Unrest in the Middle East — Yet Another Reason to Switch to Solar Power

As we wit­ness events unfold­ing in Egypt and else­where through­out the Mid­dle East we are struck by the desire of peo­ple every­where to be free and to live lives of hope and self-determination.  But here at home we are reminded that insta­bil­ity in the Mid­dle East means higher energy prices — both directly at the pump, and indi­rectly in the form of mil­i­tary and other costs asso­ci­ated with pre­serv­ing the con­tin­ual flow of oil com­ing to these shores. It is not a sus­tain­able future, and as Amer­i­cans we need to rethink how we fuel our lives.

Every­day nearly 3 mil­lion bar­rels of oil flow through the Egyptian-controlled Suez Canal, an amount equal to Canada’s entire daily oil pro­duc­tion. Much of that oil is des­tined for the United States, which imports nearly 6 mil­lion bar­rels of OPEC oil each and every day.  As the wid­get to the right shows, oil prices are on the rise again, above $90/bbl as this is writ­ten.  If the sit­u­a­tion in Egypt dete­ri­o­rates to the point of dis­rupt­ing the flow of oil through the Suez Canal, oil prices will likely spike to all-time highs.

It sim­ply doesn’t have to be this way.

The new gen­er­a­tion of EVs — like the Nis­san Leaf - and plug-in hybrids — like the Chevy Volt - have the poten­tial to lead the way to a new future of energy inde­pen­dence.  Com­bine them with a solar power sys­tem of your own, and your energy sav­ings really mount up.

Let’s look at an exam­ple.  Take a Leaf with its 24 kWh bat­tery pack.  It is adver­tised to get roughly 100 miles per charge, but let’s be con­ser­v­a­tive here and assume that it only gets 80.  More­over, we will assume that our charg­ing sys­tem is only 90% effi­cient so to fully charge that 24 kWh bat­tery pack will actu­ally require 26 kWh of energy.  At SCE’s top-tiered rate of $0.325/kWh, our Leaf costs 10.8¢/mile to power.  Com­pare that to the aver­age gasoline-powered car on the high­way today.  That vehi­cle, accord­ing to the Bureau of Trans­porta­tion Sta­tis­tics, aver­ages 22.6 miles/gallon.  For gaso­line priced at $3.50/gallon, that aver­age car on the road today costs 15.5¢/mile to fuel. Let oil prices spike, and gaso­line prices climb to $4.00/gallon (cer­tainly well within the realm of pos­si­bil­ity) and that cost per mile goes to 17.7¢.  That means if you drive 10,000 miles per year, your fuel cost alone in that typ­i­cal Amer­i­can car will be $1,770/year and the Leaf — even using the most expen­sive elec­tric­ity in SCE ter­ri­tory, will save you $690/year.

Now what if you pow­ered that Leaf not from SCE’s Tier-5 elec­tric­ity, but with solar power from a Run on Sun solar sys­tem? Assume that you installed a 5 kW sys­tem that cost $6.00/Watt to install (a rea­son­able cost).  That sys­tem would cost $30,000 to install. After rebates (from the util­ity) and a 30% fed­eral tax credit, and the out-of-pocket cost is roughly 1/2 of that ini­tial cost — say $15,000.  That means that the sav­ings from dri­ving 10,000 miles/year will pay for your solar power sys­tem in eight and a half years.  But dur­ing those years you will con­tribute zero pol­lu­tion to the envi­ron­ment and never have to stop at a gas sta­tion again.

This is the way for­ward. This is the way to insu­late our­selves from polit­i­cal insta­bil­ity while at the same time clear­ing our air and dras­ti­cally reduc­ing our green­house gas emissions.

For years detrac­tors could say this wasn’t real­is­tic — that the vehi­cles didn’t exist or that the eco­nom­ics didn’t pen­cil out. Those days are over.  The future requires a new way of think­ing that will turn us away from the failed prac­tices of the past.