thou off grid hippie types that say they are so green really are not. The business they work at, the stop lights they stop at, the lighted streets etc make them as big as participant in power production as everyone else. The power you use in your home is a drop in the bucket really.
Building homes that make more power than they take
If you had the money, would you buy a smaller house that's built to be as "energy independent" as the ones described above, or would you opt for a bigger "conventional" house like the ones most of us have grown up in?
I would definitely go with smaller and energy independent.
I love the sound of what's described in the article.
I WISH! The wife is too afraid of creepy crawlies coming in. (yeah I know but try and tell her!) Well that and the possibility of a dank or moldy smell if moisture builds up in the pipes.
Wimmens!!! :roll:
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