Adapting to Renewables
Solar Energy Is Already a Well-Developed Technology That Can Earn You Money and Significantly Reduce Your Electricity Bills
Did you know that solar is the cheapest energy in human history? And that solar can pay itself off within 3-7 years and then start generating income for households? This isn’t the future, this is right now.
If you plan to live in the same house for 4+ years, you should strongly consider installing solar panels on your roof. Your electricity bill will increase drastically and your solar panels will pay themselves off and then start generating revenue within several years. As well as you playing a large part in stopping the effects of climate change.
Will Solar Panels Increase the Value of Your Home?
The answer is- it depends.
Solar panels are an asset that can strongly reduce electricity bills and generate revenue.
However, you need to be very, very, very controlled in where exactly the solar panels are placed on your roof. Some solar panels look great, but other solar panels look terrible, which can affect the value of your house.
If you allocate enough time- e.g. 2 hours, you should be able to plan where they can be placed to (1) maximise- and not reduce- your house’s selling value (some solar panels look terrible while some panels look good) and (2) what you look at every day.
You need to google images of solar panels on houses, and after scrolling through a hundred or so of them, plan very, very, very carefully where exactly they will be placed on your roof, how high they are above the edges, and how they look.
How Long Do Solar Panels Take To Pay For Themselves?
This depends on a number of factors:
Any available government assistance available (e.g. some locations offer 30-50% rebates) and the cost of your solar panels.
Your access to green loans for the solar panels and how this works (however, be really careful with interest rate repayments). Here is one example of a green loan: https://www.solararena.com.au/solar-for-0-up-front/.
Any extra benefits you can find (for example, getting a cheaper home loan for houses that meet the 2030 goals (https://www.domain.com.au/money-markets/what-is-a-green-home-loan-and-how-can-it-benefit-me-1170464/, and selling your house for a higher price because of the cheaper energy bills- however, this also depends on spending 2-4 hours on researching and thinking about where exactly the solar panels are placed and ensuring this happens).
The number of solar panels you add- the more panels you add, the more you will be able to sell back to the grid through Feed In Tariffs (the name of the revenue you make when you automatically sell back to the main grid) and the more you will be helping the 2025, 2030, 2050 goals and the environment. However, this also strongly depends on how long you want to live in your current house- if you live there for less than e.g. 5 years, you might not be able to get the full benefits).
The Feed In Tariff rates and electricity prices- the higher electricity prices are, the more money you will save on your energy bill over time.
The number of sunlight hours- obviously, the more hours the sun shines, the less you need to buy energy from the main grid.
How efficient you are with using energy- if you use less energy, you are more likely to sell solar power to the main grid and less likely to buy energy from the main grid.
Any potential problems with the solar panels- the best-case scenario is full exposure to the sun from at least 9am to 3pm each day- so, minimal shade, tilt and orientation.
More About Renewables
Renewables are energy sources that won’t run out over years, decades, or centuries, and often also refers to energy sources that make the 2050 climate change goals more likely.
What types of renewables are there?
Hydropower and Geothermal Energy are “on-demand” sources of renewables- i.e. you can switch them on at any time for the amount of energy needed.
People are searching for other forms of “on-demand” energy, both for energy sources and for storage sources for variable renewables.
A lot of people have proposed hydrogen storage research and development as high potential for the future- we just need those 100 billion world tech attempts at a % as quickly as we can.
A high potential area for large scale energy storage is research and development on frozen liquid air for creating storage and “on-demand” energy out of excess sun and winter.
The above technologies could also be combined for finding even cheaper and safer ways to store larger amounts of excess solar and wind energy to fuel houses and businesses for longer.
Solar Energy and Wind Energy are variable forms of renewable energy and are the cheapest forms of energy by far, even earning a significant % of people revenue rather than energy bills (and significantly reducing energy bills for others). However, the power grid still needs to rely on polluting and non-polluting energy sources for high peak demand and especially low sun and wind times.
Solar Energy Rooftops & Farms are the highest potential type of energy because it is the cheapest form of energy in the world and the sun is in plentiful supply.
The main challenges are how to store it for longer when the sun doesn’t shine, and how to manage low supply and high demand peak-time plants, which most likely need to be coal, oil and gas in the short and medium term. Apparently they are mostly automated, but the question is- how do you make these profitable enough?
Do governments buy them and then do contract bidding to manage the maintenance, pre-loading, operating of these?
However, these problems are if the government builds 100% solar and wind energy- individual householders with solar panels connected to feed-in tariffs will have significantly reduced electricity bills (and sometimes electricity revenue) if they are connected up to the main grid.
There is also something called Concentrated Solar Power, which is appropriate for Winter-prone areas, because it produces more power with less solar panels.
Nuclear Power should be seriously considered in locations with lower risks. The main challenges with nuclear power are people not understanding the higher safety levels, what to do with waste, and higher investment costs, but this should be seriously considered.
Turbines which capture inflowing and outgoing Tidal Power, although the technology still has a long way to go before it’s ready on a wider scale.
Wood has been a historical source of renewable energy, because trees can be replanted.
It is starting to be replaced by energies like Biomass Energy and Bio-Fuel Energy, which are grown and used “on-demand” for powering energy plants.
These are a potential source of energy for times of low sun and wind supply and/or higher demand, for use in peaker plants or as baseload creations. This can also earn farmers profits by requiring certain amounts of this.
How do you get your country to increase its renewable energy mix?
Most likely by focusing on the benefits, like:
how most of these reduce the polluting health effects on humans
how cheap many of these are
and why climate change actions are so important.
And how do you overcome the problems, like:
the variability of Solar Energy and Wind Power farms, which need a mix of battery or storage technology and expensive peaker plants
what level of pre-preparedness do people have for times of high energy prices from low supply and high demand- e.g. in heatwaves and in winter
In addition to the above, persuading to get 100 billion % attempts at climate change tech (especially storage %s) will help the above as well
For more information about renewable forms of energy, please have a look at Project Drawdown’s 100 top ranking climate change solutions:
