If you had 5 60w bulbs and used them each 6 hours/day, your monthly cost at 11 cents/kwh (the national average) would be 5*60w*6hrs*30 days /1000 * $.11 = $5.94.
So, you would have to run each of these theoretical 60w bulbs for a maximum of 1 hour/day. That seems like a bit of a stretch to me. If you only ever had one light on in the house at a time, you could still only burn it for a max of 6 hours/day to have your cost only 1 dollar a month. I live in Maine, and I don’t go to bed at 4:30 pm during the winter, or get up after 7:00 am. Do you live on the equator?

Seriously, please cite some sources. I especially couldn’t follow the logic on the total pollution part.

Hello Don,

I am delighted to see your website.

I live in a house which cannot have solar panels on the roof because of trees which I want to keep. I also have a big backyard on the south side of the house which would be an ideal place for solar panels. Since I do not like the look of ground mounted panels, I have long thought about a solar gazebo. I found your website by typing in “solar pergola” as I have done for the past few years.

Today I was at the annual Colorado Garden and home show, which I attend almost every year. Each time I go I talk to deck/pergola builders, as well as solar panel installers – about how they should combine their work to create solar pergolas. Most of them don’t give it much thought.

I don’t want to go to the expense of hiring an engineer or architect to design a pergola sturdy enough to support panels securely during high winds or heavy snows. I am waiting for people to figure out that there is a potential market for solar gazebos, to design several attractive, low-maintenance, and cost-effective options and to put them on the market.

I always tell the deck people that I don’t want a wood structure. That’s when they tune me out. However, it seems I spend my life doing maintenance and think that having wood outdoors is inviting trouble. I would like pillars made of aluminum or steel-reinforced-concrete possibly, which would require no painting. I have also considered things like heavy duty PVC pipes.

I am looking forward to seeing many companies offering a variety of solar gazebos. It is an idea whose time has come.

Andra

When my wife and I were both working, our Honeywell programmable thermostats were a real emergy saver. No, it would not pay for my childrens college fees, but our carbon footprint was reduced and they paid for themselves in the first year. The rest was gravy for ten years.
Since we retired, the new mini split heat pump is paying for itself over ten years. All things are not the sole solution. We must all do our part. Our heating cost is now fourty percent of what it was 12 years ago, and our total energy use is 52 percent of what it was 12 years ago.
Most of the “prescriptions” helped.

Is the presumption that children’s college tuition’s will be paid via the energy savings?

Anybody measuring this elusive savings?

In certain circumstances setback MAY save a few pennies a day (often at fair cost to comfort. Unfortunately this comfort cost presumption causes people to shy away from true efficiency measures). In many cases setback may actually COST energy as well as cost comfort. Bringing the house back to temperature is energy intensive, and surfaces take a long time to recover.

My clients are abandoning setback, which allows for smaller equipment. This approach IS saving a surprising amount of money and dramatically improving comfort. We ARE measuring.

Every house is different, and what will save is different. Implementing prescriptive measures and assuming some huge savings, without tracking and quantifying results, is incredibly ignorant.

We need to educate people, cure ignorance with good information. We need to stop throwing money and implementing behavior modification based upon wives tale assumptions.