I feel so old and SO naive

[cigarsarge]

Going green has advantages to the forward looking person. Growing your own food, solar power for your house, providing your own means of transportation forgoing the oil companies, has definate financial advantages as well as making the earth more livable. The wife and I are making serious strides in becomming more non dependant on "the system". I don't see myself being able to get rid of my cars. That is not practical for me at this. I can cut back on gas consumption. I do grow a good part of my food and get quite a bit from a food co-op we belong to. A few of us are about to slaughter a cow that was free range fed.

My wife and I are looking at solar power seriously. I have a friend that uses it...So far without a flaw.

[kevin7]

Sarge ,we have about 5 families on solar power here and the excess is bought by our electric co op at wholesale rates. It was a big expense up front to the customer but out co op fully supports solar and wind generation. Look into it

[heftysmokes]

We've been looking into adding solar as well. Doing some preliminary research, the wife found these http://www.dowsolar.com/ which I think would be a cool way to go when they become more widely available. Supposedly, they will be better at withstanding damage from wind, hail, etc. The wife likes that they blend in a bit better than the big panels mounted on your roof.

[ashauler]

Sarge ,we have about 5 families on solar power here and the excess is bought by our electric co op at wholesale rates. It was a big expense up front to the customer but out co op fully supports solar and wind generation. Look into it

Kevin, how does that work? The selling back part. How is the excess power metered?

[Roham]

Kevin, how does that work? The selling back part. How is the excess power metered?

What, you wanna get Kevin shit on too now??? lol just joking

[kevin7]

Kevin, how does that work? The selling back part. How is the excess power metered?

We have some special meters that read forward (normal) power flow and reverse(u selling to us) flow. We are about .10 a kWh retail and we pay people about .06 a kWh(wholesale) for the excess solar power they sell to us. Meters are read over the powerline and solar customers are paid every 3 months. Its not gonna make you rich or anything but it is pretty cool and if you have enough panels you can generate a pretty significant amount of power. We currently have a customer thinking about installing a wind turbine. We will buy his excess power too if he has any. The transformer that feeds a residential customer works both ways,put high voltage in it (ours is 12,470 phase to phase /7,200 phase to ground) and you get 120/240 volts out of it. Put 240 in it and you will get 7,200 volts out of it. If you hook up an emergency generator up in an outage without disconnecting from the grid it will put out deadly voltage and sufficient amps to kill anybody touching a downed power line,linemen die because of this every year.

[Paddy]

Going green has advantages to the forward looking person. Growing your own food, solar power for your house, providing your own means of transportation forgoing the oil companies, has definate financial advantages as well as making the earth more livable. The wife and I are making serious strides in becomming more non dependant on "the system". I don't see myself being able to get rid of my cars. That is not practical for me at this. I can cut back on gas consumption. I do grow a good part of my food and get quite a bit from a food co-op we belong to. A few of us are about to slaughter a cow that was free range fed.

My wife and I are looking at solar power seriously. I have a friend that uses it...So far without a flaw.

I with you there Ken, I only like grass fed beef. The first time I saw a steak here in the USA and saw the fat was pure white I was shocked. Only after some research I discovered that color comes from force-fed corn.