One of the things that comes with studying electrical engineering is that people assume you know the answers to all kinds of questions.
Some are good questions even if they are incompletely worded, like: “How much work does it take to move a kilogram?” It took some discussion but at the end he understood physics a bit better.
Some questions are way past my ability to explain, as in: “How does the gravitational distortion of space and time work?”
Some I just know how to Google, like “I accidentally erased a lecture on my audio recorder. Can you get it back?”
Then there are the yes or no questions that don’t have yes or no answers: “Should I put solar panels on my roof?”
Some time ago I worked under a doctoral student on a microgrid. We had solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and everything necessary to communicate between them and the load. I like the idea of renewable energy and smart houses, and I really enjoyed working on the microgrid project.
I like projects like this for many reasons, but I realize that most people like the returns on their investments. Working on the project in 2010 made me intimately aware of how expensive, per kilowatt hour, solar panels were. Saving the environment, or lowering American dependence on foreign oil are nice sentiments but they are very external gains. People will not sink money into these ideas unless they are very committed to them.
Happily they don’t have to anymore. I have been following the solar panel industry over the past four years, and things have changed. Installing solar panels has gone from a thing you do if you care about the environment to a thing you do if you care about your bottom line.
In Texas, for example, it now takes just 14 years for solar panels to pay for themselves and then you start getting $87 back every month. That is the cost of two Smartphone plans.
It has been amazing to me that over the course of 4 years I have gone from saying “They are nice ideas, but unless you live in Hawaii not really monetarily feasible for the population as a whole” to “If you plan on living in that house for 20 years then invest in them.”
You know something makes monetary sense when Wal-Mart starts doing large scale implementation.
Yes, some of that monetary sense stems from the fact that solar comes with government incentives, but I think just a few years from now it will make sense without government incentives.
My name is Caroline Storm Westenhover. I am a Senior Electrical Engineering student at the University of Texas at Arlington. I am the third of seven children. I enjoy collecting ideas and theories and most enjoy when they come together to present a bigger picture as a whole. Perhaps that is why I like physics and engineering. My biggest dream is to become an astronaut.