A large amount of nonsense being talked by opponents of green power because of the Texas outages. Solar PV works quite well even in Maine's winter because PV cells like winter weather. There's less internal electrical resistance when it's cool, and the snow we have on the ground most of the winter reflects light up to the array. Ours is deliberately tilted to shed the snow quickly. It's been running flat-out since the sun hit it square on about 9.30am. Wind turbines are similarly at full blast today in Maine because of the strong polar wind we have, and because we employ anti-icing systems that Texas chose not to pay for. Here's the power produced by the solar array on our barn the last week. You can see that some power was produced on even the snowstorm days, while the array was at peak output for four of the seven days. Each kilowatt hour saves us 18¢. The array cost $3,500 after the federal tax rebate, although it was cheaper because we did much of the work ourselves, with the help of some students that wanted work experience (they were paid!), and the local solar PV company who helped with the paperwork. It's made 80 KWh in the last week, so that would be $14 in power for the week, or about $60/month. I don't know of any other investment that will safely give you $60/month for only $3,500 upfront. Nothing legal, that's for sure. And it will make even more in summer, zeroing out our bill entirely some months. CMP fought us tooth and nail on this installation, and we had to take them to the PUC. But it's been worth every penny. My only regret is that it needs no attention, so I don't get to tinker with it! It's totally boring how reliable it is. But I do have a 1975 VW bus for that. And It's quite toasty in our house today running on solar PV and wood stove heat. I feel sorry for all the Texans without power, but let's put the blame where it belongs, with their pay-to-play politicians and their cheap-assed power companies.
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