Anyone been following the solar project UB put in right next to the Flint Rd entrance? I saw on the Buffalo News yesterday that it cost 7.5 million (grant from the Power Authority, aka we all paid for it) and it will save UB $60k a year in energy costs.
So doing the quick math, that’s 125 years just to break even, assuming it requires zero dollars to maintain over that 125 years (which it won’t).
I honestly think they would have been better off going to the bank, getting 7.5 million in dollar bills and just burning them for heat over the winter.
the reduction in savings of electricity isnt what makes these systems worth installing, its the grants you have to install them and the tax reductions. we have a system on the roof at work and its hardly benificial in electric use reduction.
using solar for water reheat is much more beneficial.
$60k/year is a small dent in UB’s total energy cost. Solar power is unfortunately still in it’s infancy stages and is terribly inefficient. Current PV cells only capture ~12% of the energy from the light hitting them. And in Buffalo that’s 12% of not a lot.
Know what could have saved them 10x as much, or $600k a year in energy costs? Invest that 7.5 million aiming for an 8% return a year. Take the 600k in investment income and use that toward your electric bill.
I don’t think you are looking at this the right way. UB is a city in itself with a campus of almost 30,000 people and of that, almost 10,000 live on campus. The grid is providing power for these people who live, commute, and work there so the cost for the amount of people who actually use this clean energy is a huge step. Someone who places them on their house are only servicing a few people, but for a college campus , the long term benefits outside of the pure cost savings are huge esp with the grant money and can help them pull away from area utilitiy dependencies which I believe in turn reduces the demand on the Buffalo grid for everyone in its surrounding areas.
You don’t really understand how little 750 killowatts is do you? It’s like emptying a 2 liter bottle of water off the Peace Bridge into the Niagara River and saying you’ve helped alleviate the drain of Niagara Falls. Except in this case you paid 7.5 million dollars for that 2 liter bottle of water.
Taking 7.5 million and using it to establish a clean energy technology center at UB… now that’s how you actually move toward energy independence.
Currently, it just about never makes sense to run solar. Electricity from the grid is quite cheap, reliable, efficient, and plentiful.
Even with tax credits and incentives totaling about 70% off, solar does not currently make sense for the average household. The payoff is something like 20-40 years depending on install costs… A cheap system won’t make it that long.
Do you people know what a grant is? UB didn’t have 7.5 million laying around to blow on anything. They were given it for this project along with the engineering resources. If it wasn’t going to us, it would have gone somewhere else in the state. Just be happy that this broke city got some money from Albany to put into a sustainable entity here and even into some local businesses who did the labor.
They want to mothball NRG Dunkirk electric plant (coal fired) because there really isnt much of a demand and electricity is very cheap right now. I believe both Huntley and Dunkirk both have around a 600MW capacity, so even if you eliminated Dunkirk, that 750KW (when everything is actually working as expected, best case scenario) is .125% of the capacity of the Huntley plant. So in reality, its a drop in the bucket. Wind power, around here, makes much more sense, but even wind turbines only turn a profit thanks to the government grants that are given to install them. At least they can generate electricity 24/7 which isnt the case with solar. If solar cell technology wasnt soo poor this might make more sense in the future.
