Earth Hour is everyone on board?

The inadequacies of the Prius "ROI justifications" for not buying a Prius apply here as well. Given a very constraining set of financial assumptions, most everything forward thinking can be shown to have a bad ROI. Let me list them:
1) Totally ignoring the effects of voting with the wallet on the market. The electric rates change to benefit a large community of solar users cannot be one of the ROI assumptions, even though it could be a big factor (e.g. Prius drivers getting HOV stickers.)
2) The ROI assumes no change in the lifestyle of the user from the pre-solar days. The change in lifestyle may be a bigger factor in cost saving than the electrical savings. (e.g. Prius drivers improve there mpg in every other vehicle they drive)
3) The incidential benefit of having power during utility brownouts. A bundle is saved not having to buy a generator and the supporting cost. (e.g. Prius NON-brake pad replacements were not factored into any ROI analysis I saw.)
4) A "Linear" Future that assumes a slow price increase in electricity. (e.g. Ever Prius ROI before the gas price spike assumed no spike.)
5) The value at the "End Of Life" not accounted for. (e.g. Prius ROI calculations did not initially account for the high resale.)
6) Everything else I left out. (e.g. How does one put a ROI value on PriusChat education?)

Having learned the Prius "ROI Lessons", I cannot accept the simple ROI approaches used to prove that the solar return is not there.

 

The Prius ROI justification is rather simple by comparison. I only had to apply it against similar interior capacity vehicles I might have purchased (not those that were too small or that I wouldn't touch for reliability reasons.) The payback on the cost differential at the time of purchase was a few years. Obviously that has degraded in the short term.

I really don't see that most forward thinking things have a poor ROI. Most of them are based not on replacing new with new, but replacing old with new AND more efficient. If something efficient is grossly overpriced compared to the generic then it's ROI won't make sense.

This isn't like buying a car, fridge, washer, light bulbs or HVAC--almost nobody will have to put in some sort of PV system. So the obsolescence replacement market and differential investment cost is non-existent. A new home doesn't need PV like it does the other things, so again it is all up front cost adder that is not necessary for the home. Couple that with marginal or negative return and you won't find many takers on the investment.

Reminds me of a dairy cow feed supplement that a former employer tried to produce and sell. The asst. production superintendent laid out the problem and why the product failed rather simply, "It took statistics for the dairy farmer to see that his milk production was increased, but it didn't take statistics to see that the feed bill was up." It didn't help that the product stunk to high heaven. If you ask the average homeowner (or dairy farmer) to do sophisticated analysis to determine if the project makes sense, then you don't really have a viable model. Heck, many folks still don't appreciate the savings on CFL's where the payback is incredibly short.

The PV solar industry seriously needs to get their s*** together and figure out how to bring the installed package cost into the sweet spot. They don't appear to be anywhere close yet and it is a bit perplexing.

I'm not opposed to assuming growth rates in electric costs...however, with coal as the base, and without assuming carbon taxes the electricity inflation rate is not likely to move breakeven more than marginally. We do have a plethora of coal in this country, and other energy efficiency improvement as well as wind generation will likely keep electricity demand from growing for many. (Local utility has had 12 straight months of reduced electric demand.) So in the end utility costs are very regional...as is the output of a given array and its ROI.

The numbers are what they are and unfortunately they are not yet kind to residential PV solar. I will wait until they look attractive. I do want to do this long term...just as I want to replace my old ~27" CRT TV with a big flatscreen. I waited a long time for flatscreen prices to drop into what I felt was the reasonable zone...but I'm still waiting because the increased energy consumption has given me pause about making the upgrade. Present flat screens don't fit the energy budget window I have alotted for them. So now I'm waiting for the low power consumption flatscreen leaders to emerge. Considering I tend to have things like this for 20 years, it is worth waiting.

Now as how to make PV solar more attractive in the short term: I suspect that the answer is to be found in the example of the $7,500 new homebuyer tax credit. Give a very large PV solar credit up front in the first year, and have the taxpayer pay much or all of it back over 15 years at 0% (just like the homebuyer tax credit.) By large I mean something like 75% of installed cost. This would get past the very substantial finance cost hurdle for a very long payout item.

 

I have no issues with a person using ROI's for their own decisions. I have a bit more of a problem with a 'generic' ROI being used to convince the general public or other forum members that there is a wrong and right answer based on an ROI analysis. (This is not being a critic to what you have wrote so much as providing an alternative viewpoint.)

In my case, I will eventually go solar and it is not an ROI that will decide that. It's like doing an ROI on having a child. It can be done, but the ROI shows it is a losing money proposition (and it was!). The result being I ignore doing an ROI since making money is not the reason for having the child.

 

so, ok. what would be better?

building a super efficient new home or putting PV on an existing home to reduce energy costs?

well obviously doing both would be nice, but that would be too expensive. actually when you get right down to it, it could potentially cost the same to update an older home as it would to put up a good PV array.

what it boils down to is volume and critical mass. solar is not cheap now because so few do it. no real synergy in the industry, no competition, etc...

trust me. get a good government backed program to install on a massive scale and you will have bidding wars galore. granted, could be another military aerospace debacle (remember the $400 toilet seats?) situation if not watched, but what it will bring in is smart money and smarter heads.

this is when innovation will pick up and costs will come down. all we have to do is get there

 

Re: No stamina points for this man...

Some people might turn out their lights and go for a walk to the local icecream store but bugger that!!

 

That's what I did for Earth Hour - turned off everything, even the furnace, and went for a walk - and not to the ice cream store. Wow, is there ever a lot of wasted light out there. Thousands upon thousands of lumens, but few humans. Would motion-activated lighting make more sense? Like on a car sales lot: wouldn't the guard dogs be even scarier in the dark?

 

What I did during Earth Hour?

Our choir was performing Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass with an orchestra. It would have been pretty tough singing that piece in the dark...