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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (252660)	12/30/2007 5:31:50 PM
From: Katelew	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Bob, I'll try to better explain what I meant by ROI with regard to European solar development. Let's assume a hypothetical corporation, probably one in southern Europe where there's more sunshine. The building already exists and is hooked into the local power grid. The owners make the upfront investment in solar. The original feasibility study would be similar to what a homeowner does when putting more energy efficient windows or insulation or something in their home and they look at how many years before the thing is paid for and the projected savings start to materialize. What has/is happening in Europe is that, unlike a homeowner, the corporate building can sell its excess wattage back into the grid. As the cost of traditional power has increased (as it has in this country as our utility bills went up), these corporations could sell their excess power back into the grid at increasingly higher prices, thus paying down their original investment faster. Once the investment was paid off, their sales of excess power became a positive number and thus a positive ROI. The positive ROI was always out there in the original feasibility work-up.....it's just that it's arriving in a shorter period of time. This in turn is leading to smaller companies making the investment which leads to further economies of scale, and so on and so on which reduces the amount of govt. subsidy needed, etc. etc.. I hope this made sense.