Solar with Batteries vs. Generator: A Cost-Benefit Analysis

In the realm of backup power solutions, homeowners and businesses often find themselves choosing between traditional generators and modern solar systems with battery backup. While both options provide energy security during outages, their long-term costs and benefits differ significantly. In this case we are looking at a larger, whole-home sized generator and comparing it to a solar system that produces as much or more power. See table below for comparison of costs, savings and benefits.

Update to Sustainability WikiBook (Using the power of Generative AI)

It's been a while since the Perpetual Sustainability(tm) wikibook has been updated. The idea behind the book was that people could link through on each sustainability-related topic and find up-to-date information on the topic as only Wikipedia can provide -- the genius of crowdsourcing. We let ChatGPT 4.0 work on an update (and the graphic). What do you think?

YOU Q: Please generate an outline improved from the one attached that includes hyperlinks to each topic. Where appropriate include links to quality Wikipedia articles. Also, please utilize the WikiBook outline with Wikipedia hyper links by Hall from: https://www.sustainzine.com/p/sust-wikibook-links.html

EV v ICE, What's the Price?

 Every couple months something pops into my news feed or email about how bad or expensive Electric Vehicles (EVs) are compared to the olde Internal Combustion Engine (ICE machines).  (See cartoon from Yale Climate Connection Don't be fooled: Electric vehicles really are better for the climate.)

One that popped up was from a very biased web site (can't call it a magazine or journal). The cost for EVs to operate were $17 per gallon, equivalent. It relied on an actual study, and then changed out all the facts.

Solar Investment is Crazy Profitable for Businesses and Good for Homeowners

[Update. The Inflation Reduction Act 2022 has raised and extended the 30% investment tax credit to qualified investments. There are many limitations and additions. See our Blog post here. This makes all the financial discussions below much more profitable. Also, higher inflation and higher power inflation. The below Article was originally published in Summer of 2020.]

 

SBP has done several detailed financial calculators for analyzing both residential and commercials solar projects. SustainZine has a main web page on Solar Profitability where we discuss examples from our Solar Profitability Calculators: https://www.sustainzine.com/p/solarinvest.html ... Here are articles – and YouTube videos – discussing both:

1. Quick Take on  Residential Solar: Solar Invest 2020: Do Good and Save Money Too … See the video related to Residential here: Solar Residential: Good Investment & Doing Good
2. Full Financial Analysis: SolarInvest2020: Residential Solar is Good, but Commercial Solar can be Crazy Profitable! … See the video related to Commercial/Business here: Solar for a Business can be Crazy Profitable: Do Good by Doing Well

YouTube Video on Residential: Solar Residential: Good Investment & Doing Good https://youtu.be/p0pqg4ZeTjY

Dr Elmer Hall talks about the doing good and making money at residential Solar. He discusses that subtilties of the financial analysis for a homeowner, and why it typically is a far better decision than a typical profit analysis would suggest. #SustainZine #Solar #RenewableEnergy #SBPLan

YouTube Video on Commercial Business: Solar for a Business can be Crazy Profitable: Do Good by Doing Well https://youtu.be/ulryBkhsKWg

Dr Elmer Hall talks about the doing good and making money by a business installing Solar. He discusses the financial analysis for a business and why it probably is such a great investment. The investment for businesses has huge tax savings. Plus, the money to pay for power to operate the business is already committed if the building is used. This is Part 2: See part 1 related to Residential as well. #SustainZine #Solar #RenewableEnergy #SBPLan #Profitability #CrazyProfitable 

Earth Day 2020, 50 years of Hind sight

It is the 50th Earth Day and the world is generally locked down while we deal with the Coronavirus pandemic -- and how best to ramp back up the world economy.

50th Earth Day. April 22 2020

The pandemic is a serious and sobering aspect to the fun and excitement to an otherwise interesting and informative day of rallies, speeches waterway cleanups and more...

Worldwide we are going on 3M positive COVID19 cases and nearing 200,000 deaths. The US, never to be outdone in anything that seems competitive, has 32% of the cases and more than 25% of the deaths. Deaths in New York and New Jersey just passed 15,000 and 5,000 respectively. New England deaths exceed all other countries. It is hard to imagine this given that the virus had to cross the Pacific (to the west coast) or travel to Europe and then cross the pond to New England. The US has only 4.2% of the world's population, yet 25% of the worlds deaths, and rising. How can that be?

COVID19 Positive Cases and Deaths

As of April 22, 2020

Cases  %/World World 2,621,436 100.0%  deaths 182,989 7.0% 7.0%   %/World US 837,719 32.0%  deaths 46,771 25.6% Deaths% 5.6%

COVID has had a big toll on health and live and a wicked toll on the world's economies. There some linings, and some of them silver, from this pandemic – currently and on the other side of it. Let’s think of a couple while we address what the other side of COVID might look like. First, if you think that we will ever get back to “normal”, you probably haven’t thought it through a lot.

Pollution. The massive slowdown in the world economy has allowed the earth to take a breather. There are wonderful satellite views of China, Europe and the US, before and after pictures. Business as usual shows clouds of pollution followed by a few weeks of complete economic shutdown, and pristine-looking skies. Wow! There are similar pictures everywhere. Denver. LA, New York. The clear canals of Venice with fish and dolphin. 

Pollution contributes to hundreds of millions of ailments every year, and to millions and millions of deaths. Let's say 6 to 10 million people die each year because of air pollution. (See for example, this Forbes article in 2018.) Note that the infographic shows about 2.1M in the USA. Maybe the slowdown in the first quarter of 2020 will result in 1M people saved related to air pollution? 

Once people get a taste of clean air, they tend not to want to return to smog and pollution.

A Whole New Economy. The world economy will never be the same. For several reasons. First, what we came to think of as "normal" was never normal. We have undertaken to consume all the world's fossil fuels in a few short centuries. We are fully beginning to realize the full costs of non-sustainable systems, the business-as-usual economy was never normal.

Earth Overshoot day is a concept that is especially relevant to the first Earth Day in 1970. The resources we took and consumed from the earth -- although maybe not sustainable and renewable -- were fully supplied by the 1 planet we inhabit. That is, the 3.7B world population in 1970, staying with the same consumption patters, could live on the earth without depleting her resources. Think of this earth carrying capacity like you do a annual budget, it would be nice if the annual income lasted all year. But the population has more than doubled to 7.7B, and overall consumption has nearly doubled. Right now, the carrying capacity of Earth is exhausted about the end of July, only 57% of the way through the year! That's 43% deficit spending for the rest of the year. To consume 43% more than the earth's annual carrying capacity, we deplete resources like trees, fish and more.
But, in 2020, the earth has gotten a bit of a breather. Overshoot day will improve dramatically!
The economy will change. There will never be a "new normal". People have gotten a taste of teleworking. It's going to be hard to force people back into the offices that require an hour commute each way. Travel will take some time to come back, and business travel will never be the same. Stadium events will take some time to come back. Students have fully embraced online learning, and they will never fully go back.
Consumption of fossil fuels are down at least 30% during the closed economy, but consumption may only bounce back half when the economy slowly starts to churn back.
This might be the jump start that we all needed to step up a move toward sustainability. Assuming a 15% jump back, we would need to reduce our carbon footprint by 3% each and every year to have a 40% (overall) reduction by 2030, a 66% reduction by 2040, and near zero by 2050. Good news, we can easily move to 100% renewables by that time. (See Stanford Roadmap to 100% Renewable Energy by 2050 by country and also by major city.) And we can profitably move to 100% renewables if we include the health and death costs of fossil fuels.
Hind sight is 2020. Every year since the turn of century as been in the hottest 20 some years, with many years breaking all time records. In fact, many months have hit monthly record highs, especially since 2015 (an El Nino year). January 2020 was hottest on record, and the oceans have never been hotter. Remember that carbon dioxide (CO2) persists in the environment for about 100 years from the time we introduce it by burning fossil fuels. As CO2 zooms from about 320ppm a hundred years ago to 415ppm now, the green house gasses will result in atmospheric heating for a century!
Our linear economy was never "normal", for this reason, and many others no one should consider using the term "new normal" on the other side of the COVID recession. Hopefully, with 2020, we will have a new respect for science and scientists.
Let's leverage this tragedy of COVID to make a real difference in our trajectory of the future.
May every day be an Earth Day.

Time to DrawDown and Look at All the Sky, not just Half

In the US, we often characterize women hitting the Glass Ceiling where men are in the highest positions of companies – executives and board rooms. Interestingly, men don’t see much of a glass ceiling, maybe because they are usually upstairs and not looking down. Old white men may be complicit and complacent in women knocking at the other side of the glass, but world-wide the imperative to give women respect and opportunity is critical, with profound implications for the world population and sustainable economic development. It’s a human and a humanity issue for everyone everywhere.

Let’s talk about Drawdown and Half the Sky (Wikipedia contributors, 2018). Both are bestselling books and global initiatives.

Everyone should be familiar with each of these.

Half the Sky is a bestselling book by Kristof and WuDunn (2009), a movie, and an activist movement. See Half the Sky movement: http://www.halftheskymovement.org/

Women are not allowed to do many things in many countries. The limitations on women in many cases mean that only half of the human resources in a country/area are utilized. It's a lot like seeing only half of the sky!

Women are often not encouraged to go to school. In many cultures girls are expected to drop out of school very early, say age 11 to 13, so they can get married and/or work. (Or worse, funneled into sex slavery.) Encouraging women to stay in school longer solve many problems simultaneously. At an older age, with education, they are better able to do family planning and more productive work. This is key to population control. Educating women is key to reaching a global population of 9B or less, instead of 11B or more.

In terms of economic development, a better use of women resources is a critical asset to the work economy. In fact, women are absolutely critical to sustainability efforts: lower population, higher GDP, higher per capita GDP, and reduced environmental impacts on the planet.

There's an effort call DrawDown (www.DrawDown.org) that looks for the best initiatives, using the current technology that will make the biggest difference in CO2 emissions and global warming. Groups use the best, peer-reviewed, information available to analyze each initiative. Initiatives are evaluated on the emissions savings as well as the actual cost saving on a world-wide bases. When taken together, two women's initiatives, ranked #6 and #7, would move up to #1 position. The two categories are: educating women and family planning.

Note that the three women/girl initiatives are ranked 6, 7 and 62; however, combined, they represent arguably the best single initative to address in terms of impact on global warming reduction. And, oh, by the way, they will contribute massively to world GDP and assist dramatically with cost savings compared to business as usual.

The book Drawdown and the web site Drawdown.org are edited by Paul Hawken (2017).

The first table shows the summary by sector the top 80 Drawdown initiatives. These initiatives are all things that we should do, no matter how aggressively you think our action toward Global Warming might be. It would be simply irresponsible not to address these issues. Note that an initiative related to utilities is ranked 77 but has 3 parts; therefore, there the top 80 lists is actually 82 items (see the Top 80 list below).

We need to be more proactively regarding women and girl’s rights; or, we could continue to see only half the sky.

DrawDown Initiatives for Reducing Greenhouse Emissions (CO2e)
(Including Net Costs to Implement and Projected Savings)
Summary by Sectors of the top 80 Initiatives
Sector	Initatives	CO2e GT Reduction	Net Costs (US$B)	Savings (US$B)
Buildings and Cities	15	55	4,927	17,906
Electricity Generation	20	246	4,896	21,447
Food	17	322	777	10,017
Land Use	9	150	131	1,199
Materials	7	112	1,125	1,040
Transport	11	46	17,753	22,666
Women and Girls	3	121	-	88
TOTAL	82	1,051	29,609	74,362
Source: Paul Hawken (Ed.), 2017, retrieved from www.DrawDown.org.
* Note. Energy Storage and Grid are ranked 77, but represent 3 options, so 82 entries are in this list.

See the top 80 table below.

References

Kristof, N., & WuDunn, S. (2009). Half the sky: Turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

Hawken, P. (2017). Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan every proposed to reverse global warming. (P. Hawken, Ed.). New York, NY: Penguin Books.

Wikipedia contributors. (2018, April 9). Half the Sky. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15:55, April 10, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Half_the_Sky&oldid=835610476

DrawDown Initiatives for Reducing Greenhouse Emissions (CO2e)
(Including Net Costs to Implement and Projected Savings)
			Total CO2e (GT)
			Atmospheric	Net Costs	Savings
Rank	Solution	Sector	reduction	US $B	US $B
1	Refrigerant Management	Materials	89.74	N/A	($902.77)
2	Wind Turbines (Onshore)	Electricity Generation	84.6	$1,225.37	$7,425.00
3	Reduced Food Waste	Food	70.53	N/A	N/A
4	Plant-Rich Diet	Food	66.11	N/A	N/A
5	Tropical Forests	Land Use	61.23	N/A	N/A
6	Educating Girls	Women and Girls	59.6	N/A	N/A
7	Family Planning	Women and Girls	59.6	N/A	N/A
8	Solar Farms	Electricity Generation	36.9	($80.60)	$5,023.84
9	Silvopasture	Food	31.19	$41.59	$699.37
10	Rooftop Solar	Electricity Generation	24.6	$453.14	$3,457.63
11	Regenerative Agriculture	Food	23.15	$57.22	$1,928.10
12	Temperate Forests	Land Use	22.61	N/A	N/A
13	Peatlands	Land Use	21.57	N/A	N/A
14	Tropical Staple Trees	Food	20.19	$120.07	$626.97
15	Afforestation	Land Use	18.06	$29.44	$392.33
16	Conservation Agriculture	Food	17.35	$37.53	$2,119.07
17	Tree Intercropping	Food	17.2	$146.99	$22.10
18	Geothermal	Electricity Generation	16.6	($155.48)	$1,024.34
19	Managed Grazing	Food	16.34	$50.48	$735.27
20	Nuclear	Electricity Generation	16.09	$0.88	$1,713.40
21	Clean Cookstoves	Food	15.81	$72.16	$166.28
22	Wind Turbines (Offshore)	Electricity Generation	14.1	$545.30	$762.50
23	Farmland Restoration	Food	14.08	$72.24	$1,342.47
24	Improved Rice Cultivation	Food	11.34	N/A	$519.06
25	Concentrated Solar	Electricity Generation	10.9	$1,319.70	$413.85
26	Electric Vehicles	Transport	10.8	$14,148.00	$9,726.40
27	District Heating	Buildings and Cities	9.38	$457.10	$3,543.50
28	Multistrata Agroforestry	Food	9.28	$26.76	$709.75
29	Wave and Tidal	Electricity Generation	9.2	$411.84	($1,004.70)
30	Methane Digesters (Large)	Electricity Generation	8.4	$201.41	$148.83
31	Insulation	Buildings and Cities	8.27	$3,655.92	$2,513.33
32	Ships	Transport	7.87	$915.93	$424.38
33	LED Lighting (Household)	Buildings and Cities	7.81	$323.52	$1,729.54
34	Biomass	Electricity Generation	7.5	$402.31	$519.35
35	Bamboo	Land Use	7.22	$23.79	$264.80
36	Alternative Cement	Materials	6.69	($273.90)	N/A
37	Mass Transit	Transport	6.57	N/A	$2,379.73
38	Forest Protection	Land Use	6.2	N/A	N/A
39	Indigenous Peoples’ Land Management	Land Use	6.19	N/A	N/A
40	Trucks	Transport	6.18	$543.54	$2,781.63
41	Solar Water	Electricity Generation	6.08	$2.99	$773.65
42	Heat Pumps	Buildings and Cities	5.2	$118.71	$1,546.66
43	Airplanes	Transport	5.05	$662.42	$3,187.80
44	LED Lighting (Commercial)	Buildings and Cities	5.04	($205.05)	$1,089.63
45	Building Automation	Buildings and Cities	4.62	$68.12	$880.55
46	Water Saving - Home	Materials	4.61	$72.44	$1,800.12
47	Bioplastic	Materials	4.3	$19.15	N/A
48	In-Stream Hydro	Electricity Generation	4	$202.53	$568.36
49	Cars	Transport	4	($598.69)	$1,761.72
50	Cogeneration	Electricity Generation	3.97	$279.25	$566.93
51	Perennial Biomass	Land Use	3.33	$77.94	$541.89
52	Coastal Wetlands	Land Use	3.19	N/A	N/A
53	System of Rice Intensification	Food	3.13	N/A	$677.83
54	Walkable Cities	Buildings and Cities	2.92	N/A	$3,278.24
55	Household Recycling	Materials	2.77	$366.92	$71.13
56	Industrial Recycling	Materials	2.77	$366.92	$71.13
57	Smart Thermostats	Buildings and Cities	2.62	$74.16	$640.10
58	Landfill Methane	Buildings and Cities	2.5	($1.82)	$67.57
59	Bike Infrastructure	Buildings and Cities	2.31	($2,026.97)	$400.47
60	Composting	Food	2.28	($63.72)	($60.82)
61	Smart Glass	Buildings and Cities	2.19	$932.30	$325.10
62	Women Smallholders	Women and Girls	2.06	N/A	$87.60
63	Telepresence	Transport	1.99	$127.72	$1,310.59
64	Methane Digesters (Small)	Electricity Generation	1.9	$15.50	$13.90
65	Nutrient Management	Food	1.81	N/A	$102.32
66	High-speed Rail	Transport	1.52	$1,038.42	$368.10
67	Farmland Irrigation	Food	1.33	$216.16	$429.67
68	Waste-to-Energy	Electricity Generation	1.1	$36.00	$19.82
69	Electric Bikes	Transport	0.96	$106.75	$226.07
70	Recycled Paper	Materials	0.9	$573.48	N/A
71	Water Distribution	Buildings and Cities	0.87	$137.37	$903.11
72	Biochar	Food	0.81	N/A	N/A
73	Green Roofs	Buildings and Cities	0.77	$1,393.29	$988.46
74	Trains	Transport	0.52	$808.64	$313.86
75	Ridesharing	Transport	0.32	N/A	$185.56
76	Micro Wind	Electricity Generation	0.2	$36.12	$19.90
77	Energy Storage (Distributed)*	Electricity Generation	N/A	N/A	N/A
77	Energy Storage (Utilities)*	Electricity Generation	N/A	N/A	N/A
77	Grid Flexibility*	Electricity Generation	N/A	N/A	N/A
78	Microgrids	Electricity Generation	N/A	N/A	N/A
79	Net Zero Buildings	Buildings and Cities	N/A	N/A	N/A
80	Retrofitting	Buildings and Cities	N/A	N/A	N/A
		Sum of top initiatives	1,050.99	29,609.30	74,362.37
Source: Paul Hawken (Ed.), 2017, retrieved from www.DrawDown.org.
* Note. Energy Storage and Grid are ranked 77, but represent 3 options, so 82 entries are in this list.