Flux is correct but the biggest one you can lay your hands on!!

The most effective way to reduce your energy bills is to build your new house with the correct orientation. So invest a little more and hire an architect next time and they will also take care of everything else to ensure your house is green

I notice no mention of the cost of building the power plant. According to this site http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/WebHomeCostOfNuclearPower Current nuclear plants are costing around US$3500 per KW to build despite optimistic forecasts, which means the solar setup isn't actually doing to badly for the government on these 4KW systems, especially if you factor in the amount of power lost during transmission over the grid. (and how much does the grid cost to maintain?) Anyhoo, this argument could go on and on.

not arguing guys...just friendly exchange of knowledge, facts & ideas. pweedas...our feed-in rate is 60c per kw/h, and with a 1.4kw system (and it's a hybrid-crystalline, not mono-crystalline, as I first mentioned), we produce (on avg, taken from a local builder, who installed his system over a year ago) - 6kwh per day, and even on those black/stormy days - (very uncommon for Vic. though) our panels make about 1-2kwh! ...so that's a payback of - $1,315 per yr the total cost of system from our pocket (which is the main factor here) - $7,500 Paid for in 5.7yrs! As I mentioned earlier, add interest if borrowing, and it's not as attractive. The panels have a 25yr warranty, and the inverter has a 5yr warranty (extendable to 12yr)...we're hoping it doesn't get "snotted" in 5.1yrs! As for Nuclear power, if it comes, Portland has been pencilled in as one of the first in Vic, due to the large amount of power Alcoa drags from the grid, and it would be welcomed by most - I don't know much about fusion, so sitting on fence on that one, but more than happy to support it if it's as good as you/they say. I hope it's not like all the wind farms that are around here...great for small-scale electricity production, but if we're looking at the cost - manufacturing & maintenance is huge. As for a good feeling, yeah, it does make me feel good that I don't get a power bill anymore, even if it takes over 5 years to break even...electricity will go up, so I'm confident that the $7.5k investment was worth it ...if it all turns to sh!t, so be it...it won't cost any more than what I've outlayed, besides, it's only money and that's not a concern to me, as long as the wind keeps blowing.

next bill 21/11/09-22/01/10 add $56.85CR for a running total of $120.65CR this was helped by the biggest output from us being 350units @29.06c per unit next month will have a stinking hot feb when 2 daughters were home and living under the aircon.. when we did our monthly readings we found that this was the first month that our input had exceeded output( by 19 units) we checked with synergy and they reckon if you stay over $100.00 credit for 3 months the computer will send a cheque, but you can also request payment if over $100.00

Isn't the main factor whether or not we (society) are getting a good deal? The fact that your payback is 5.7 years is pretty irrelevant isn't if the taxpayer is wearing another 20 years of the payback (which may have been better of spent investing in other decentralised methods of power generation). Note: I made the 20 years bit up - I have no idea what the subsidy was and maybe taking that into account it's only a 5.8 yr payback. I just think it's a bit of a misguided view that as long as you are getting a decent payback everything is alright.

dirty harry, yeah I guess you're right re; taxpayer's dollars, but in the scheme of things, we pay for so much now with our tax dollars, this is a way that I can re-coup some of that coin...and at least it's going toward a god cause (not just talking about reducing my solar bill either), reducing fossil fuel usage, research into green energy etc. which IMO is better than the billions of dollars that are wasted on other expenses the government see fit to use our taxes for.

our WA power stations may be selling it for 2c , which would help to explain why Griffin went bust. I think of it this way. the infrastructure to supply Kalgoorlie. and probably WA is already unable to do so. . building more giant power stations isnt working environmentally. so why do we keep doing it?. The figure Ive been told is that a 1km2 solar farm here in Kal could mean that for part of each day we could be sending power back down the 700km line to Muja, and it would fit on the rooftops of the houses! Yet we dont do it because the state is too busy thinking till the next election , rather than the next century .A couple of christmases ago the Govt gave every body a handout to the tune of $8.4B? to help boost the economy. imagine if that had been used to reopen a solar panel factory to produce parts that then get stuck on suitable roofs all over the country. apart from making people more aware of the power they consume, it might have even saved even more billions on building more power stations

Nuclear huh ? Is uranium not also a finite resource (like coal or oil) ?? Wind power would actually seem to be the more sensible for a sustainable future, as the solar panles are also made from a finite resource and cost a sh!t load to produce, as well as create a whole lot of pollution in the process.

Yes, Uranium is a finite resource and there is not a lot of it. However, even with the known reserves and the old 3rd generation reactors it is sufficient to give us 30 to 50 years of power. There is probably a huge ammount of undiscovered reserves because since the market has been choked off by bad press and protest, almost nobody bothers to look for it. Fortunately, due to an inate desire to blow our planet to smithereens back in the 1950s to 1990, we now have a ready made highly refined source of uranium in the form of the ICBM warheads which are now being recycled into uranium to run power stations. It seem that holding sufficient nuclear bombs to blow the world apart 100 times over has finally been recognised as a slight overkill and a large proportion of the misile warheads are now destined to be recycled for peaceful purposes. I can't remember how long this will power the present reactors but I think it might be around 30 years. That's just if we stick with the present nuclear reactor technology. There is a 4th generation design which they say can use the spent fuel from the 3rd gen. reactors and with this technology the reactors can get about 10 times the power from the same amount of uranium. It was also said that with this technology there is enough uranium already mined and in stock to provide the world power requirements for most of this century. This should be more than enough time to get fusion reactors up and running. If not, they can start mining it again and give us another 200 years. The problem has been that with all the bad press and protests regarding the use of nuclear fuel for any purpose at all, the technology development was choked off soon after birth so we are still fuddling around with technology which is now 20 to 30 years behind where it should be by now. The decision to go down this path of power generation by good old safe, clean and secure coal and oil fired power stations has now turned around and is biting us in the bum. If the politicians had thought ahead further than the next election it should have been obvious that it one day would, but I guess they were happy so long as it didn't come home to roost on their watch. They were right it didn't. However, that particular chicken has now come home to roost and is circling overhead with a 30 year case of chronic constipation, just looking for somewhere to dump it. So what are we doing about it? We are running around looking for umbrellas in the form of a few megawatts of wind power or solar power or wave power when the need is for gigawatts. Wind, solar and wave are just not going to cut the mustard. We either turn off the 3000 watt aircons, 500 watt plasma tvs, 300 watt computers, (hang on, i'll just finnish this first. ) or we initiate a changeover to a power source which can reliably provide that sort of energy output without gassing the planet with its exhaust. And at the moment that has to be nuclear fission reactors because that's all we've got. In the future it will be clean, pollution free nuclear fusion reactors which we do not yet have because no one will put up the cash for developement. That is very short sighted.

In the mean time, go solar and get the Gov green loan if you qualify of course, I just got a new job and will be doing it. GT