You know, marketing is sometimes ridiculous, and this one is no exception. I spotted this ad over on the Sierra Club website that was obviously targeted for “low information voters”. Why? Well if you’ve any basic 4th grade science you’ll recognize this photo used as part of the ad to suck people in to looking at some solar panel scheme:
It’s a D-cell wired up to a coil of wire to create a weak electromagnet.
Some trick.
That ad links to this page, which then goes on to tell you about another, totally unrelated, ‘brilliant trick’.
Right. What they don’t mention is that while you might save 70% on your electric bill, you’ll probably pay close to that (with some smaller savings left) to pay for the solar panels that company installed. You’ll swap one payment for another, but you surely won’t get the full 70% in savings.
‘Caveat Emptor’ – let the buyer beware.
If you want to see how some unsubsidised folks keep the energy flowing check out otherpower.com and notice how they use a variety of systems (wind, wood burning and solar). They are “miles from the nearest power line and ain’t moving to town” so they have to be creative. That they are. The way they keep their capital costs down is to build the stuff as much as possible from scratch. Turbine blades and generators are made so the installed cost is 1/10th purchasing commercially.
I ask again…what happened to the Rural Electrification Act?
I thought the power utilities were obligated under their PUC commission to put electric every where there is a where?
All that solar energy is going to be cooking up and heating and warming our houses!
It is obvious why all of the people Pushing the Solar Scam are rich and those buying it are poor.
Do some simple investment analysis.
The Musk Solar City/Powerwall propaganda is based upon 1200 sqft and is over $30,000 for that home. For 2400 sqft they want $50,000 (plus installation). If that cost is added when you build a house as an “option” that amount will be added to your home mortgage payments – for as long as you own the house. Using the calculator on Calculator.net for loan payment, you will pay $299.78 more each and every month to pay off that extra $50,000. It has to be added to your home loan as you do not get the rebate until you own the solar system and you get your income taxes back. In some cases that could be a year. Property tax must also be considered, they could add $50,000 – $100,000 to the value of your house (in most states) increasing your taxes by about $300 to $500 per month. Don’t forget insurance, Or are you going to just buy a new one? Your Home insurance will be based upon the Appraised value and will be $50,000 or more than your neighbor who does not have a Solar panel. Some insurance companies will then add a premium for this high risk attachment and “replacement cost” increases added to that. another $100 to $200 per year. Don’t forget Maintenance That will be at leas as much as you pay for your furnace/AC, about $250 a year average.
So add up your “hidden” costs (annual): Mortage + $3600, Taxes + $200 Insurance + $100 maintenance +250 —- Total = $4,150 or more a year which is $350 a month to save $200 a month in electricity costs. (and many of these hidden costs will go up at about the same rate as the cost of electricity and then again when you replace the old broken unit.)
And yes I know if you buy and build and install your own, you might do better. But you rarely ever reach the REAL break even point. I know, I have one it does not work out when all hidden costs are added. The only reason I am “saving” money is because I know where to get the parts @ur momisugly wholesale, and do all of the maintenance and repair my self.
Better yet, if you had invested that money, then using the rule of 72 for future value of an investment $50,000 would be over $200,000 in 30 years at 5%, (a doubling about every 14 years). and quadruple that amount if you invested all of the hidden costs each and every month to the investment. So you gave up a $1,000,000 ++ retirement nest egg for imaginary savings on your electric bill.
OK, Abe. Now explain chick magnets to us pocket-protector wearing guys ;o)
Well, maybe if a wire a giant inductor in parallel with my solar panels, I can capture me some of that “free energy” 24x7x365. Oh, that and, I just need to go convince 10 suckers … I mean, friends, to go sell cheap substandard household goods … then I can GO DIRECT!!!! / sarc
You stumbled onto an inconvenient truth. A colleague was responsible for “riding the fences” for a power company, looking for farmers who strung fence wire on big insulators (not the electric fence kind) parallel to their power lines. He came across one who had sucked out enough of the electric field to light his hog barn.
This is just an urban legend.
The fact that there are two wires on power lines that carry current in opposite directions means that mag fields from the two lines almost exactly cancel out.
The magnetic field drops off at the 4th power from the center line between the two power lines.
If this were true, you wouldn’t need to string a new line, just use the barbed wire on your already existing fence.
@MarkW I will gladly buy you an insurance policy, payable to me, for $100,000, If you will agree to grab hold of the wire I string beneath a high tension line, the power lines hanging on large insulators (about 2 feet long) on poles more than 30 feet high.
Still doubt it? Then look at the lineman’s safety book. You will see that the wires they are working on are grounded at both ends, and several places in between the breakers supposedly removing power from the wire. Then look closely at the Cyclone fence surrounding any power substation near you. You will see Heavy braded copper wire grounding every fence pool, every piece of fence spread between the poles, and often a ground cable wove in the fence near the top of the fence.
It is not a myth.
@MarkW – Read this. https://electricalnotes.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/effects-of-high-voltage-transmission-lines-on-humans-and-plants/
5) EMF Effects on Pipe Line/Fence/Cables:
◾A fence, irrigation pipe, pipeline, electrical distribution line forms a conducting loops when it is grounded at both ends. The earth forms the other portion of the loop. The magnetic field from a transmission line can induce a current to flow in such a loop if it is oriented parallel to the line. If only one end of the fence is grounded, then an induced voltage appears across the open end of the loop. The possibility for a shock exists if a person closes the loop at the open end by contacting both the ground and the conductor.
◾For fences, buried cables, and pipe lines proper care has been taken to prevent them from charging due to Electrostatic field. When using pipelines which are more than 3 km in length & 15 cm in Diameter they must be buried at least 30 laterally from the line center.
@MarkW Even better – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxzSZ78cM-4
Scams use partial truths (lies) and outright falsehoods (damn lies) to deceive and defraud. The lies used to promote AGW, similar to those used for solar-power schemes, are world-class scams. I will get my solar-power system on my roof when I benefit, not when there’s profit in it only for manufacturers, contractors, utility company, and government. Similarly, I will concede carbon taxes when hell freezes over.
In order to partner up with Big Green and their government-and-ratepayer-funded schemes, it helps not to have moral scruples.
VW did well with it too.
Renewable energy tax credits make the advocacy world go round (and off the rails).
I made a circuit that looked a lot like that in the mid eighties to get free HBO. It had a homemade coil around a nail, and a capacitor and it filtered out their jamming of those channels and cost about a buck in materials.
Actually, they used to make a similar electro-magnet that did indeed save 70% on your electric bills. On the old ‘rotating disk’ electric meters, it was possible to stop the disk rotating, and therefore stop the meter counting.
Would never have dreamed of doing such a thing myself….. 😉
Speaking of saving batteries, here’s a real sciency sounding site that might be worthy of the Sierra Club or the Union of Concerned Scientist. Click on the 9 volt battery icon 2nd down on the left.
(The others are worthy of SC and UCS also.)
http://www.marksinfinitesolutions.com/
PS This guy means all this as humor. (That was for all the trolls.)
“Astonishing/brilliant/secret/[fill in your fav] tirck” is a fad with slick marketers.
Like telemarketers and spammers, they aren’t bright sparks.
These things are up all over my neighborhood. Every year or two I check into the cost of installing some of these. Every year it is the same. Without subsidies, the system pays for itself in about 60 years.
Sounds like a clickbait ad.
I am willing to have a solar energy system installed on my roof as long as:
I do not have to pay for it.
After it is installed I own it free and clear.
It will provide my home with power off grid if need be.
Someone else will maintain and repair it for free and upgrade it to the newest technology when it comes along for free as well.
If I at any time do not like it any more it will be removed for free.
Any damage to my home as a result of such a system will be paid for by the installer.
I like the idea of solar power but I cannot afford to pay anything for it.
Actually I am willing to pay for anything if it is free.
Unfortunately anything that is sold as free (like solar subsidies) usually isn’t.
Solar panels also have to be cleaned regularly due to bird droppings and other stuff that collects there. Direct solar power is a loser from the start. Nature provides the solution directly – fossil fuels, which are essentially stored solar energy. Except for the abiotic sources of gas and oil.
West Oz tried to default on their FIT, which was set at a crazy level. Very difficult for a govt to get out of its insane arrangements though.
If you put a $10,000 solar system on your roof, your local government will raise your property value which raises your taxes more than what you would save on your electric bill making a solar system a never ending loss.Here in Illinois, a 10K solar system would raise my taxes approx. $500 per year. I don’t have money to throw away.
I saw on an old episode of “I’ve Got A Secret” recently an engineer who had created an electromagnet that could support 250 lbs that ran off a one D cell battery. Is that not really possible?
I get a great kick out of the idiots buying meter shields to put over their new digital electric meters to “protect their families from utility radiation”, the disguise nonsense for trying to cheat their utility out of reading the meter by the networking between the meters.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=electric+meter+shields
My neighbor had one on his electric meter about 12 feet from my 2 kilowatt ham radio antenna. I didn’t point that out to him or my pinned irony meter. We had it out a couple of years ago when the RF from my licensed FCC transmitter got into the tractor-trailer jumper cables hooking his stereo to its speakers, which made a great antenna for my signal and a horrible noise in his stereo.
The power company let it slide the first month but when they came the second month they removed their electric meter from under his meter basket, leaving him in the dark. It’s illegal, you know, to tamper with your power meter, right there in your signed agreement to get electric power in the first place. They took their time putting the meter back after he paid the steep reconnect fee….(c;]
It’s similar to what British Gas do here:
They service the old back boiler then they are required by BG to tell me about a new central heating system.
“You will save £300 per year with a new system” (true, the old one is 60% efficient, the new ones are 95% efficient)
BUT – a decent new system will cost around £3000 – so that’s TEN years before you see those “savings”.
And I was warned, off-the-record, that the new systems are more prone to failure – valves and computer circuit board failing. The Baxi back boiler pretty-much never goes wrong.
End result?
Just becasue it’s new and/or “green” does NOT make it worthwhile.