Google has recently unveiled a project to help homeowners determine whether they should invest in PV rooftop solar to save money. Inadvertently, Project Sunroof is demonstrating that PV rooftop solar is uneconomic.
Project Sunroof is being rolled out across the United States, but is currently only available in a few cities.
The Project Sunroof website uses a few specific examples to demonstrate the viability of PV rooftop solar at those locations.
The book Nothing to Fear provides similar information by state, using a program supplied by an installer. Google’s evaluation’s are probably more accurate because the satellite images of rooftops used by Google can discern shading by trees or other obstacles.
Using the data from the Project Sunroof web site, paybacks, without subsidies, are 13, 17, 12 and 27 years respectively, to recover the initial investment in Redwood CA, Somerville MA, San Jose CA, and Cary North Carolina.
The payback periods calculated by Project Sunroof are longer than those shown in Nothing to Fear.
The installer program used in Nothing to Fear estimates 8-year and 12-year paybacks for Los Angeles CA, and Massachusetts, and 16 year payback for North Carolina, but these estimates don’t include the cost of labor to install the PV rooftop system.
An acceptable financial payback is usually less than 3 years. Any investment that requires more than 3 years is probably not a good investment. Payback periods of 6 years or more are bad investments.
In all 50 states, only PV rooftop installations in Hawaii could be acceptable investments with payback periods of 3 years, as calculated using the installer’s program in Nothing to Fear.
Google’s Project Sunroof is now the third method for calculating payback periods to demonstrate that PV rooftop solar installations are uneconomic.
The first method uses 0.75 kWh per square yard of solar panel, as used by the University of California, San Diego, and as shown in Nothing to Fear: The second, an installer’s program, also shown in Nothing to Fear: And third, Google’s Project Sunroof.
PV rooftop solar is a bad investment, and a bad use of taxpayer money.
Google’s Project Sunroof is now helping to confirm this.
Money wasted on a bad investment isn’t available for a good investment.
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Nothing to Fear explains why CO2 isn’t to be feared, that politicians are harming Americans by pushing the CO2 agenda, that mankind has benefited from using fossil fuels and can continue to do so, perhaps for 1,000 years.
The appendix itemizes payback periods for PV rooftop solar by state.
Nothing to Fear is available from Amazon and some independent book sellers.
Link to Amazon: http://amzn.to/1miBhXy
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