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SolarInvest2020: Residential Quick Take on Doing Good

BySustainMe

Residential Solar can be a good investment. Good Savings.   [UPDATE: 30% Investment Tax Credit on renewables in the IRA Act. See our Blog post here. This makes all the financial discussions below much more profitable. Also, higher inflation and higher power inflation.] Anyone thinking of putting solar on a residential property will obviously be friendly to doing a good deed for the environment, but would also like to understand the financial implications. There are…

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SolarInvest2020: Solar Profitability Calculations: Residential and Commercial

BySustainMe

As people hunker down at home, and spend time doing all those fix-up items that have been waiting for years, they should also consider working through the details of adding solar. First, of course, do those energy efficiency tricks that cost very little: smart thermostats, caulk windows and cracks, and improve your insulation. Your favorite power company will do an energy audit so you can get a check list of things to do. The typical…

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SolarInvest2020: Residential Solar is Good, but Commercial Solar can be Crazy Profitable!

BySustainMe

Business/Commercial Solar can be crazy profitable. [UPDATE: 30% Investment Tax Credit on renewables in the IRA Act 2022. See our Blog post here. This makes all the financial discussions below much more profitable. Also, higher inflation and higher power inflation.] Consistently three-fourths or more of people surveyed believe that renewable energy – especially solar – is good and that we should do more solar on the buildings where the sun shines consistently. But is doing…

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Opportunity Lost by Waiting until 2020 for Solar Investment

BySustainMe

[UPDATE: 30% Investment Tax Credit on renewables in the IRA Act 2022. See our Blog post here. This makes all the financial discussions below much more profitable. Also, higher inflation and higher power inflation.] The Renewable Investment Tax Credit, which is currently in 2019 at 30% of the qualifying investment, is a wonderful incentive to put in renewable power including solar, wind and qualifying battery backup. The ITC will drop down by 4% in 2020…

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Renewable energy of Wind and Solar no longer needs subsidies

BySustainMe

Nice Bloomberg article here. Renewable of Wind and Solar are now cheaper than coal, oil, gas, nuclear. No big need for subsidies to make them competitive. But, there’s also no need, quite the contrary given the externality costs, for subsidizing fossil fuels! Nice article with great graphics show the fall in price for wind and solar.

Make your own fuel, while air conditioning (HVAC). Carbon Capture.

BySustainMe

Imagine a great idea that is entirely possible with new technology coming down the pipeline from various sources. That is what an article in Scientific American by Richard Conniff envisions based on a paper published in the Nature Communications which proposes a partial remedy based on A/C units:  Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (or HVAC) systems move a lot of air. Dittmeyer, Klumpp, Kant and Ozin (2019) describe the idea of using renewable energy from…