The world we live in...

[Seth53]

I installed an initial 16-panel system on my Durant, IA garage in 2015, then added an 8 panel array (ground mount) a year later. Electric bills went from (on ave) $140/month to $40. I also got a net metering check every year for about $200. After the IA and Fed rebates and credits, my payback was 6.5 years. I went with AES out of the twin cities. It's now a rental and I kept the electrical in my name, charge the tenant $100 more/month (for "free" electricity) and harvest the yearly net metering funds. It's been all gravy after the payback lines crossed. The Durant REC pays me at the wholesale rate.

It is also a Betamax system as any current panels deliver about 25% more efficiency, etc....i.e. it's already outdated. But like any evolving technology, you gotta put your toe in the water at some point.

So, I got married, moved (reluctantly) to Illinois (near Geneseo) on a farm and was appalled at the $250/month electric ComEd bill. Soooo...….we're installing a 65-panel system, and a back up generator. Eagle Point Solar from Dubuque is doing the honors. Bigger panels, more juice produced, less cost per juice produced, etc. Technology keeps marching forward. I don't do the battery backup route as batteries are expensive...I'd rather take the net metering money. ComEd pays me net...far better than the REC wholesale rate.

As screwed up as Illinois is, they do lavish the solar endeavors with SHINE rebates, supportive fed credits and state deductions. My payback is only about 4.5 years. After that, it's gravy. So, yes, I'm using your and my tax dollars to offset my costs but don't blame the player, blame the rulebook.

All the systems are statue systems versus the sunflower systems where the panels follow the sun. A cool thing to watch but they wear out much faster. A neighbor of ours has a sunflower system for his hog operation.

Residential wind is a loser proposition IMO. Big system wind is gaining steam now that there are companies who can recycle the turbines into other manufacturing/construction products. Wind technology will march forward as well.

I'm not a "save the whales" advocate by any means, but I believe strongly enough in the premise (economics first, environment second) that I am having my 3rd residential solar array installed in eight years. I use plenty of gasoline, LP, etc. but do think solar makes sense...a lot of sense under the right circumstances.

 

[okeefe4prez]

I installed an initial 16-panel system on my Durant, IA garage in 2015, then added an 8 panel array (ground mount) a year later. Electric bills went from (on ave) $140/month to $40. I also got a net metering check every year for about $200. After the IA and Fed rebates and credits, my payback was 6.5 years. I went with AES out of the twin cities. It's now a rental and I kept the electrical in my name, charge the tenant $100 more/month (for "free" electricity) and harvest the yearly net metering funds. It's been all gravy after the payback lines crossed. The Durant REC pays me at the wholesale rate.

It is also a Betamax system as any current panels deliver about 25% more efficiency, etc....i.e. it's already outdated. But like any evolving technology, you gotta put your toe in the water at some point.

So, I got married, moved (reluctantly) to Illinois (near Geneseo) on a farm and was appalled at the $250/month electric ComEd bill. Soooo...….we're installing a 65-panel system, and a back up generator. Eagle Point Solar from Dubuque is doing the honors. Bigger panels, more juice produced, less cost per juice produced, etc. Technology keeps marching forward. I don't do the battery backup route as batteries are expensive...I'd rather take the net metering money. ComEd pays me net...far better than the REC wholesale rate.

As screwed up as Illinois is, they do lavish the solar endeavors with SHINE rebates, supportive fed credits and state deductions. My payback is only about 4.5 years. After that, it's gravy. So, yes, I'm using your and my tax dollars to offset my costs but don't blame the player, blame the rulebook.

All the systems are statue systems versus the sunflower systems where the panels follow the sun. A cool thing to watch but they wear out much faster. A neighbor of ours has a sunflower system for his hog operation.

Residential wind is a loser proposition IMO. Big system wind is gaining steam now that there are companies who can recycle the turbines into other manufacturing/construction products. Wind technology will march forward as well.

I'm not a "save the whales" advocate by any means, but I believe strongly enough in the premise (economics first, environment second) that I am having my 3rd residential solar array installed in eight years. I use plenty of gasoline, LP, etc. but do think solar makes sense...a lot of sense under the right circumstances.

For people way out in the country solar makes way more sense than attempting to build the grid out to them. It's like how cellular phones allowed third world countries to jump over the massive cost of having to build out their own telecom grids with wires going to every house.

In a state like Illinois where the government is beyond broke and ComEd is merely an extension of that completely broke government you are definitely gonna want to disentangle out of their systems as much as possible. The rate payers end up having to heavily subsidize the nonpayers and with the outflows of population the stress on ComEd just to cover capex is gonna get ugly.

 

[Seth53]

For people way out in the country solar makes way more sense than attempting to build the grid out to them. It's like how cellular phones allowed third world countries to jump over the massive cost of having to build out their own telecom grids with wires going to every house.

In a state like Illinois where the government is beyond broke and ComEd is merely an extension of that completely broke government you are definitely gonna want to disentangle out of their systems as much as possible. The rate payers end up having to heavily subsidize the nonpayers and with the outflows of population the stress on ComEd just to cover capex is gonna get ugly.

Agreed. REC-based (for example) systems are political window dressing IMO. Stand alone independent systems do make sense

 

[HawkGold]

I installed an initial 16-panel system on my Durant, IA garage in 2015, then added an 8 panel array (ground mount) a year later. Electric bills went from (on ave) $140/month to $40. I also got a net metering check every year for about $200. After the IA and Fed rebates and credits, my payback was 6.5 years. I went with AES out of the twin cities. It's now a rental and I kept the electrical in my name, charge the tenant $100 more/month (for "free" electricity) and harvest the yearly net metering funds. It's been all gravy after the payback lines crossed. The Durant REC pays me at the wholesale rate.

It is also a Betamax system as any current panels deliver about 25% more efficiency, etc....i.e. it's already outdated. But like any evolving technology, you gotta put your toe in the water at some point.

So, I got married, moved (reluctantly) to Illinois (near Geneseo) on a farm and was appalled at the $250/month electric ComEd bill. Soooo...….we're installing a 65-panel system, and a back up generator. Eagle Point Solar from Dubuque is doing the honors. Bigger panels, more juice produced, less cost per juice produced, etc. Technology keeps marching forward. I don't do the battery backup route as batteries are expensive...I'd rather take the net metering money. ComEd pays me net...far better than the REC wholesale rate.

As screwed up as Illinois is, they do lavish the solar endeavors with SHINE rebates, supportive fed credits and state deductions. My payback is only about 4.5 years. After that, it's gravy. So, yes, I'm using your and my tax dollars to offset my costs but don't blame the player, blame the rulebook.

All the systems are statue systems versus the sunflower systems where the panels follow the sun. A cool thing to watch but they wear out much faster. A neighbor of ours has a sunflower system for his hog operation.

Residential wind is a loser proposition IMO. Big system wind is gaining steam now that there are companies who can recycle the turbines into other manufacturing/construction products. Wind technology will march forward as well.

I'm not a "save the whales" advocate by any means, but I believe strongly enough in the premise (economics first, environment second) that I am having my 3rd residential solar array installed in eight years. I use plenty of gasoline, LP, etc. but do think solar makes sense...a lot of sense under the right circumstances.

As a fellow Illinoisan I agree IL is screwed up and we all know it...thx Madigan. But, Iowa is screwed up and doesn't know it. Rural areas of both states are dying with hubs doing well. Des Moines area cites outside Des Moines are flight cities from rural areas or businesses growing and taking advantage of incentives. IL has places like tat on a smaller scale such as outlying Champaign, Effingham, N and NE Peoria and so on.

 

[okeefe4prez]

As a fellow Illinoisan I agree IL is screwed up and we all know it...thx Madigan. But, Iowa is screwed up and doesn't know it. Rural areas of both states are dying with hubs doing well. Des Moines area cites outside Des Moines are flight cities from rural areas or businesses growing and taking advantage of incentives. IL has places like tat on a smaller scale such as outlying Champaign, Effingham, N and NE Peoria and so on.

As a former Illinoisan, when I see the name "Madigan" I can't help but thank the almighty that I moved out of there before the Germ hit. I saw Madigan had to resign and was under investigation. Has anything come of that?

I actually feel somewhat bad for many of the folks stuck there, particularly the farmers. The tail liabilities that the state government has created that are woefully underfunded are going to be a gargantuan problem over the next few decades. When I visited over the 4th of July and saw about 10 people on my Metra car on what used to be one of the busiest weekend days of the year I felt a great deal of unease. Current ridership is well under half of what it was in 2019 and they were losing money in 2019. You can't just cut the trains in operation to save costs because most of the costs are the CBA mandated pensions and post-retirement medical and capital expenditures. Those expenses don't shut off just because you cut system capacity by a third. The viaducts on the system are almost all insanely old and replacement of just one costs well into the 8 figures. I used to live by the Davis stop and the viaduct there looked like it was ready to come down any day now and my old neighbor told me that they just spent a fortune repainting it. I seriously have no idea how they're gonna come up with funds to keep that system running for another 20 years. A word to the wise - if you buy municipal bond funds, don't buy any with Illinois exposure. Someone's gonna get a haircut and my guess is the order of operations will be: 1) bondholders, 2) taxpayers, 3) no one else.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

I've done some solar deals. The newer arrays are all engineered to subtly tilt throughout the day and over the seasons to get the best angle of light. Solar is probably a bit of a scam. If people actually cared about carbon emissions they'd be protesting to ensure that all these nuke facilities that are on their last legs get upgraded and can get another 50 years of life. Those reactors in Georgia are the first ones built in the US in decades. It's insanity. Once those nukes go offline all around the country the base load is gonna get really jacked up.

Here we run off a beautiful nuke power plant out in Oconee County. There are two lakes and they use the higher elevation lake as a battery in the summer and generate hydroelectricity during the day (pump water to the high lake at night, let it flow down during the day when peak demand hits in summer). They are already out of their lifespan, but they have some special dispensation to run another few years. I wish they'd build a few modern reactors there. The modern ones are about a million times safer than the old Westinghouse designs. But for a place like this, solar makes absolutely no sense unless you are using it for your house or on site generation and have a backup battery that replaces a generator. It just makes absolutely no sense to build solar in a place overflowing with zero emission electricity because the solar crap entails significant mining and transportation emissions that offer zero benefit.

Yea, I have concerns about solar for various reasons. It has been around for decades now and they haven't refined it enough to make it efficient for heavy use. Also, the panels degrade over time and lose efficiency as they degrade.

 

[racerhawk]

Bruh, they're cranking more coal out of the Dakotas today than they ever have in the past. It's all going to Asia. Global coal usage goes up every year, just like global oil usage. For every coal power plant they close in the US ten new ones spring up in China and India.

Global coal use may flatline this year with the Japanese abandoning their plan to shut down all of their nuclear plants so I wouldn't go too deep into coal investments if I were you. Wait for the next crash.

Yep, China's stage of industrial production is well behind the US. They rely on coal. Unfortunate.

Agree, it's unfortunate.

Having said that, the last time I checked, the US leads in per capita CO2 production by far. I hope the party of personal responsibility is aware of that and doesn't just blame "Gyna".

 

[okeefe4prez]

Agree, it's unfortunate.

Having said that, the last time I checked, the US leads in per capita CO2 production by far. I hope the party of personal responsibility is aware of that and doesn't just blame "Gyna".

Depends on where you measure CO2 production. The Saudis would likely outpace us tremendously if you incorporate their extraction activities and the emissions of moving the tankers across the oceans.

But irregardless, our CO2 output is driven in large part by just how gargantuan this country is, how cold it gets in northern winters where we have large population centers and how high our relative standard of living is.

 

[HawkGold]

As a former Illinoisan, when I see the name "Madigan" I can't help but thank the almighty that I moved out of there before the Germ hit. I saw Madigan had to resign and was under investigation. Has anything come of that?

I actually feel somewhat bad for many of the folks stuck there, particularly the farmers. The tail liabilities that the state government has created that are woefully underfunded are going to be a gargantuan problem over the next few decades. When I visited over the 4th of July and saw about 10 people on my Metra car on what used to be one of the busiest weekend days of the year I felt a great deal of unease. Current ridership is well under half of what it was in 2019 and they were losing money in 2019. You can't just cut the trains in operation to save costs because most of the costs are the CBA mandated pensions and post-retirement medical and capital expenditures. Those expenses don't shut off just because you cut system capacity by a third. The viaducts on the system are almost all insanely old and replacement of just one costs well into the 8 figures. I used to live by the Davis stop and the viaduct there looked like it was ready to come down any day now and my old neighbor told me that they just spent a fortune repainting it. I seriously have no idea how they're gonna come up with funds to keep that system running for another 20 years. A word to the wise - if you buy municipal bond funds, don't buy any with Illinois exposure. Someone's gonna get a haircut and my guess is the order of operations will be: 1) bondholders, 2) taxpayers, 3) no one else.

Basically agree, but don't feel bad for farmers. As a group they are doing well.
No haircut. The situation is well beyond that without a bailout by the Fed. If not big banks, why not IL... a bit tongue in cheek. Of course I don't agree with it, but the real issue is corporate bailouts. My community is the equivalent of Johnston and Ankeny and the ratings showed it. People are fleeing Champaign and coming here (gang warfare). Our schools have nearly doubled in just a few short years with building going on and apartments. Class size has exploded and less help from the state. Can't pass referendum due to board mismanagement (they sold a nice school building for 600k right during the midst of this). The rankings are tanking and an area of town isn't safe to go to now.

But farmers, they are in good shape. Iowa recently decided to do away with Estate Tax which isn't necessarily a good thing. That will help Iowa farmers where they likely don't need help but have the political help.

 

[Seth53]

Yea, I have concerns about solar for various reasons. It has been around for decades now and they haven't refined it enough to make it efficient for heavy use. Also, the panels degrade over time and lose efficiency as they degrade.

My systems are engineered to lose about 0.5% efficiency per year. The warranty then is they have to be 85% efficient at the end of the 30 year cycle or they get replaced for free. All systems are monitored through an internet program so you know up to the minute what your productivity is or if there are converter issues.

 

[okeefe4prez]

Basically agree, but don't feel bad for farmers. As a group they are doing well.
No haircut. The situation is well beyond that without a bailout by the Fed. If not big banks, why not IL... a bit tongue in cheek. Of course I don't agree with it, but the real issue is corporate bailouts. My community is the equivalent of Johnston and Ankeny and the ratings showed it. People are fleeing Champaign and coming here (gang warfare). Our schools have nearly doubled in just a few short years with building going on and apartments. Class size has exploded and less help from the state. Can't pass referendum due to board mismanagement (they sold a nice school building for 600k right during the midst of this). The rankings are tanking and an area of town isn't safe to go to now.

But farmers, they are in good shape. Iowa recently decided to do away with Estate Tax which isn't necessarily a good thing. That will help Iowa farmers where they likely don't need help but have the political help.

The farmers are doing well now. But the problem is that as Illinois gets more desperate for tax revenue the one thing that can't be moved, the ground, is gonna bear the brunt of their decades of fiscal responsibility.

I have a buddy in Champaign who said they just changed the school system by disregarding the boundaries or something and that there is a mad rush to move out or enroll in private schools. That can't be good.

We have so many people moving in down here that they just opened a new high school and it's already overcrowded and the models of growth from even 5 years ago were so wrong that the other schools that it was supposed to relieve are even more overcrowded now than they were before they jettisoned kids to the new school. It's insanity, but as long as the politburo makes it less and less desirable to live in places like Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, California and New York we're gonna have a flood of people coming in down here. They need a policy change quickly. I'd almost be inclined to hit people with a relocation tax to move in because we need money to build infrastructure immediately and the good folks down here aren't too keen on running up huge governmental debts.

 

[okeefe4prez]

My systems are engineered to lose about 0.5% efficiency per year. The warranty then is they have to be 85% efficient at the end of the 30 year cycle or they get replaced for free. All systems are monitored through an internet program so you know up to the minute what your productivity is or if there are converter issues.

That's a quantum leap from the past.

 

[Seth53]

Yea, I have concerns about solar for various reasons. It has been around for decades now and they haven't refined it enough to make it efficient for heavy use. Also, the panels degrade over time and lose efficiency as they degrade.

And I do agree that large arrays just don't produce what they should for entire communities. But at the individual level, they do.

 

[Fryowa]

My systems are engineered to lose about 0.5% efficiency per year. The warranty then is they have to be 85% efficient at the end of the 30 year cycle or they get replaced for free. All systems are monitored through an internet program so you know up to the minute what your productivity is or if there are converter issues.

Be honest here...

Do you really think the company you have your warranty with will still be there in 30 years? In 30 years the the stuff you have will be 15 years obsolete, and we know that kind of warranty is a token gesture.

I'm not saying your stuff isn't efficient and doesn't live up to the manufacturer's claims, but there's not going to be anyone there in 30 years to give you brand new panels if they're at 82% 30 years from now. Those are the kinds of warranties companies give when the people in management have no intent on sticking around that long.

 

[Fryowa]

Agree, it's unfortunate.

Having said that, the last time I checked, the US leads in per capita CO2 production by far. I hope the party of personal responsibility is aware of that and doesn't just blame "Gyna".

What we should be doing that would actually help, is to learn to deal with the problems that humanity is going to deal with from the climate change. Like it or not, what George Carlin said wasn't in jest. Whether it's human-inflicted or not, climate change is going to happen. We as humans have just kickstarted it unfortunately and the genie is out of the bottle. We can either cry about the milk we spilled, or try and deal with living in the mess. Cause it ain't gonna stop.

We need to figure out how to deal with more severe weather and rising coastlines. Most climatologists agree that the hardest hit parts of the world in the next 150 years will be coastlines and already really hot places. Some places are going to benefit from it; in the US the Upper Midwest will actually see better weather (aside from isolated sever weather intensity) and longer growing seasons just by dumb luck. But it you live in California, Nevada, New Orleans, Arizona, Florida, etc, you're gonna be screwed and there's no stopping it now. People need to figure out how to live with that way faster than we need to figure out how to plug a bunch of Teslas in without tripping the local substation.

Even if we hadn't screwed up and caused the greenhouse effect, it's going to happen at some point by itself. And at some point there's going to be another ice age. You know how we have yearly cycles of different seasons? The earth does too. But you don't pay attention to that because it's not regularly changing during your lifetime, which is understandable. Those cycles might not be on regular schedules, but they all cycle through eventually. The best idea is to try and do what's feasible now to try and not make it worse, and start to figure out that we can't have 60 million people living in areas that only have enough water for 10 million people.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

My systems are engineered to lose about 0.5% efficiency per year. The warranty then is they have to be 85% efficient at the end of the 30 year cycle or they get replaced for free. All systems are monitored through an internet program so you know up to the minute what your productivity is or if there are converter issues.

Good to know and good information. If people take the time to look when out driving around in neighborhoods, you do see systems on roofs more than you would typically notice.

 

[MelroseHawkins]

Be honest here...

Do you really think the company you have your warranty with will still be there in 30 years? In 30 years the the stuff you have will be 15 years obsolete, and we know that kind of warranty is a token gesture.

I'm not saying your stuff isn't efficient and doesn't live up to the manufacturer's claims, but there's not going to be anyone there in 30 years to give you brand new panels if they're at 82% 30 years from now. Those are the kinds of warranties companies give when the people in management have no intent on sticking around that long.

I agree when a company has to sell warranties and use that as a main selling point, that can be a red flag. In my city/area, we lived with what you mentioned. The local solar company just up and quit and there was a huge mess with open accounts that they apparently weren't gunna fill. I wonder how the warranties worked out with the people they served in the past.

 

[Seth53]

Be honest here...

Do you really think the company you have your warranty with will still be there in 30 years? In 30 years the the stuff you have will be 15 years obsolete, and we know that kind of warranty is a token gesture.

I'm not saying your stuff isn't efficient and doesn't live up to the manufacturer's claims, but there's not going to be anyone there in 30 years to give you brand new panels if they're at 82% 30 years from now. Those are the kinds of warranties companies give when the people in management have no intent on sticking around that long.

I won't around in 30 years either. So what happens then doesn't concern me.
But if any of the panels slips below 85% capture before that, they get replaced.
Everything is monitored via the internet so I/they will know.

Also, the two companies I've dealt with have agreements that they'll upgrade a system at 25% normal cost (no rebates available) to current specs. I'm considering it.

 

[Seth53]

I agree when a company has to sell warranties and use that as a main selling point, that can be a red flag. In my city/area, we lived with what you mentioned. The local solar company just up and quit and there was a huge mess with open accounts that they apparently weren't gunna fill. I wonder how the warranties worked out with the people they served in the past.

And yes, some go out of business. Moxie in the Quad cities is one such case.

 

[HawkGold]

The farmers are doing well now. But the problem is that as Illinois gets more desperate for tax revenue the one thing that can't be moved, the ground, is gonna bear the brunt of their decades of fiscal responsibility.

I have a buddy in Champaign who said they just changed the school system by disregarding the boundaries or something and that there is a mad rush to move out or enroll in private schools. That can't be good.

We have so many people moving in down here that they just opened a new high school and it's already overcrowded and the models of growth from even 5 years ago were so wrong that the other schools that it was supposed to relieve are even more overcrowded now than they were before they jettisoned kids to the new school. It's insanity, but as long as the politburo makes it less and less desirable to live in places like Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, California and New York we're gonna have a flood of people coming in down here. They need a policy change quickly. I'd almost be inclined to hit people with a relocation tax to move in because we need money to build infrastructure immediately and the good folks down here aren't too keen on running up huge governmental debts.

Iowa ranks 13th on total tax burden. IL is 10th. I'm aware of the $750 tax voucher for schools, but I don't believe your info to be accurate. That said, we have seen a mad rush. I think Des Moines is/will be experiencing a rush out even more with gang activity.

Ironically every state you mentioned is a tax outflow state to DC and then to inflow states like Iowa.

Farm property taxes are nearly double Iowa.