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Hi all,
Is this a “green” country or what? I am considering adding solar to a new house I am building, I am very interested in doing this, yeah the payoff isn’t so cool when you get the calculator out but, it seems there are other benefits.
Using the system to charge your batteries when the electric rates are 1/5 the price at night! the thought of sticking it to OPEC even if it is only a little bitty bit makes me happy.
I am very surprised there are not more people building with solar (or other alternative energy) or at least talking about it.
As a home buyer what is your all opinion about the selling advantages of a solar house?
Thanks,Jim
Jim,
Are the meters there in Costa Rica some digital type that tracks WHEN you use the power?
I like the idea of using the power at night to charge batteries. of course isn’t the power there fairly inexpensive? I would think that preparing for outages would be plan A for me.
I have seen the power connections from ICE to the houses but never wanted to get that close to take a closer look at the type of meter.
What I would like to do is to find the perfect property where there is a river next to it to harness gravity by using the falling water to generate electricity. Not sure of the legalities of this but it would nice if it is legal.There is no provision for ICE to buy back photovoltaicly-generated electricity. That said, a battery backup, based upon a bank of golf cart batteries, might make sense, but it wouldn’t save any money.
About 95% of Costa Rica’s electricity is generated hydroelectrically, so not buying electricity from ICE will hardly be sticking it to OPEC.
All that said, we’ve had solar hot water heating in three of the four homes we’ve built and wish we’d put it on the one we missed. That I can heartily recommend.
rates at night are +/- 30 col a KW at night and 150 col KW in the daytime. in the peak demand times they use a lot of on demand type power which I believe is one form of hydrocarbon. but to take advantaage of this you need a digital power meter, which ICE will provide.
I have seen a system here that you run your house off batteries charegd at the cheap rates at night, I really like this idea.
Any idea how much solar water cuts off of your electric bill ( assuming you are using elec hot water.
I am very surpised by the lack of intrest in alternative energy 🙁
Jim
I can’t cite a dollar figure for the savings we get from our solar water heater, but I do know that much of the time the solar panels are providing virtually all our water heating. We’ve found this to be true in Costa Rica, in Lansing, Michigan and on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
The warm feeling I get when someone is thoughtful enough to say thank you for having been helped far outweighs the empty one I get when there’s no feedback at all.
Edited on Jun 25, 2009 14:13
Our electricity bill is less than $50 per month so we have decided not to install solar panels as the energy used in making the panels and the financial outlay will outweigh energy and cash savings. Instead we plant 100’s to 1000’s of trees a year on our farm to get our “nice warm feeling” and invest in working with our local schools on environmental projects and education.
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