re: #255 Russkilitlover

I’m talking photovoltaic roof panels. They are still too expensive and they only pay for themselves in 20 or so years, but those of us lucky enough to have them as a standard feature in our home (paid less than $900,000 for my home) are enjoying cheap electricity and have the satisfaction of “doing our part” for the environment by generating elec for the grid.

I’ve always advocated to builder groups to use their economies of scale to bring the prices down for new home building. Went nowhere, of course.

I have a 7.5kw pv field. It was a great investment, frankly.

I live in the San Diego area, so we have a “tailwind” of sorts by getting more days of sun.

But the real advantage is as an inflation hedge. Energy prices will soar in the coming years with or without a recovery simply because the dollar will shrink in value due to all of the borrowing we are doing. Add whatever carbon tax that congress goes for (the current approach favors letting utilities goose folks for more money to deter consumption), and the “free” electricity becomes more valuable.

Many people do the 20 year payback calculation based on an assumption of a stable dollar and stable prices for the power you would otherwise buy. Plug in inflationary assumptions, and the payback period gets cut in half and the payoff beyond break even climbs even higher.

PV is a solid way to “lock in” the cost of electricity.