The Green Jobs Czar may be gone—asshole—but the taxpayer-supported environmental boondoggles continue unabated. Here’s one for pistonheads patrons, via physorg.com. The website somehow forgets to mention a $100,000 federal grant to the smiling man above. Or the fact that 5 billion panels times $6,900 is . . . a lot of money. Even for Uncle Sam. Hang on; does that include installation?
The 12- x 12-foot panels, which each cost $6,900, are designed to be embedded into roads. When shined upon, each panel generates an estimated 7.6 kilowatt hours of power each day. If this electricity could be pumped into the grid, the company predicts that a four-lane, one-mile stretch of road with panels could generate enough power for 500 homes. Although it would be expensive, covering the entire US interstate highway system with the panels could theoretically fulfill the country’s total energy needs. The company estimates that this would take 5 billion panels, but could “produce three times more power than we’ve ever used as a nation – almost enough to power the entire world.”
I don’t want to set a bad tone, because I’d be interested to hear the science/construction of such a system, but this seems like a friggin’ racket! Yeah I know $100K can’t break the already broken bank, but what ever happened to private venture capital? Oh I forgot, profit is evil.
Interesting concept. I’d like to see it tried small scale with a sidewalk or bike path in a park.
I’m sure there’s plenty of surfaces not covered by solar panels that don’t have giant semis rumbling on them at 70 mph or could be covered by traffic 95% of daylight hours (405, I’m looking at you).
Try something that’ll be more accessible to fix when one of these things breaks. Like a high school parking lot (just the aisles)
I’d prefer small scale experiments with solar panels ABOVE parking lots, providing both electricity and shade. Business peak demand for electricity occurs during the day and covered parking is a valuable amenity for employees and customers. Yes the interstate highway system has a lot of surface area, but much of it is in rural areas a long distance from where the electricity is needed.
Sure. Wonder how they stand up to snow plows and salt?
Right on, Bob!
WInd has made tremendous progress recently and is closer to being ocmpetitive, but SOlar has a HUGE way to go, it is WAY too expensive and good only for small scale home energy gen, not huge power plants,and even then it is way too expensive..
To be feasible, SOlar FIRST needs a few major league breakthrus in cost-tech, to make it even remotely competitive with all other energy gen, alt and conventional.
Really interesting video. I’m sure it’s not a new idea, but if we can make it work now it would be pretty amazing. It sounds like the current sticking point is making a glass surface that meets all the specs. I hope our friends in Washington are paying attention to this as it develops, even if the payoff is years into the future.
If this works, how ironic would it be that the US interstate system of roads is the greatest civil engineering project in human history, used by cars burning fossil fuels that nearly destroyed life on Earth, until we put solar panels in the same roads and actually started exporting our excess energy?
“each panel generates an estimated 7.6 kilowatt hours of power [sic] each day”
Maybe in the Mojave Desert in summer, when they are clean and new. Each night they will generate 0.0 kWh of energy. What are you going to do then? How much will that cost?
We can’t even keep the asphalt on our highways in good repair. How are they going to keep these things in repair?
This is just vapor designed to gull money from the suckers and political support from the fan-boys.
Solar’s problem is its tremendous COST. It is so much more expensive than even WIND or HYDRO, new Tech Breakthrus are needed to make an already technically feasible option also an economically competitive one!
This picture sums up the benefits of solar pretty nicely
I have no idea if these solar panels will ever ‘see the light of day’ in the real world, but will comment on the snarky tone in the headline…
If we DON’T come up with some solutions to our energy problems, we’re all majorly screwed…so maybe solar panels in the road is crazy, and probably not a valid solution…but it is exactly this kind of outside the box the thinking that is required to break our stranglehold addiction to oil that is threatening our planet, and future generations’ survival.
A $100K grant is a pittance, friggin’ pocket change, compared to the untold BILLIONS in tax breaks, and in warfare costs ‘we the people’ have already gifted to Big Oil in order to keep our junkie’s habit fed. Talk about a ‘taxpayer supported boondoggle’, indeed.
I have no problem using tax dollars to improve the viability of renewable resources. After all, we used a lot of tax dollars subsidizing depreciation of Hummers for years. However, what is with the insistence of going for the most complex, poorest payback options first? I have been involved with the PlaNYC energy initiative that is being promoted by Mayor Bloomberg. I fully support the concept of efficiency being pushed front and center – its about time – but what’s with the political agenda being more important than actual payback? Case in point: Solar collectors on the roofs of City buildings. Horrible payback period, often more than 20 years. Yet, those same dollars could be spent on other energy programs that have paybacks of a few years. But a lighting control system does not have the political impact of saying there are PV collectors on the roof of, say, City Hall. As long as there are people with “agendas” there will be bad decisions made. America is loaded with easy places to save energy, as we waste so much. Seems to me the easy stuff should come first, especially if the taxpayers are picking up the tab.
As someone else mentioned, roads are not gleaming surfaces. They get dirt, oil, skid marks, mineral deposits and all other kinds of crap deposited on their surfaces, to say nothing of ice, snow and snowplows. I have to believe that’d cut way into the efficiencies, if not outright damage them.
Solar panels will eventually probably have a big-time place in the world, but it’s more likely to be on rooftops, not roads. Rooftops that are owned and directly benefit businesses and consumers.
There’s nothing crazy about this idea. Thin film photovoltaics are a reality. They can be printed out on machines much like a typical inkjet printer. They aren’t very efficient, but then again, they don’t have to be. Once you can print out very large, cheap, flat solar power collectors, the question becomes – where do you put them? Our flat parking areas and sparsely travelled roads would be a great choice.
The rocket science involved in making road-worthy solar cells involves self-healing damaged and defective circuits, routing the power and protecting the photovoltaic from normal wear. I think within 5 years we will have working photovoltaic parking lots. Within 10 years they will be cost-effective.
If we DON’T come up with some solutions to our energy problems, we’re all majorly screwed
Yankee Rowe, the first practical* pressurized water reactor, opened nearly 50 years ago. GE’s breakthrough sale of a large scale nuclear plant (Oyster Creek) to JCP&L happened a few years later.
We’ve had the solution to our electric issues for years now. Ironically, it’s the so called ‘environmental’ lobby that’s been the major roadblock to implementing it.
*Shippingport was a cute science project, but in many ways not a practical power plant. And it was tiny.
ok, well the $100k grant is a good idea and not a large amount of money as these things go, but putting the solar film on roads is really just an awful idea. It would be a fantastic idea to line the sides of our interstates with solar collection devices though. Ease of access, existing electric infrastructure is often close by, etc…
I can’t help but think of those (really very cool and a big safety plus) reflectors that have been used down highway centerlines. They’re basically a wash in northern states though, as snow plows just demolish them. Anyone who’s seen a plow throwing sparks from digging through, or who gives a second’s thought to the forces generated (even without bottoming out) on the bottom edge of those things should just dismiss this out of hand.
Oh yeah, and traction…can you really make them rough enough to work with existing tires? Am I going to get rear-ended every rainstorm?
So paving all highways with these would cost $34.5 trillion. Look for Obama to pass the bill next week.
“The Green Jobs Czar may be gone—asshole”
Van Jones has more character than 95% of the commenters on this site, and probably 75% of the contributors, too.
cnpota :
September 7th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
I don’t want to set a bad tone, because I’d be interested to hear the science/construction of such a system, but this seems like a friggin’ racket! Yeah I know $100K can’t break the already broken bank, but what ever happened to private venture capital? Oh I forgot, profit is evil.
No, it’s not that profit is evil – it’s that cutting-edge technological research isn’t profitable. That’s why the government does it.
How do the insurance companies feel about it? Ever notice when you drive on the interstates how many cars have gone into the weeds? One could rack up a huge bill with the DOT and your insurance company will have to pay. And they’ll, in turn, pass that cost on to you, the motorist, through higher premiums.
Those higher premiums could, in turn, be used to pay for energy savings.
This is a bad idea. There are plenty of good reasons these run-off areas were built into our roads.
AICfan :
September 7th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
We’ve had the solution to our electric issues for years now. Ironically, it’s the so called ‘environmental’ lobby that’s been the major roadblock to implementing it.
There are very real environmental concerns when it comes to nuclear power, starting with what to do with the wastes – many of which will still be toxic hundreds of thousands of years from now – and ending with horrifying real-life experience in nuclear accidents.
I’m not ruling out nukes at this point, but I think we need to be awfully cautious about going ahead with it full steam.
If nuclear advocates want to gain traction, then they had better not trivialize the environmental consequences of using it.
Solar panels are already too expensive, why would we want to design ones that can stand up to the pounding a road surface takes. Hell, we don’t even design TODAY’S roads to stand up to much pounding.
When the government puts windmills on the White House lawn and on Capital Hill, I will believe they are serious about alt energy. Can we put those windmills off Cape Cod now??
What is (it) with the insistence of going for the most complex, poorest payback options first?
This is an excellent question/observation. These sorts of projects are rightly easy targets and ones that set back a rational renewable debate every time.
@Freed Mike, concerning nuclear power:
Nuclear waste can be refined into further fuel. The amount of true Nuclear waste produced by our current power plants each year could fit in the free space under a standard business desk. Granted, over the years it could add up to a significant amount, but c’mon! Have you seen the space under your desk recently? Not very big.
The nuclear waste disposal issue is a diversion. If it was such a problem, why does France seem to have solved it? Are we to believe the are dumping it in the rivers? We have the solution, but NIMBY concerns have thwarted it.
Kids – This ain’t gonna happen. Ever. Look around the world for major solar panel installations. You’ll find a few – but nothing really significant that a nuclear plant couldn’t do more efficently. Check out Japan where power is expensive. There is pracital consumer-driven interest in reducing energy costs. You’ll see (some) solar hot water, and a little solar heat. Nobody is using solar panels except experimentally. Japan DOES have nuclear power though, and lots of it.
Check around the world. The serious solar experiments don’t use solar panels – they use mirrors to heat fluids to drive turbines.
Here’s a link to an example of the problem at Nellis AFB.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9829328-54.html
140 dedicated acres. On trackers to follow the sun. In the desert. 15-megawatt installation will be one of the biggest solar farms in the world.
Only produces 25% of the base’s needs.
Essentially, this cover the highways idea is simply a modern dreamer’s version of “give me a lever long enough and I can move the earth.”
Well, yeah, ya can. But how practical is the idea?
I’ll believe that we have an energy problem when the environmentalists agree to nuclear energy.
@ dwford
The nuclear waste disposal issue is a diversion. If it was such a problem, why does France seem to have solved it?
How they “solved” it? In what way?
@ Lokkii
Please inform yourself of the solar example that is Germany.
In years to come, countries with largely renewable energy sourcing will have an enormous energy input cost advantage. The cost of the energy is essentially fixed. Europe, China & India are already onto it. USA is the laggard again.
How are we paying for these solar panels again?
@Pete:
France reprocesses their nuke ‘waste’. The big secret of the stuff is that there’s still a LOT of usable fuel in there, the problem is that the fission products have built up. So, they strip all that stuff out, some of which is quite valuable, and process the rest back into fuel.
This was the plan in the US until the 70’s, when Carter put the kibosh on it due to concerns that somehow, the plutonium that’s recovered would end up in the wrong hands. Although the fuel out of commercial plants has the wrong mix of Pu to really be usable. Some say impossible, some say not. Certainly not easy.
The remainder, the actual ‘waste’, contains short lived stuff, and quite a few noble gases. The iodine that anti-nuke groups always talk about getting released in an accident, for example, has a 1/2 life of a few days. And then it turns into Xenon…
Spent fuel isn’t easy to steal – the actual assemblies weigh a lot, and require active cooling for the first year or so out of the reactor, and afterwards are still nasty radioactive.
BTW – the Yankee Rowe plant I mentioned earlier is now gone – the remainder is just a football field sized concrete pad with a dozen or so large canisters, each holding a number of fuel assemblies. They’re currently looking to turn the rest of the site into a park or whatnot. If/when the government follows the law and takes the stuff off the utility’s hands, the site will be clean enough to build houses on…
If we DON’T come up with some solutions to our energy problems, we’re all majorly screwed
Yeah…sure…that’s what they want you to think.
I was unaware we even had an energy problem. We have TONS of coal here in MN, nuclear power is great, and we have all the oil we need. We have an energy surplus.
Van Jones has more character than 95% of the commenters on this site, and probably 75% of the contributors, too.
Yeah…to bad it’s a shady and shitty character.
He is a self-proclaimed communist and a 9/11 truther.
He should be committed to the Ha Ha Hilton.
@ AICfan
You’re talking about La Hague (which I have toured) and Breeder Reactors.
It has it’s critics.
“The problem in a nutshell is that without breeder reactors, which can break down the most long-lived elements in nuclear waste, reprocessing comes nowhere near achieving Finck’s 100-fold reduction in that waste.”
It’s the economics of nuclear that are broken, not the engineering. Nuclear is not magical, it’s ridiculously expensive and NOT renewable. There’s no point in following the rabbit down the non-renewable path.
AICfan:
We’ve had the solution to our electric issues for years now. Ironically, it’s the so called ‘environmental’ lobby that’s been the major roadblock to implementing it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if coal industry execs are secretly funneling shoe boxes full of Benjamins to green types to keep nuclear bottled up. Coal use in the US has increased 20 percent in the last 20 years – and will continue to do so short of a revolutionary reduction in electricity use. There’s no 10 year period in the history of the grid where coal use has declined.
When environmentalist stop flapping their gums regarding nuclear and start to confront increasing coal use, we’ll know they’re serious.
When the naysayers stop flapping their gums regarding environmentalists and start to confront decreasing sustainability, we’ll know they’ve broken through their own selfishness.
@ihatetrees:
I wouldn’t be surprised if coal industry execs are secretly funneling shoe boxes full of Benjamins to green types to keep nuclear bottled up
Coal industry and railroads. The utilities all pulled out of FutureGen, and right now, carbon sequestering coal burners are a technology looking for a customer. A lot of the proposed ‘cleaner coal’ power plants over the last few years have been canceled. Meanwhile:
* The TVA re-opened Brown’s Ferry #1, adding 1100 MW of nuke power to their system.
* The TVA started work on completing Watts Bar #2. When finished in 3 or 4 years, it will be the first ‘new’ nuke to open since Watts Bar #1 in ’96.
* Numerous utilities have put in for new nuke licenses – 6 units in Texas alone.
* The NRC gave Votlge an early site permit that allows non safety work to begin ASAP. They have already ordered their two AP1000s from Westinghouse (Toshiba).
* A few other utilities have ordered or signed letters of intent, to order new nuclear plants.
Coal’s a dead power source. Nobody wants it anymore.
When environmentalist stop flapping their gums regarding nuclear and start to confront increasing coal use, we’ll know they’re serious.
Italy just lifted its ban on nuclear, and wants 25% of their electricity from nuke in the next decade or so. There’s talk that Germany is heading the same way.
FWIW, the majority of Americans support nuclear power, and have for a long time. It’s the special interest groups that have been blocking it. Having grown up in Shoreham’s shadow, I can tell you that the ‘conserve and rely on rainbows and unicorns’ utopia sure as hell ain’t – electricity’s expensive as heck on LI and unreliable to boot.
Italy just lifted its ban on nuclear, and wants 25% of their electricity from nuke in the next decade or so.
Not true. The Italian Government has set-up a central authority to investigate the possibility of licensing 4 plants before 2013. The next election is every likelihood to reverse Berlusconi’s “desire”.
There’s talk that Germany is heading the same way.
Not true. Ruling parties have agreed to a slower phase-out, that’s it.
The majority of Americans support nuclear power, and have for a long time.
Not true. The majority (~59%) of Amercians support nuclear power as ONE of the sources.
A Harris Interactive poll (and many others) suggest upwards of 88% of Americans believe renewable sources should ALSO be pursued.
My employeer has run research for companies like Southern Edison suggesting consumers want MORE of their power from renewables. SCE are doing a great job showing the way with their sourcing mix.
@PeteMoran:
They have “solved” it by having a storage solution that they have deemed safe and that their people deem safe. They reprocess the waste and get the amount down to the bare minimum. There is no reason we can’t do the same.
So, how many more resources will this eat up? Oil for manufacture and construction, rare earth metals?
How much to maintain? How much to install millions of miles of the stuff?
Is it actually worth it in places that have squat for sunshine (The Pacific Northwest, the 68 sunny days a year in Binghamton, NY).
Why don’t we just try and reduce electric consumption? It’s a lot cheaper, and who cares if all the Lowe’s and McDonald’s are closed two hours earlier? Not like we build anything worth a damn in this country beside POS houses that fall apart after 30 years and crappy rustbucket cars with $2,500 worth of health care costs built into each one…
Retarded idea period.
I would order a truck full of cement just to drive behind and watch these things crumble..
Assuming it worked flawlessly, imagine how many jobs deploying this across the country would kill.
And while we’re at this, I’ve got roadside wind generators to sell you.
See… all those cars create quite a lot of turbulence punching through the air at 80 mph… we’ve got to recapture all that lost energy!
–
Pedestrians? Of course, they’ll have to learn how to duck and weave…
roadside wind generators
Not a bad idea. Very few (if any) pedestrians purposely walk alongside highways/freeways unless they’re hitchhiking (quite rare these days); crazy, suicidal maniacs; or have broken down and have no other choice.
In the latter case, a simple system of louvers to protect the pedestrian from spinning blades and to channel air to said blades would be an elegant solution.
I’m thinking vertical axis wind turbines would be perfect down the middle of interstates, especially I-80 through Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. Hoo, boy, at times the wind coming down the east side of the Rockies is strong enough to topple loaded semis.
My favorite renewable resource is oil. Go read “The Deep Hot Biosphere” and decide for yourself.
You can’t drill new wells off the Santa Barbara coast because it may cause an oil spill yet the stuff weeps out of the cliffs along the beach south of Santa Barbara into the ocean and it’s OK because it’s ‘natural’. Drilling a well ‘pollutes’ the environment yet there are huge pools of open oil pits right in the middle of LA. As long as you put a fence around them, give them a neat name like the La Brea Tar Pits, and call it a museum then it’s OK too. If you spilled the very same crude in a dirt lot two blocks away they’d have you arrested and call a HazMat team out to clean it up!
If you spilled the very same crude in a dirt lot two blocks away they’d have you arrested
No. They (whoever they are) wouldn’t; otherwise, all of our prisons would be filled with scofflaws who dare let oil leak from their engines.
I agree that people should educate themselves about oil and its geologic and natural history. But, it’s still a carcinogen and just as you wouldn’t stand next an unshielded nuclear reactor, you wouldn’t want your neighbors dumping oil where it might contaminate your well. NIOSH reported in 1982, “[We] recently completed an evaluation of an office building in Boise, Idaho, in which workers were experiencing symptoms of headache and nausea related to intermittent noxious odors (1). The cause of the problem was gasoline vapors entering the building from an underground aquifer contaminated with petroleum products leaking from a nearby oil storage tank . . . one case included vomiting intermittently for 10 months.”
Yes, seepage occurs naturally. But more oil is spilled into oceans as a result of human exploitation of oil, and man-made spills can have devastating effects not just on ocean wildlife but also fisheries and tourism, major California industries.
“Recent global estimates of crude-oil seepage rates suggest that about 47% of crude oil currently entering the marine environment is from natural seeps, whereas 53% results from leaks and spills during the extraction, transportation, refining, storage, and utilization of petroleum.” Source
SexCpotatoes :
September 7th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
@Freed Mike, concerning nuclear power:
Nuclear waste can be refined into further fuel. The amount of true Nuclear waste produced by our current power plants each year could fit in the free space under a standard business desk. Granted, over the years it could add up to a significant amount, but c’mon! Have you seen the space under your desk recently? Not very big.
Yeah, but when it comes to this stuff, all it takes is a little bit to ruin your whole day…or year…or a whole decade for a four-state area.
Again, I’m not ruling out nuclear, but this feels like an energy source that will leave our descendants with a massive headache for hundreds – maybe thousands – of years to come.
There are better alternatives.
I’ve always wondered how much energy could be harnessed from just the vibration of vehicles speeding along on a highway or interstate.
Since when can we choose only one source of energy? We have had a mix in the past. We have a mix right now. We will have a mix in the future. We will change the mix in response to economic and environmental conditions. Anyone who says “coal is the answer” or “nuclear is the answer” is responding to a nonexistent question.
And before denouncing a new idea, how about taking 2 minutes to understand what it is? Scott Brusaw, the inventor, addresses the cost issue in detail. You may find his response unconvincing (this is blue-sky research he’s working on here) but he has clearly spent a long time trying to make his case. At least have the decency to hear him out.
The numbers
“AG :
September 7th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
“The Green Jobs Czar may be gone—asshole”
Van Jones has more character than 95% of the commenters on this site, and probably 75% of the contributors, too.”
I would appreciate if you speak for yourself only.
Coal’s a dead power source. Nobody wants it anymore.
… except the Chinese.
@PeteMoran :
RE: Germany and Solar power.
You’re so busy defending unicorns that I thought I should probably specify which unicorn you need to defend here.
You didn’t really read that article that you sent regarding Germany and Solar power, did you?
Here are a few quotes relevant to my point that solar panels are not a practical solution:
[Only] One in a hundred homes has gone as far as installing its own solar arrays. ..The tariff they receive is even more generous than the price paid to the big producers – currently more than double the price of conventional electricity.
This new industry is based in the former, communist East, where unemployment is still in double figures and new solar panel factories are bringing much-needed employment…
Unemployment in the region is running at 17% and new factories, such as Conergy’s integrated solar panel plant on the outskirts of town, are providing a lifeline to the town.
Most importantly, there is a market mechanism in place, which gives suppliers of solar electricity a guaranteed price for the energy they supply to the national grid set for 20 years.
In short, this is a political jobs program and not very much a practical solar panel system.
@ Lokki
Most importantly, there is a market mechanism in place, which gives suppliers of solar electricity a guaranteed price for the energy they supply to the national grid set for 20 years.
In short, this is a political jobs program and not very much a practical solar panel system.
You mean; they’re (Germany) investing in a stable energy price future?
Unicorns indeed! Spare me.
Unicorns indeed! Spare me.
Sorry Pete… your fate will be the same as all of the other unicorns.
Folks, from someone who has studied this issue to the niggling depths of the debate… it’s all not that simple. Except for one thing.
Conservation. If we simple use less energy, we win. For now. I’ve reduced energy usage in my own home by more than half by simply having enough lights in a room (usually one or two instead of three or five), caulking and insulating where needed, and generally just avoiding all energy traps (dryers) and passive sources (plugged in a/c outlets) wherever possible.
It also helps to be a bit of a tightwad. But every time I pass by the unused baseball fields near my home and see hundreds of bright lights used in full force by the county, I know all too well where the real waste originates.
(T)hey’re (Germany) investing in a stable energy price future.
Only if you believe that the price of energy will increase to the subsidy rate. Their next door neighbors the French will be glad to wheel more nuke generated electricity to the Germans when that happens. They have to support the good life somehow and mostly don’t enjoy working to do so.
At least the Germans have the sense to taper the subsidy off over the next 20 years. But then they may need to goose it again – an abwrakpramie for the worn out solar clunkers? But, German industry will have a substantial head start in providing solar technology, if the economics bet pays off, to places that actually have sun. (Or we could take the word of a solar power spokesman in that BBC report that Germany is sunny.)
I thought the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corp’s circumlocution about funding this subsidy was hilarious.
“It’s not a subsidy in a formal way because it’s not state money. The utilities are gathering that money and there is an additional bonus the rate payers [consumers] have to pay and with this money, the electricity from the renewables is paid.”
(next ‘graph)
This has been imposed through legislation…
@ chuckR
I thought the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corp’s circumlocution about funding this subsidy was hilarious.
You mean, you didn’t understand that the Utility isn’t building a powerplant…..
PeteMoran
No, I mean what was quoted. The claim was that because the utility was collecting the subsidy as required by legislation, it wasn’t truly a tax.
As an employer, I collect FICA, FUDA, TDI and income tax as a (not by choice) agent of the government. Does this mean that because the government doesn’t collect the tax directly, it’s not really a tax?
chuckR :
September 8th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
PeteMoran
No, I mean what was quoted. The claim was that because the utility was collecting the subsidy as required by legislation, it wasn’t truly a tax.
As an employer, I collect FICA, FUDA, TDI and income tax as a (not by choice) agent of the government. Does this mean that because the government doesn’t collect the tax directly, it’s not really a tax?
From your company’s standpoint, no, it isn’t. You’re just putting those funds in a trust for your employees.
FreedMike
Of course it isn’t a tax ON my company, but it is a tax and I do act as an agent of the IRS. As for the claim that the German subsidy structure isn’t a tax, that’s disingenuous. It is a short-circuiting of the typical collection/re-distribution approach, but it’s still a tax.
Sorry to bump an old post, but 7.6 KWh could, if you are lucky, fetch $1.50 a day or $45 a month. Compared to a cost of $6900. At 5% interest, it will take 20 years to pay that off. You’ve just broken even, assuming that it needed no maintenance and is functioning just as well in the year 2029.