techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Johnnie wrote:
GE wants to sell wind turbines and solar systems, not light bulbs. The profit margine is way better on research intensive products that are complicated to make which limits everyone & their sister competing in the market.
With something like 100 million homes in the country and maybe over half of them free standing regular houses, the market for solar systems could be massive.
50 million homes and maybe $1,000 profit on each solar system is $50 billion of profit. The markup on light bulbs is nothing compared to that.
Add in commercial solar & wind systems for factories and office buildings & retail buildings and light bulb profit is nothing to even think about.
http://ge.ecomagination.com/site/index.htmlBTW, any idea on the cost-effectiveness of solar? My parents were really thinking about it until they saw that it would be $10,000 to put it in and that it would take a couple decades to pay for itself - that was of course maybe 3 or 4 years ago. For them to really have that market though they'll definitely want to invest their research into reducing the production costs of solar cells as much as they can - that seems to be everyone's biggest hangup with it.
They haven't managed to make them really cost effective yet, but as electricity prices rise and advances in production of the equipment lower the price people will invest in them. My neighbor 1 mile down the dirt road has no power service for his vacation home/nice cabin and has solar. No way could normal families live off the system he has which is too lame to run much more than a few lights and the pump for the well.
add up all the household energy bills, heat,hot water,cooking and all the electric used for lighting, washing cloths, cloths drier, air conditioning and in some parts of the country it adds up to a real lot of money, so they are getting real close to be cost effective.
a year ago I lived in CT. Electric bill was over $100 a month and is now probably pushing $150.00 with electric hot water and 350 gallons of heating oil a year. Near $3,000 a year in energy costs to run the house and it was just me living in the house.
I've reduced it to under $2,000 moving to vermont
So a system capable of running everything for a house even at $10,000 is feasable already and once the investment is made it sould be good for 20 years with little further exspense and it would be total protection from inflation and if electric cars ever become cost effective, no more gasoline bill which is probably pushing $1500 a year for average people.
06 Feb 2008, 12:03 pm
