Taking a fresh look at solar energy’s benefits | Highlands Today:
Local article to Central Florida. It is good to see some movement on solar.
Great. We all need to be more sustainable. Glad to see Coronado Solar getting out there and making it happen.
Couple areas that aren’t precise. Probably lost something in the translation. Payback on solar hot water is usually 2 to 4 years. Really good ROI for pools (unless you like to polar-bear it in the winter). Payback for solar is usually 6 to 9 years; that’s probably the 6.5 years mentioned in the article.
CO2e saved per home is about 6.68 metric tons per year based on 11.3MW per year with typical US electric power. (http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-resources/refs.html)
That would be about 155 trees planted from seedlings for 10 year (not 20+ years life of the solar array). (http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-resources/calculator.html)
It is always hard to visualize our carbon foot print. Each person in the US produces 5 metric tons of CO2 (or equivalent). Figure 2 people per household. And an acre of trees/forest takes out about 2 MTons per year (until about 30 years, then only 1MTon). So a household of 2 needs to plant at least 5 acres of new forest today to cover all of their burning of ancient forest (coal and oil) for the next 20-30 years.
Oh well, energy-ize your house and save 15%-25% of your utilities for the change in your pocket. Get solar water heaters and save 5-15% and plan to go solar completely within the next few years. Maybe start the array and get the meter so it can easily be expanded in the future. Prices continue to drop and efficiency improve:-)
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