BERKELEY SOLAR
The City of Berkeley figured out a great way to help residents solarize:
"The city foots the bill for the installation, but homeowners retain ownership and pay the city back over 20 years via an annual property assessment. And if they sell their house before the bill is completely paid off, no worries -- the liability for the remaining bill, along with the solar panels, goes to the next owner of the house."Makes me kind of want to live there. Via Salon.
Oh man, think about that though - 20 years! 2 decades! If you install something now, don't you think that by 2029 that technology is going to be ancient? Can you imagine moving into a house and having to pay for some some enormous apparatus that someone installed 15 years back that really ain't that efficient by today's standards? I'm all about the movement towards solar but this cost thing has be worked out before it'll work.
ReplyDeleteI see your point, but we're not talking about iPod's. Solar tech will improve, but it's not going to be irrelevant come Christmas.
ReplyDeleteSeems like the important thing is creating the market, so that in 2015 innovative and efficient panels become a common element of homeownership. People need to take things for granted.
In Israel every metropolitan building has panels on the roof. Perhaps there's a good reason US cities are this far behind, but perhaps not. (Israel was backwards in so many OTHER ways, hence my suspicions.)
This seems like a smart program if it does any of the following: creates interest, reduces dependence on the grid, gives back to the grid, or pushes the technology forward so that in five years the panels are cheap enough to pay off in 10 years, and in ten years the program is irrelevant because every household has solarized (or can afford to).