Is Solar really worth it?

[mcrover]

Got a quote on fitting solar to the sheds at work and the club house the other day........not happy really and hopefully someone here will know of a more reasonable way to go.

Ok to start with they didnt like it that the shed is about 200m away from the clubhouse where the meter is and then there is the golf ball issue.......

Then the price.......he started off by talking about domestic house systems at around $4000 and I was thinking thats sort of reasonable but then we hit the usage hurdle.

Do cover 3/4 of what we use the system would cost (after a gov rebate for being a community building if we qualify) $50+k and save us approx.....$540 per annum.

Meaning it would take 95 years to break even.

Now this is all just estimated at the moment, how do you work it out to be more accurate as I cant take it to the commitee and say I want to spend $50k on something that will not really save us any money and will take 100years to recover the money.

Can you depreciate a Solar system over a certain time frame to make it worth while?

Is there better systems out there that would atleast save us a bit more than $540 per year on power, this wont even cover the electric carts we have and Im wanting to move to as many electric machines as possible for noise reasons as well as enviromental reasons.

[isuzurover]

Solar (photovoltaic), while a good option, is the most expensive (currently available option). It relies on rebates to make it anywhere near attractive, and these have been cut back (at least domestically). Large scale generation costs are approx 4c/kWh for coal, and 25c/kWh for photovoltaic.

There is a fair bit of competition these days (especially now the rebates are halved) so it would be worth getting a few quotes.

How windy is it where you are? Would a wind generator be worth looking at??? Large systems work out around 12c/kWh. If you are worried about aesthetics, you can get vertical (VAWT) systems which are shaped a bit like an ice cream cone.

I cannot comment on any depreciation/tax issues. However, could you sell it on the PR value??? People might prefer playing on a "greener" green (pardon the pun ).

Btw - out of interest, Red or Green?

[JDNSW]

As indicated above, by Isuzurover, photovoltaic is inherently much more expensive than anything else! There is no way you will ever justify it on a financial basis.

Except, you can reasonably expect all non - renewable methods of electricity generation to get a lot more expensive in the future, and in a lot less than 95 years. What electricity cost were you using to calculate the annual saving? To be realistic you would have to use an escalating figure, rising to perhaps double the current one (plus inflation) within ten years, and continuing to rise after that. This is how a photovoltaic system starts to look better.

Even with this I would expect the best breakeven period would be around ten to twenty years.

John

[mcrover]

Solar (photovoltaic), while a good option, is the most expensive (currently available option). It relies on rebates to make it anywhere near attractive, and these have been cut back (at least domestically). Large scale generation costs are approx 4c/kWh for coal, and 25c/kWh for photovoltaic.

There is a fair bit of competition these days (especially now the rebates are halved) so it would be worth getting a few quotes.

How windy is it where you are? Would a wind generator be worth looking at??? Large systems work out around 12c/kWh. If you are worried about aesthetics, you can get vertical (VAWT) systems which are shaped a bit like an ice cream cone.

I cannot comment on any depreciation/tax issues. However, could you sell it on the PR value??? People might prefer playing on a "greener" green (pardon the pun ).

Btw - out of interest, Red or Green?

Im assuming you are meaning grass greens or scrapes?

They are Green, very very green at the moment actually, we just cored and fertilised and the bloke doing the fertiliser put out about 4 times too much on 3 of the greens meaning they nearly glow in the dark they are sooooo green.

The PR was one of the reasons we were thinking about it and yes there is value in that seems that we now have 3 other courses in the area that were'nt there 10 years ago and we are all fighting for the same little white ball whackers money to keep going.

My reason is for the machinery side of things, we now have houses on all 4 sides of the course and they will start getting narky with us mowing at 5:30am on a sat morning so I was pushing for an electric mower to replace our now old and wearing out GK6.

The electric equipment doesnt just save money on fuel, they are lower maintenance as all you need to maintain in the drive train is brushes and the batteries I have made last for 6 years in previous machines I maintained at other courses so Im sure it would work well for us.

It's just the electric stuff is more expensive and the solar was hopefully going to be the sweetner to get it over the line but it doesnt look as though this will happen at the moment anyway.

They also have some great electric transport vehicles these days which are just as good as the petrol versions (unlike the old ones that were either slow and didnt last long or very very heavy) which the boss likes but again they are a few grand more exxy so again I was hopeing that the solar would sweeten that pie as well.

Wind isnt really the go, we do get our fair share but I wouldnt say it was regular like on the coast.

There is a Hydro set up that I looked up in which it used the incoming water to the dam system (which includes irrigation return and storm water in our case) to turn a turbine which made electricity which then helped off set the cost of running the irrigtion system (this was from the states) but I dont think it would be close to the scale that we would need.

[Blknight.aus]

if your only using it for charging sniff around government websites for ex gov auctions and telstra auctions....

If memory serves we should be getting close to either the 10 or 5 year interval when they replace all the panels on the remote monitoring stuff...

I got 210ish watts worth for under $50... including 2 regulators

that should be enough to charge a couple of decent batteries...

[zelko]

Hey mate

What is your usage, kw per day and what size system has he quoted you on.

Zelko

[mcrover]

if your only using it for charging sniff around government websites for ex gov auctions and telstra auctions....

If memory serves we should be getting close to either the 10 or 5 year interval when they replace all the panels on the remote monitoring stuff...

I got 210ish watts worth for under $50... including 2 regulators

that should be enough to charge a couple of decent batteries...

There are 6 batteries in each buggy and 12 buggies that would be on it as well as the mower and transport vehicals would be another 4 battery banks of 6 each (48 Volts)

We will need a pretty big array apparently to cover that.

But thanks Dave, where is it that you get them? is it at auction or do you get it though an internal sorce?

Hey mate

What is your usage, kw per day and what size system has he quoted you on.

Zelko

I cant remember off hand, Ive been sick all week but went in today to catch up and didnt even look at that stuff.

When I get back to work next week I will look it up and let you know.

[Blknight.aus]

my panels all turned up at a pickles site, a couple in darwin and the others in townsville.

I didnt need the bigger ones which were essentially up to 8 of the 70 w panels Ive got mounted on a frame with a kick ass regulator.

my single panel will charge a 12v n70 in a day from about 9v to 12.5ish v. thats the one that I took to cooma.

[mcrover]

Id need 64 of those panels then to charge everything in a day but then again it's not all used at once so maybe be able to halve that to say 30/32 something like that.

The other problem is that they are all 48v systems on chargers that need 240 50hz so I would need to invert it or feed back to grid and just pull from the grid as per usuall (or maybe fit a timer or 2 to feed the chargers off peak to then drop the amount needed again but Im not sure by how much).

I will keep an eye on pickles auctions then, that would make it worth while.

[EchiDna]

there is always Welcome to Platypus Power - Micro Hydro Electric Generator Factory - micro hydro and aussie... but maybe tooo micro....