[LianneMigiano]

What happens when a home with solar panels on the roof needs a new roof? Do those owners need to find some kind of specialist to undo/redo the panel installations?????

[retiredguy123]

Originally Posted by LianneMigiano

What happens when a home with solar panels on the roof needs a new roof? Do those owners need to find some kind of specialist to undo/redo the panel installations?????

Yes, they do. The average cost to remove and re-install existing panels is about $4,000.

[zendog3]

A few answers: I did not intend this post to change anyone’s belief in the existence of global warming. For those whose opinions have hardened, no analysis is sufficient. For those who are skeptical, I suggest a reading of the science reports is not beyond the grasp of educated non-scientist. The issue is important and deserves scrutiny, not of the comments of politicians, pundits, and talk show hosts. Wikipedia has an authoritative writeup, including citations from more than 300 scientific papers. It is worth reading.

People considering solar panels as an investment decision are missing the point. There are many factors to consider to determine if the money to purchase solar for your house is the best investment of your money. In my opinion, investing in solar panels on your home will probably not return as much money as some other prudent financial investments. However, I have traded sending a check to the electric company for sending a check to pay off my loan. I have just about as much money left after paying the bills. I am more in debt, but the asset of my house has increased in value. I golfed this week with a man who had just purchased a used solar home, so I am confident my house will sell when the time comes. Financially, my solar investment is break even.

The real benefit of solar is in carbon savings. For example, in May (the last monthly record I saved), my roof produced 2.4 MWh of electricity, which equals 1.66 tons of carbon that would have been released into the air.

When I add the subjective value of carbon saved to breaking even on electricity payment) I am well pleased with my investment in solar.

One and a half tons of carbon saved each month may only be a drop in the ocean, but if like-minded people who read this do the same thing. Then, we can have an impact.

Don’t abandon your ideals to cynicism. Think like an ecologist. Think about your great-grandchildren living in a world of sea-level rise, climate refugees, fires, floods, drought, and the political instability those things lead to.

[graciegirl]

Originally Posted by zendog3

A few answers: I did not intend this post to change anyone’s belief in the existence of global warming. For those whose opinions have hardened, no analysis is sufficient. For those who are skeptical, I suggest a reading of the science reports is not beyond the grasp of educated non-scientist. The issue is important and deserves scrutiny, not of the comments of politicians, pundits, and talk show hosts. Wikipedia has an authoritative writeup, including citations from more than 300 scientific papers. It is worth reading.

People considering solar panels as an investment decision are missing the point. There are many factors to consider to determine if the money to purchase solar for your house is the best investment of your money. In my opinion, investing in solar panels on your home will probably not return as much money as some other prudent financial investments. However, I have traded sending a check to the electric company for sending a check to pay off my loan. I have just about as much money left after paying the bills. I am more in debt, but the asset of my house has increased in value. I golfed this week with a man who had just purchased a used solar home, so I am confident my house will sell when the time comes. Financially, my solar investment is break even.

The real benefit of solar is in carbon savings. For example, in May (the last monthly record I saved), my roof produced 2.4 MWh of electricity, which equals 1.66 tons of carbon that would have been released into the air.

When I add the subjective value of carbon saved to breaking even on electricity payment) I am well pleased with my investment in solar.

One and a half tons of carbon saved each month may only be a drop in the ocean, but if like-minded people who read this do the same thing. Then, we can have an impact.

Don’t abandon your ideals to cynicism. Think like an ecologist. Think about your great-grandchildren living in a world of sea-level rise, climate refugees, fires, floods, drought, and the political instability those things lead to.

Please do not preach to the choir.

I know of no one who does not believe in climate change and global warming. It is what we can do about it that is up for debate. Carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" that are pollutants from industry are probably to blame, BUT...

Industry has halved death from starvation and poverty since 1990.

I do not think all the noise and all the rah rah rah stuff that comes from things like the Paris Summit add a damned helpful or NEW solution to this problem. To me it is mostly political noise and a lot of money wasted.

I stand with being much more careful with the things we own; reuse, recycle, repurpose and try to avoid unnecessary use of plastics. We need to be careful where we throw our trash and we need to just be more careful, period. We listen to "faddy" solutions that really don't work and cost more. We are sending a lot of stuff into the sky and using a lot of fuel to do it. We are seeing forests and homes burn because we don't want to sacrifice trees to stop forest fires. We are throwing out the baby with the bath water.

We have solar heaters for the pool on our house but at this time I don't think solar panels for power are cost productive or useful.

Maybe turn our air conditioning to a little less cool???

[Michread]

We’ve had solar panels on our northeast home for 8 years. We purchased the system outright. We made our money back in 4 years.

With the state and federal subsidies and the monthly SREC checks we receive for overproduction, we never pay for electricity.

But for our home in the villages, it doesn’t make financial sense to install them at this time.

[Pmarlow]

This is the problem with solar power it only makes since if you get large subsidies from someone else as well. Which of course means it doesn’t make sense to do it.

Originally Posted by Raywatkins

We looked at solar as we have it on our main home in the UK.
We thought it had to be a great option given all that sunshine in Florida.
But the scheme in the UK was different and we could not make it work on our home in The Villages. The main reason for us was that we could not benefit from the tax breaks.
If we had the tax breaks it did cost in. In the UK the government pay us for each unit we produce even if we use it ourselves. The rate per unit is very generous. We also get half of all units paid an extra fee on the assumption we feed it back onto the grid. We had to fully fund the initial installation in the UK. Our returns over the first 8 years even allowing for growth on our investments and other factors, was passed break even.

So with that in mind we thought about it for the US house for a while and the issue that finally swung us away from it was the potential structural issues.

[retiredguy123]

In my opinion, the solar systems being sold to Villagers are not about global warming or saving the planet. Most of these homeowners are being scammed by contractors who lie about the financial benefits of the systems they are selling. If the contractors provided a fair and accurate assessment of the payback period, and included the total life cycle cost, offset by the potential alternative investment income, they would go out of business. If solar panels were a good idea, the power companies would use them to produce the electricity that they sell to you in the first place.

[aallbrand]

Do not fall for the solar scam . Same scams been running for 20 years only the names and victims have changed .

[aallbrand]

Try Amway . I also have a bridge in New York I can sell you

Be smart with your money ( solar in this state is not smart )

[Jimmy Lee]

The anthropogenic global warming premise is based on the theory that humans are increasing the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere which reducing the rate of infrared radiation escaping to space resulting in warming the earth. Ice core samples drilled in Antarctica and Greenland give us a record of temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide contents going back as far as 740,000 years. The original coarse measurement of the cores showed a remarkable positive correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature. BUT more recent closer examinations of the ice cores on finer time scales (more measurements per unit of length in the cores) has shown CONCLUSIVELY that in the past temperature changed BEFORE the carbon dioxide concentration changed. This can be easily explained by the fact that water holds more dissolved carbon dioxide when it's cold than when it's warm. This is why the carbon dioxide in a cold carbonated beverage fizzes off when it comes in contact with your warm mouth. This indicates that the earth is warming (several very plausible explanations have been offered as to why) and this is causing carbon dioxide to be released from the oceans (oceans cover 70% of the earth and contain 50 times more carbon dioxide than the atmosphere). Unexplainably, people pushing anthropogenic global warming simply ignored this ground-breaking refutation of their theory.

So in 2020 we got a chance to conduct a grand expireiment to see who's right. Due to COVID shut-downs all over the industrialized world which stopped cruse ships, airline flights and a lot of car travel and kept billions of people stuck at home and recessions in all the industrialized nations. Human carbon dioxide emmssions dropped precipitously. If human emission are what's causing the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere to increase we should have seen a decrease in first half of 2020. But check out the atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements at Mona Loa Observatory in Hawaii. There was no apparent effect form all the lock-downs. The carbon dioxide concentration just kept rising at the same slow rate.

Carbon dioxide is coming out of the oceans because the earth is wamimg very slightly from a cold period around 1750 called the "Little Ice Age" and you're not going to change that by putting solar panels on your roof.

[JMintzer]

Originally Posted by Vermilion Villager

Boy did you ever nail that one!!!
From reading all the people bashing your post I can confirm.....YOU REALLY CAN'T TEACH AN OLD DOG NEW TRICKS!!!!

Well, it helps if you have actual info that help back your position...

[tuccillo]

It has been reported that daily CO2 emissions dropped by about 17% during the peak of the pandemics but have recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Typical average drops by country were much smaller with the US at 12% and China at 1.7% (not sure what the time scale was but I would guess about a year). I would not call that a "precipitous" drop.

Originally Posted by Jimmy Lee

Human carbon dioxide emmssions dropped precipitously.

[Pinball wizard]

Just thinking out loud...

If solar is such a great deal, why doesn't the electric company just rent or lease our roof space, put up solar cells, and sell the electricity generated.

[retiredguy123]

Originally Posted by Pinball wizard

Just thinking out loud...

If solar is such a great deal, why doesn't the electric company just rent or lease our roof space, put up solar cells, and sell the electricity generated.

Exactly. It makes no sense to mount metal and glass panels on an expensive asphalt shingle roof just to generate a small amount of electricity. The electric company could install the panels almost anywhere for a lot less money, if it were cost effective to generate electricity that way. But, it is cheaper to use fossil fuels instead of solar.

[Sheltie-Lover]

And you get a tax credit on your taxes.