State of Colorado Solar Incentives Reviewed!

Published on October 30, 2007 by Dan Hahn.
Categories: Solar Financing.

We finished reviewing the state of Colorado’s solar power incentives, rebates, and tax credits here.

A sick graph – Iraq war spending vs. spending on renewable energy

Published on by Dan Hahn.
Categories: Solar Trends.

These figures are in millions. The source for energy R&D expenditures is from the National Council for Science and the Environment. Take a look here.Though the war in Iraq now costs about $120B a year, two authors (one a Nobel prize winner) estimates the total cost of this war exceeds 2 Trillion Dollars.

“Accrued liabilities for U.S. federal employees’ and veterans’ benefits now total $4.5 trillion. Indeed, our debt for veterans’ health and disability payments has risen by $228 billion in the past year alone…The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the interest payments on the money borrowed to finance the Iraq war will total $264 billion to $308 billion.”

That $2,000,000,000,000? Well, that amount of money could’ve built solar thermal plants here that would have provided energy for 2/3rds of our nation’s energy demand.

If you found this information eye-opening, interesting, or evocative, please throw us a bone or two (or ten). I’m a starving grad-student, Dave is just getting going selling solar in San Francisco, and we need all the support we can get to drive more traffic to the site, get more people educated about clean technology, and persuade legislators to further secure our energy independence.

If you found this post eye opening, please send us an email. We’d love to hear from you.

Solar Powered Cars: Are they Cost Effective Yet?

Published on October 29, 2007 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: Solar Technology.

So you probably saw our posting about the makeshift solar powered Prius and also the guy who stretched his prius into a limo that Dan wrote a few days ago. Well this post is about the company that is now offering kits to turn any new production Toyota Prius into a solar powered car. This post goes over what we like most…. Does it make dollar sense?

The company is SolarElectricalVehicles.com. I requested a quote for my new prius (that I’m seriously thinking of getting). Here was their response:

“Thank you for the interest in the solar charging system developed by Solar Electric Vehicles (www.solarelectricalvehicles.com). Our solar charging system is unique to the market because its one of few aftermarket upgrades that actually pays for itself over time. We are currently only offering the kit for the 2004 to 2007 Toyota Prius. At this point, we are also planning to adapt the solar roof to other vehicles. We are taking reservations for a production toward the end of the year. (Production will commence once 30 pre-orders are received each with a $500 deposit). If you are interested in proceeding, please contact Greg Johanson directly (805-497-9808 x102) to place the order and inquire as to program specifics.

The solar charging system (patent pending) was developed to enable the Toyota Prius with hybrid synergy drive (HSD) to drive for extended miles in the “EV mode”. The stock Prius has up to 2 miles of EV mode driving but the cars equipped with our solar charging system have up to 20 miles of EV mode driving range per day. This extended EV mode driving range translates to an increase in average fuel economy of up to 70 miles per gallon.

In order to provide additional information on the system and its benefits, please let me know what you are looking for (system specifications, ROI, etc…). The system starts at $4500, which includes the solar modules, electronics, and a 2.3 sealed lead acid battery. The 120 VAC plug-in is an additional $1000. We do not install the kits at this point in time, but recommend that you consult your local mechanic. Installation should take about one to two days.

For more information about our research & development data, statistics, and module composition, please read the “white article” found on our website.

http://www.solarelectricalvehicles.com/articles/prius-white-paper.shtml

Also, a streaming video clip from KTLA news can be found on youtube if you search solar powered prius…

You can also purchase additional batteries at EDrive in Pasadena, CA through Greg Hansen. They can provide a plug-in to home system as well. http://www.edrivesystems.com/

If you live out of state/country, F.O.B. (freight on board), Westlake Village, CA charges and sales tax will be additional. DVD and installation manual to be included with roof shipment.

Your TOTAL SOLAR SOLUTION is a residential or commercial solar electrical system coupled with a plug-in electric of hybrid vehicle. The solar system provides clean, renewable solar energy for your home or office, and allows you to use that same solar energy to charge your vehicle at night. New utility time-of-use electric rates magnify your savings, because you get the most credit for the solar energy you feed back into the grid during peak middle-of-day use hours. When you charge your vehicle at night, you pay the lowest electric rates and charge your car with your solar system’s credits. Adding one kilowatt to your solar electrical system will provide you with enough additional energy for 30 solar powered mile per day for your EV car or plug-in hybrid.

Your TOTAL SOLAR SOLUTION can qualify for significant tax incentives that reduce the cost up to 80%. Call Solar Electrical Systems today and ask about the Total Solar Solution!

So bottom line, it’s $4.5 K and $5.5K if you want to be able to plug it in. Plus they don’t do the install themselves, so let’s add another $1K for install. I don’t need to work out the math specifics…. but you’re not going to recoup $6500 over the life of the car unless oil jumps from $80 to $400 a barrel. HOWEVER, we haven’t looked at our favorite things yet…. Solar Incentives, Tax Credits, and Rebates!. So let’s have a peak…

Pie Me in the Face for Solar!

Published on October 26, 2007 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: Solar Competitions.

We have a competition with a friend’s blog to see who can get the most RSS subscribers in a month. He writes all about email. That’s right, email. We have to beat him. So, we’re offering some prizes. If you subscribe to our blog, you may be picked at random to receive either a solar powered vibrator or a solar power rocks! T-shirt. (DH – “Dave you really think somebody will want a T-Shirt we haven’t designed yet?” DL – “Hell yeah, it’s gonna be awesome”). We’re giving away 3 vibrators and 50 T-shirts. We haven’t got many subscribers yet, so your odds are looking pretty good at getting something! Also, if you email us an innovative idea that we employ to attract 1000 subscribers, we’ll give you a solar powered backpack, worth $249!

<——–click on it to see all the cool things it can do!

Last but not least, after you subscribe to our RSS feed, email me if you live in the bay area (Dave AT solarpowerrocks.com) or email Dan if you live in shouting distance of Portland OR (Dan AT solarpowerrocks.com). Why? You will be randomly selected to pie us in the face with a pie flavor of our choosing (I’ll just tell you right now, mine is lemon meringue). We’ll also post a video of you smothering us with pie for all to see. Enjoy, and please forward this to your friends. The competition begins NOW (oct 26th 2:31 PM pacific time) and ends Nov 16th at midnight!

De-mystifying your PG&E Solar Power Bill

Published on October 25, 2007 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: pg&e.

If you’re a PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric) customer, that blue-bordered power bill you get is complicated enough to understand as it is, right? Well, consider you take a bold green step forward and install a solar power system on your house. Unfortunately, that bill now gets even more complicated. Don’t distress though, we’re here to sort out this mess and hopefully save you a lot of money. What follows is a case study of two very close friends of mine (and PG&E customers) that just so happen to have solar panels on their roof (below). I guess you could consider their dog a “third” friend of mine since my leg has seen a lot of attention whenever I’m over there. Gross.

Lets dig in to all that PG&E solar nitty gritty!

When my friend’s system was installed on their house, PG&E sent them an interconnection agreement. On this agreement, they decided whether they wanted to get on the E1 or E7 rate plan.

• If you choose E1, the power PG&E delivers will cost you the same amount – all
  the time. PG&E also credits you for the power you produce, at an equal rate of what they charge for it.
• If you opt for E7, the time you use (TOU) your energy determines pricing. PG&E will charge you more during peak hours and less during off-peak hours.
  • E7 requires a special TOU meter to split out peak and non-peak usage. My friend’s solar system was installed with a bidirectional meter (see pic), though it wasn’t a TOU bi-directional meter. PG&E wanted to charge them $277 for installation of one. So, make sure when you’re having your system installed that you’re in line to receive one if you plan on going TOU.
  • Since “peak hours” are 12:00 PM – 6:00 PM and the sun shines pretty brightly around that time, my guess is PG&E is trying to make it difficult to stick with the E7 TOU rates. But stick with those rates! That’s when your solar system is most efficient and making money for you if you’ve got your system sized right! The E7 TOU rates are first come first serve, and limited. PGE power is about 4 times as expensive from noon to six. But here’s the rub… PG& had 5000 E7 slots available this year, and the year is almost over and the woman on the phone told me they haven’t even used half of of those.
  • If you produce more in a year than you use, you don’t get a check for that power unless you have signed a contract to sell electricity to PG&E. This isn’t an issue for my friends because their system is relatively and they consume more than they produce.

So what does their bill look like?

Well, before the solar system, they got a blue bordered bill (Energy Statement – called the Blue Bill, on the left). This bill had gas and electric charges and it came due monthly. So after the install, they now get two bills. They get the original Blue Bill which has normal gas charges as usual, but the electric has been replaced by a base electric charge which is anywhere from $4-$8 dollars, with their power consumption and production layed out in the second bill. This second bill is called the NEM (Net Energy Metering, on the right) bill. They can opt to pay this bill at the end of the year. That way, if some months are negative and some are positive, they can reconcile it all at the end (called the “true up” period). Their bills are mostly positive since they have a small solar system and run some power hungry servers, so they pay a big chunk at the end of the year (which is nice, you get to hold onto your money longer). If you are new to this whole idea of “net-metering”, check out our previous post net metering. That should clear things up.

So, what are the rates?

Well, their baseline rates are 29.3 cents per kWh for Peak Hours and 8.66 cents per kWh for Off-Peak Hours. WOW. Big difference, right? Again, if you use a lot of electricity between the hours of 12:00-6:00pm, make sure you’re utilizing your solar system to save you money and stick with that E7 rate plan. The PG&E rating system is excruciatingly difficult to read and understand. Check out the PG&E tariff page. I downloaded the E1, E7, and NEM rates as well. The purpose of us being here is so we can help you decipher all of this.

As you use more power, the price goes up.

These plans operate on tiers, which are related to a baseline. The baseline is the power PG&E expects you to use as a house, and it’s pretty conservative. If you run servers or a hot tub, you’re probably going to go over it. Once you go over, power costs more:

Total Energy Rates
Summer	PEAK	OFF-PEAK
Baseline Usage	$0.29372	$0.08664
101% – 130% of Baseline	$0.29372	$0.08664
131% – 200% of Baseline	$0.39105	$0.18397
201% – 300% of Baseline	$0.48102	$0.27394
Over 300% of Baseline	$0.52817	$0.32109
Winter
Baseline Usage	$0.11472	$0.08966
$0.30202	$0.11472	$0.08966
131% – 200% of Baseline	$0.21205	$0.18699
201% – 300% of Baseline	$0.30202	$0.27696
Over 300% of Baseline	$0.34917	$0.32411

So, how much are they saving?

Because you can only see the net power consumption (not how much they produce and how much they use) I have to estimate based on looking at all their power bills and knowing their lifestyle, which is no problem because I’m over there playing Halo III all the time anyway. Because the solar system they have is rockin in full gear at the same time power is costing about 4 times a much as it does during the non-peak hours…. They’re saving a lot. I won’t get into the math but it looks like about $1200-ish a year.

Here is more information about California solar power energy rebates

ASK US QUESTIONS!

I understand this is confusing, so if you have questions, ask them in the comments, I’ll CALL PG&E, and I’ll update the post.

Cheers! – Dave

How Far Could $68B Go in Securing Our Energy Independence? Pretty Damn Far.

Published on October 23, 2007 by Dan Hahn.
Categories: Solar Politics.

After hearing President Bush beseech members of Congress for $68B more dollars for the war in Iraq tonight, I got myself to thinking. If we’re already spending $120B a year on this war and we simply decided to bring our troops home, how far could we get in meeting our nation’s energy demands solely with sunshine and that extra $68B dollars? Well according to an article in the Green Wombat last month, a solitary solar thermal plant sized at 92 x 92 miles could take care of our entire energy demand. That’s the size of land that purple square takes up in the above map. Granted, for security purposes it would be a dumb idea to go and build a lone solar plant like this, so let’s do some more realistic math. The land area cited in that article was 92*92mi = 8464sq. miles. Let’s say we intend to create 16 solar thermal power plants and scatter them about really sunny areas of our country such as the southwest, Texas, and areas of Florida. 8464/16 = 529sq. miles for each solar thermal power plant. It just so happens that the square root of 529 gives a clean 23! So we are in search of sixteen 23 by 23 mile plots of sunny land to power the entire country. We’ve got $68 Billion dollars to spend on all of them, or $4,250,000,000 for each one.

Since the Nevada Solar One project cost roughly $240,000,000, produces 64MW of power and amounts to 1 mile by ½ mile (pictured above – thanks to googlemaps) of concentrating thermal solar, let’s just say we use that extra war money to purchase as much solar energy as we can afford. Pictured below is the Nevada Solar Two plant (which I created in MsPaint.. Long live MsPaint!). As you can see, this hypothetical solar thermal plant is about 3 miles by 3 miles, is constructed of 18 Nevada Solar Ones, would produce 1,152MW and would cost at most $3.2B (200 million * 18). I say “at most” here because you’ve got all the equipment going to one place and there are bound to be efficiencies with economy of scale, etc. to bring the megaplant’s cost down a bit from the original $240M to $200M.

But we have enough cash from the proposed war spending to build about 20 of them ($68B/20 = $3.2B). So we’re at 9sq miles * 20 Nevada Solar Twos = 180sq miles of solar thermal energy and 23,040MW. That’s a bit of a far cry from the 8464sq miles needed to satiate the demands of the entire country. We’re just over 2 percent there. While this might sound like a marginal amount of energy, consider that 23,040MW of energy is equivalent to the amount produced by 19 nuclear power plants (1,200MW apiece!)! 23,040MW of energy could power 14,400,000 homes. That’s the number of households in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago – combined!

If you really want to shake things up, consider that since the Iraq war began, we are now roughly $9 Trillion dollars in debt. Many people, including myself, don’t have any concept of how much money that really is. Well, that’s $9,000,000,000,000 dollars. Remember those 16 plots of 23×23 miles we needed to satiate the nation’s thirst for energy? Well 9 Trillion dollars would be enough to purchase about 2,813 Nevada Solar Twos! That’s 9sq. miles * 2,813 = 25,317 sq. miles of solar thermal energy – more than triple the land area in solar power plants to satisfy the energy demands of our entire country!

It truly is depressing to imagine what the other 2/3^rds of that $9 Trillion could have been used for. Universal health care? Education? Ugh!

More Links:

• How Far Could $900B Go in Securing Our Energy Independence? Far. Very @#$%ing Far. [1/30/09]
  
• US Spending on the Iraq War Compared to Energy R+D [graph]
• The Land Mass of Solar Cells Required to Meet the Entire World’s Energy Demands
• Underdog Gaining Ground in Solar vs. Coal Showdown

Prius Stretch Limo Achieves 50mpg and Seats 8

Published on October 22, 2007 by Dan Hahn.
Categories: Non Solar.

Earlier in the year, I reported on a guy who outfitted his Prius with solar cells to eke out 10% more efficiency. Well folks, we’ve got another Prius modder here that deserves some recognition as well. He did not use solar cells in his modification, but managed to stretch out his Prius and insert a row of seating to accommodate all his children. The result is a Prius SUV Limo contraption. I sure as hell would rather see this thing rolling around town instead of a gas guzzling juggernaut such as the stretch Hummer! This would probably catch on pretty well for the environmentalist hedonists in Portland. Lobbyists might actually feel good renting these things out to ferry legislators around the state or city. Apparently the car still is able to achieve 50mpg! From the guy with a lot of time on his hands: “I built the car to function like a minivan with the convenience of one door for every primary seat. Nothing fancy inside. Note the three bucket seats in the middle row that hold the child restraints.”

The following bits of notes were lifted from a Priuschat.com forum last month:

After looking at these pictures for a while I can almost tell you how the thing was built.

1. The rear end is a 04-05 Prius cut somewhere in the middle of the front door.

2. The front end is a 06-07 Prius cut somewhere in the middle of the rear door.

This would explain the color difference as well as the rear tail light and front hybrid emblem.

3. The middle door section is made with a rear prius door.

This would explain the need to make that weird looking curve in the door. The back of the rear door is higher than the front so you would have to dip it back down to make a nice straight line toward the rear. THe front part of the rear door would not need reshaped because its already in line with the rear of the front door. Confused yet?

Since the middle section is a combination of two different shades of silver the owner just tried to blend them together instead of painting the whole car.

4. The center window must come from another type of car or custom made. haven’t really figured that part out.

5. The roof is made from the two cars and the antenna was left because of, well, two antennas are better than one!

Oh and after seeing the high res pics I agree that the two dots are a sunshade.

Did I miss anything?

We need to see if we can get this guy to come to Hybridfest 2008.

From the mechanic/stud/sextuple child rearer:

“[The above speculator provides an] incredibly accurate description of how this car might have been built without even consulting the voodoo advisor! He is right on every count except the paint. The following are pictures of the process that illustrate his points. The color, by the way, is azure pearl, a scion color.”

All New Homes Energy-Neutral in California by 2020

Published on by Dave Llorens.
Categories: Solar Legistlation.

This is big. I’m surprised there’s not more buzz around this…. It’s probably because things 13 years from now don’t peak peoples’ interests like political hot-topics or Justin Timberlake’s “d*** in a box” (btw, that is my Halloween costume, FYI…. also, was considering a full body box.  Get it?).

The California Public Utilities Commission adopted (among other things) an initiative to make all new residential homes in California zero net energy by 2020. That means in only 13 years, every time someone wants to build a house in California, that house better have a solar power system or wind energy or…. some other space age mini power plant I haven’t even heard of yet. It also probably means that the larger the housing development it is, the more cost effective it is (because they could build a mini-power plant instead of putting solar power on each home). Although, in 13 years who knows which technology will be cheaper… Like maybe these bendable photo-voltaic units will become so cost effective by then that you could slap a few on the roof of a house for a couple hundred bucks and power the whole thing. Super cheap solar power will eventually happen, period (unless some smartypants figures out a safe way to split the atom).

Anyway, enough ranting… here is what was adopted by the PUC:

• Utilities have to make a statewide longterm energy efficiency plan
• These three initiatives:
  • New homes in California to be all zero net energy by 2020
  • Commercial by 2030
  • HVAC stuff must be reshaped for optimal equipment performance;
• Developed the “next generation” of California utility energy efficiency programs for 2009-2011;
• Committed in the near term to adopting utility energy efficiency goals through 2020 and reaffirmed the PUC’s previously adopted 2009-2011 goals; and
• Established new, collaborative processes with key business, consumer groups, California government, everwhere possible.

Carbon Free Furniture

Published on by Dave Llorens.
Categories: Non Solar.

OK, so I know this isn’t about solar power, but I want to write about these guys anyway. The guys over at getknu.com are part of the new wave of zero-carbon-footprint online stores.

• They recently donated furniture for a clean water fundraiser.
• They plant a tree everytime they sell one of their sexy pieces of furniture.
• They use sustainable wood.
• Their factory is energy efficient.
• They purchase energy credits to offset what they actually use.
• They don’t mail catalogs (I don’t know about you, but I get about 4 catalogs a day that I never open. I don’t know how many trees that is a year but it pisses me off that I have no outlet to say “Stop sending these to me!”)

Google Goes all Black in San Francisco for Energy Conservation

Published on October 20, 2007 by Dave Llorens.
Categories: Solar Competitions.

This is what you see if you go to www.google.com right now and you live in San Francisco. I guess they’re doing geolocation specific homepages now. Yikes! Google’s trying to raise awareness for solar power! Alright, alright, not JUST solar power.

Here is where Google’s “lights out” link goes.

My friend in IM in response to this said: “Hey, did you know some dude figured out that if Google made their page black that it would save like 300000 gillion megawatts or something?”

Well, actually BS. Google outed that guy as wrong, apparently it takes more juice to run a black screen than a white screen. I believe this because it came from google and, well, of all people, they would know the answer to THAT question…. but I’m an electrical engineer and I’m not sure why.