I'll take your "Good points" at face value, Rande, because you've historically encouraged open discussion, but I have to say your reply felt defensive to me. I wasn't attacking your view on FCs, just tempering your statement that people could pay for a Home Gen 7000 with just one year's savings on electricity.
Though undoubtedly there's a 'stick it to the utility' factor, I think you'd find the average homeowner, if pressed, wouldn't pay a huge premium in real dollars just for that satisfaction.
Re. your bad experiences with poor power quality, I'm sure you'd agree that your situation is not average at all, that most people aren't running time-is-money operations from their homes where they stand to lose $10K from a power quality issue. You're absolutely right, of course, for those that do, a power conditioner or a good on-line UPS - where the output power is actually seperated from the input power, so you literally can't get any flow-through surges or brown-outs - is an excellent investment to protect critical equipment. So while power quality is certainly an issue to weigh, the average user wouldn't put the same dollar value on it as you'd have to.
As to other costs that need to be factored in I did some more digging, as you suggested.
Purchase cost
From GE's site (http://gepower.com/microgen/faqs.html): "Retail pricing is determined by the regional distributors who will install the unit and meet any necessary interconnection requirements. Although GE MicroGen does not determine retail prices, less than $3,000/kW is a reasonable expectation for our first commercial unit. We expect prices to decrease as the technology matures and sales volume increases." I couldn't find the $5-7000 cost you mentioned on either PLUG's or GE's site. This statement, if I interpret it correctly, looks like 7kW steady output X sub-$3000 = ??? to $20,000 capital cost, biased towards the high end for the first, while I'm sure.
NG Consumption
From GE's FAQ's also: "Cost per kWh using natural gas = Natural Gas price per MCF X 0.01[...]Multiply your cost per kWh from the equation above times your monthly kWh usage (from your utility bill)"
In my case, looks like my house averages about 1200 kWh per month, and NG for me (in Canada) approximately $10.85/MCF (thousand cubic feet), so cost per month on avg for me using this FC would be $10.85 x .01 x 1200 = $130 a month, or $1560 per year (hmmm...sorry, that's CDN dollars, so about $1075 US a year). Interestingly, in my case that's nearly twice as expensive as my actual electricity cost for the same number of kWh. Could be screwed up by the regulatory pricing where I live, of course. I'd be interested to know others' results (for anyone looking to do this, if your gas bill measures consumption in gigajoues, as mine did, apparently the US conversion factor from MCF is 1.08 (ie. MCF x 1.08 = GJ)). More on this operating cost issue, from gepower.com "In many areas, the system can provide electricity at or below the price of utility-supplied power; due primarily to the system's low operating cost and high fuel efficiency." That's telling, IMO: there obviously are areas where the cost of generating the elec with their FC is higher than the utility-provided power.
Maintenance
From GE's FAQ's: "The system requires a routine annual check-up by an authorized service technician, and the replacement of certain components, such as the stack, every four to six years. Because HomeGen 7000 is in testing and development, practical information about maintenance is not available." Jury's out on how much, but there is maintenance cost.
Support cost
Because as Kevin Shea points out the utility has to keep you connected to the grid and supply backup power if you need it, this point is moot for now. You don't need to pay the generally significant fee required to provide 7x24 emergency response you would if you were all on your own; maintenance fees and a break/fix cost calculation are all you'd need (see above)
Wow, this got out of hand, though I didn't mean it to. It became quite interesting, and I've learned a lot.
I repeat, thanks for your overview of FC's. I found it very useful and always value your opinion. I think you just overstated the economic case for them on a user basis at this point.
Best regards
WUWT |
