Went solar

dmccarty · Oct 22, 2010

eepete said:
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As for the money I get, the utility "pays" me at the burden rate which is around 5 cents a kilowatt hour or they can credit (a form of net metering) me at that rate, I chose the credit/net metering. Another company (NC GreenPower) pays me 15 cents per KWH, which is taxable income to me. They turn around and sell that power to people who want to buy green power. For example, if someone had a meeting or concert and wanted to advertise that it was a carbon neutral event, they buy the power. Others just buy blocks of green power because they want to. So the net metering and the after-tax sale value is about 16 cents per KWH.
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Pete

Just started working my way through this thread....

I wondered how you were getting .16 per KWH. My power company pays less for the power produced by the homeowner than they homeowner paid for the power from the company. I remembering they pay around 5 cents per KWH put into the grid by the homeowner and we are currently paying 10-11 cents per KWH from the grid.

In a another TBN thread the "huge" subsidies paid to the oil company was brought up. I went and googled.

Huge ain't so huge. I think the oil companies were getting a few billion dollars per year in subsidies. Given the US budget and how much money the companies generate in taxes, revenue, and profit I would not say they receive huge subsidies. Given the anti oil bias in the press and other circles I expected a much larger subsidy. And the numbers I found were on anti oil websites so if anything their numbers are inflated.

Having said the above, the oil companies should not get a subsidy. They do not need it. Kinda like the US government paying for commercials in China to sell KFC.

Good information about CFLs.

We have 85ish light fixtures in the house and most are IC cans. The first batch of CFLs we bought from HD when we were building the house lasted at least 2-3 years before some of them started to fail. Figured we got our money out of them. Some of them are still going. Then we started buying bulbs from Lowes which where scat. They would last months. It was so bad I write the purchase date on the bulb base and keep the receipts. I return the bulbs that do only last a few months. The cans take R30 or R40 bulbs so they are expensive. But we are about to try the cheapest non R30/R40 CFLs we can and see how well they perform.

Looking at Grainger and other suppliers they bulbs are all about the same price, $6 per bulb,

:confused2:, as HD and Lowes. Just no way to really tell quality. I have seen the bulbs higher priced.

Back in our city house the halogen and incandescent bulbs would burn out very quickly. Those halogen's were expensive too. I figured they were burning out due to the heat build up in the fixtures. Both got VERY hot unlike our CFL's in the new house.

Later,
Dan