Carbon Offsets: I'm Ready To Start Selling Them!
I've been very interested ever since I had this house built to use solar and wind power. I want to reduce my consumption of fossil fuels (some of which might come from places where they wind their turbans too tight), and to be more self-sufficient.
There's one big problem: I just can't see any way (yet) to buy photovoltaic cells. To be cost-competitive with Idaho Power's roughly 6 cents per kilowatt/hour charge, I need photovoltaics to get down to about $2 per watt to really make sense. (I figure that it would take about 27 years for the capital costs of the panel alone--not counting batteries, installation, and inverter--to pay for itself with the current $5 to $6 per watt price.) I'm working on a scheme that improves the number of hours of operation a bit, but I'm not expecting to get more than a 50% improvement in output, even if my clever idea works perfectly.
Now, I know that there are a lot of very guilt-ridden people out there--the kind who fly their private jets around the U.S. every week or two, and who drive Hummers, and have enormous electricity bills (yes, I mean you, Al Gore). And so I've got a deal for you: If you really want to get over those guilt feelings about your crimes against Mother Earth, just write me a check for however many watts you want me to put up in photovoltaics--and I'll be happy to do so! I don't need you to pay the whole cost--just give $4 per watt, in 1000 watt increments, and I promise within six months to have photovoltaic panels up and operational.
Thank you!
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