Homes and vehicles consume 70% of the energy used in the USA. Homes use 2/3 of the energy. Agreed? Vehicles 1/3 (wonder why all the focus on cars?) Yes many homes in cities, more are not. I believe the power used by homes should be addressed before doing anything else, especially since a small investment can make a drastic reduction in power use!
IF I was offered the same deals as the government sponsored grid improvements I could go off grid. Not only off grid Off everything! No gas, nothing. Net zero energy home and vehicle.
Looking at the numbers, solar is available up to 20% efficiency. (32% with mirrors) I use 30kwHr/day. 10 ft x 30 ft solar panel should supply everything I need. Replacing appliances could drop it down to 8-10kwhr/day easily. Or 10 ft x 10 ft panel. Converting to EV, what do I need? http://avt.inel.gov/pdf/fsev/costs.pdf Suggest 3 to 6 miles per KwHr. Interesting. Lets use 4 mi/Kwhr. GM posted the average ride to work is 40 miles round trip. Or 10kwHr/day. Doubling the solar panel to 10 ft x 20 ft total! Hot water 4 ft x 8 ft supplies 60-90% How much for heating? Assuming 60% efficiency (too high?) My 92% 76KBTU/hr furnace runs 4-6 hr many winter days, once 23.5 hr when -23F. Heat per day" 6 x 72KBTU = 432KBTU Solar heat per day 1,000BTU/ft2 or need 432 ft2 solar heat collector = 20 ft x 21 ft My house or Roof is bigger than the above needs of 664 ft. Not many smaller? Edit: Oops forgot collectors efficiency, got to go, consulting work to do.
Back up energy is required, could be grid or gas of some kind. Even in cities homes are plenty large enough. Apartment building may have a problem, then most have large parking areas to offer for the energy production.
My numbers are based on my homes needs here in Michigan. Will change based on location.
Manufacturer have their own special needs, most have huge parking areas outside of making cement they may be able to locally produce their own power. Co-generation works.
I do not see much use for a grid, let along spending trillions fixing the current one. Thanks for your comments!
Have fun, Scott.[ Parent ]
Don't get me wrong, I'm in favour of distributed generation (and hope to go electricity-neutral at home within months), but for the UK at least RE generation still seems to look better done at a macro level with a supporting grid, eg see:
http://zerocarbonista.com/2008/07/21/micro-generation-the-emperor-new-clothes/
The Zerocarbonista man (Dale Vince) runs a pure-wind 'green' UK supplier, and I happen to be a customer.
As to domestic vs other consumption of electricity, see in the 'Links' section of my draft doc http://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-dynamic-demand-value.html
"DUKES": Digest of UK Energy Statistics notes amongst many other things that: in 2006, domestic electricity consumption was 29% of all UK demand of 406TWh (ie about 116TWh), of which only about 33% was on Ecomony 7 or another off-peak/grid-friendly tariff. Mean domestic electricity power demand was thus ~13GW, most of it potentially not 'off-peak'.
DUKES is the UK gov's official exec summary, as it were.
Rgds
Damon [ Parent ]
The cost analysis of solar vs wind vs nuclear are messed up when you add the cost of a New grid to make use of it.
Next Town over is putting in 20 miles new transmission lines, cost estimated at $15 millions. These are not even big lines. Going with larger lines must cost more? Still working on right of ways two years. The lines are going into GM test facility, employees 4,000 people. The lines are a third redundant power feed. Three years ago they lost power for a day and still pissed about it.
Macro power generation looks good cost wise until adding in the upgrade cost necessary to the transmission grid. Part of the system cost. Micro generation starts looking more attractive. Loosing 10% to transmission changes the equations.
Recently a company started production of a $1/w solar cell, first 18 months sold out. If solar panels were produced in volume to be put on homes... how would the economics change?
Prior post was using the numbers for total energy. Home energy can be used in many forms. Newest generation heat pumps are looking attractive even for Michigan!
The final comment of micro vs macro. Micro has a fixed cost over a period of time. Mostly up front, little after. Macro power will forever have to new bill to pay!!! Always going UP! Which fits in your wallet?
Having fun, Scott. [ Parent ]
Damon[ Parent ]
