15 JUNE, 2016. Houston
I LOVE the idea of solar power!!! I always have.
Here is why I don't have it now, and may NEVER get it:
Just like everything else, nothing is simple.
It really IS simple, but it is made intergalactic by the people who sell it! (Yes, it's an accusation.)
Why is this so? What you see in the picture may LOOK like a solar electric panel, but what it is to the people who want to sell it to you, it's a SEPARATOR.
A WHAT?
A separator, whose sole task is to separate you from as much of your money as quickly as possible while giving you as little as possible in return.
Basic economics.
Things are made convoluted deliberately to mask the prohibitive initial cost in solar panels.
Don't believe me?
Just try this: go to one of those companies and ask: So how much is one of those units, just like the one in the picture?
You won't get an answer to that question.
What will happen is that they will tell you something like:"Well, the price varies."
Note: whenever somebody tells you the price "varies", what they are really telling you is "Let's see how gullible this Bozo is so we can see how much money we can get out of him!"
The guy continues: "It depends on where you live, how many square feet in your home, number of people in your household, what your roof is made out of, how much sunshine you get, the price of silicon on the open market, and many, many other factors, including - but not limited to...
the amount of argon emissions, soil susbidance, BS BS BS."
You sit there listening politely to people speaking your own language and not understanding but maybe 10%...... and boy do you feel stupid!
Making the potential customer feel stupid is a tactic used on a daily basis everywhere by time-share condo salesmen, roofing, air-conditioning, and other contractors, used car salesmen, and many, many others. It's an information game: they have the information and you do not. Information is power, and power is money.
You sit there confused, frustrated, and bewildered. This is just the moment they have been waiting for!
"Tell you what," the guy says, showing you that he's definitely on your side and is going all out to help you, so he puts his arm over your shoulder in a reassuring way - the way a funeral director does to comfort you on the passing of the dearly-beloved, and says:"Let's do this: why don't we make an appointment so our people (who don't know squat about the subject, nor do they care - but they have been highly-trained in manipulative selling techniques!) can go over our plan..."
NOTE: If it needs a plan and three people to show it to you, rest assured there are many, many zeros attached to the bottom-line cost.
They want you to make that appointment.
Heaven help you if you agree. It's like a fly inviting a spider I to his flat. He may be on your turf, but you are in his snare already, and you don't even know it! To be sure, the idea is good, but it's not THAT good. By the time the flim-flam artists get finished with their intergalactic charts, diagrams, pie charts, algorithms, trigonometry, logarithmic tables, and titration tables, with circles and arrows and graphs and illustrations galore, your eyes water, your ears begin to hurt, and everything sounds so good to you that you begin to believe that the sun sets in the east. You are weary and worn-down now, and you want to sign on the dotted line just to get rid of them.
If you do, you regret that decision the instant they walk out of your home.
But the damage has been done.
Bottom line: IF solar energy were so doggone good, and a feasible proposition for the average homeowner, most people would have it already in their homes, and we wouldn't be using so much fossil fuels.
Drive around your neighborhood and see how many people have solar panels. Not so many, right?
Petroleum companies and the bog electric power companies are most likely the culprits in the suppression of solar power. Only fringe members of society, that small, eclectic group that has cash to spend on this sort of thing, can really switch over to what is — or SHOULD be - a viable alternative to standard fossil-fuel-generated electricity.
Are you ready to spend upwards of $30,000 to save maybe $5,000? It makes no sense whatsoever to me, but then again, math was never my best subject.
Do I paint a clear picture...... Or do I exaggerate?
