Hmmm. No. The payback is 20 years, which is the length of the panel life, and the limit on time the utilities have to pay you for the energy. After that, they get the energy from you for free.
You are making sweeping negative statements without specifying where in your experience this is the case. 20 year pay back would have to be a state with super low electric prices and absolutely zero incentives.
Please specify where this is the case and why, per your math.
Fed is 22% tax rebate, NY state is $5k incentive.. and power in the state ranges in the 20-30c/kWh range.. so pretty expensive power with pretty good incentive.
Yes, continue the explanation with your math, including the part where you don't actually get that rebate; as part of the solar program financing, you have to hand that rebate over to the bank to pay the finance fees, which is factored into the financing. Otherwise the monthly payments go up, and you end up paying more per month than you generate energy. I was in RI and RI rates and program is similar to NY's.
I put solar panels on my last house. You know what impact it had? Zero. Why? Because renewable energy sources are more costly, less efficient, and have a greater environmental impact over the full lifecycle than Natural Gas Plants [1]. If we replaced all power generators with Natural Gas plants (which Europe is doing because they already realized this fact), you could realize the carbon savings and generate the power that will be needed for future electrification demands.
Doesn't work. Because corporations find loopholes around the law to achieve an "equivalent" of carbon reduction, that doesn't actually reduce it, but still call themselves green. If anyone thinks that planting a few trees actually reduces carbon given how much the Chinese pump out, I have a bridge in Brooklin to sell you.
It's easy to throw around numbers without understanding the people behind them. Say the plumber whose business is worth $10 million dollars, pays himself $100k, and re-invests the rest back into his business and his employees. Is he rich? No. That's the problem with ideological socialism. You just want to stick it to the guy who is rich on paper - it has nothing to do with actually improving peoples lives.
I'm not a socialist at all, let alone an "ideological" one. My motivation is not to make people poor. My motivation is to arrange some sort of sovereignty for the vast majority of people. As long as billionaires choose all our public officials [0] while paying minimal taxes [1], we don't have majoritarian rule. If we did have it, this country would be better-run and better for both the people who live here and everyone else in the world.
Even if we can assume there is a single ten-millionaire working plumber (and really, that's far-fetched), such a person won't be harmed if all of the billionaires get trimmed back to her level.
If you truly care about cost, efficiency, and the environment, you should be looking at Natural Gas plants [1]. They are inexpensive at $60 million each, are more efficient [2] than all other power generators, provide more power (which will be needed for EVs), and is cleaner when taking into account the full lifecycle costs (construction to decommissioning). They also involve less red tape to get constructed, so they can be built quickly.
But you have to look at the decaying grid as well (another plus for Natural Gas because you could afford to do both). A lot of the power generation is lost in the grid. If you invested there, the current generation facilities could operate more efficiently and you could shutdown the dirtiest/least efficient ones over time.
No, redistribution is organized extortion. I make $100, the government takes $50 of it, pockets $30 of that, and then redistributes $20 to those that will keep them in office (A.K.A. a bribe).
Americans pay many fees and taxes that go to environmental concerns. They also see the government does not use that revenue to address those environmental concerns, because instead it goes to state and federal pensions. Therefore, the real issue is, what do Americans have to do to get the government to spend the money on the things they say it is supposed to go to? Until the government is willing to change their spending habits, yes, Americans will be unwilling to contribute more to the national credit card with no limit.
“Americans pay many fees and taxes that go to environmental concerns”
Doubt. Environmentalism is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of US governmental spending.
Edit: it’s .2% of the budget. Defense is a whopping 14%. We spend 70 times less on environmentalism than military and we’re not even at war.
Source:
http://saveepaalums.info/EPA+costs+to+taxpayers
And your point is what? You just provided the exact evidence to what I already stated. Parts of the gas tax, excise taxes, vehicle sales tax, recycling fees, etc... are all fees that Americans pay that are supposed to go to addressing impact on the environment. But the government only spends 0.2% on it. Where did the money go? That is exactly my point. Most of it went to pay pensions that the government over promises on and doesn't budget enough for. Any business that did that would be out of business or switching to 401ks, which most have done.
1) most of those taxes aren’t specifically for environmental policies. For example, vehicle taxes go to fund roads
2) no, most of government spending does not go to funding pensions and there’s absolutely no evidence to support that. That claim is absolutely ludicrous.
Newsflash, most taxes have loopholes in them to allow the money to be used on things other than what they were intended for [1]. Vehicle taxes are used for multiple purposes, not just roads. Currently, 7.2% of GDP goes to pensions [2], and that is just the federal government's part. States' contributions would easily double that figure.
Quite a coincidence. My dad was an HM3 on the USS Frontier from 1964 to 1967. He also passed in 2016. He never talked much about his service though. I only remember one story he told where US soldiers were issued bullet proof vests for the first time, and they chose to try them out by shooting each other with M16s. The result wasn't pretty.
My Father-in-law was a Vietnam Vet, an older one who had been in the military for awhile and made a career out of it. I believe he retired in 1978, he passed several years ago.
My wife was born after he retired and he spoke very little about the war. He had PTSD, but he'd mostly dealt with it by the time I met him.
The only vivid story I recall. He talked about when they were stationed at an outpost. The supplies would be stacked up in a central area and he was getting the rations for his men. There was an explosion and everyone thought they were being shelled.
However, it turned out that one of the other Sergeants was wearing a grenade on his vest. The pin caught on something and pulled out without him noticing.
They had to spend the next few days taping down the pins on all the grenades to avoid another accident.
Fascinating. I wonder what the psychology is there.
I saw a Plymouth Superbird a couple years ago that had “original damage”. It looked like it had been stolen and taken on a joyride. No straight body panels, scratches everywhere.
The story went that some kid got drafted and figured he was never coming home so he spent his life savings on the fastest car he could and tried to have as much fun as possible.
I assume it is a similar state of mind to a terminal medical diagnosis.
That's a false premise because consumers have endured the Microsoft ecosystem for decades and the risk vs choice is one that consumers have accepted. The only way Apple would have an argument for that aspect of their ecosystem, is that if all similar vendors operated the same way. This case is about consumer choice and it's the better consumer choice argument that is going to win.
Apple has made a ton of money from people utterly dissatisfied with the windows ecosystem, so I disagree people have accepted this. (I certainly haven't, and put my parents on an iPad 10 years ago and haven't heard barely a peep out of them since.)
I think more technical HN-type users aren't aware or have forgotten how terribad the Windows download scene was in the 2000s. It was almost impossible to install anything without getting some toolbar or adware bundle, if not outright malware.
You literally just used the word “endured” to describe the relationship between customers and Microsoft. That’s hardly a glowing endorsement or a strong argument that Apple should follow Microsoft’s lead!
These replies to my comment are completely missing the point. The debate isn't about what is the better system, which is arbitrary, it is about whether you have a choice, period. If you didn't want to use Windows, you had a choice; you could use Apple, Unix, or Linux. You do not have a choice on iOS, you use the App store, or you can't get apps. That's the anti-competitive behavior under review.
Microsoft making certain choices regarding to safety and how open their platform is has no relevance to what choices Apple makes. Apple happens to choose for a less permissive system and it has been going well for them and their users. I don’t see how that has anything to do with how other vendors choose to operate.
