Quote Originally Posted by DetroitPlanner View Post
Around here all of the plants have both rail and water access. Here is something else to consider as plug-in cars become a larger part of the mix, they will also contribute to the problem of emissions at coal burning electrical plants. The greater our needs, the harder it will be to justify closing them down. Your average person who wants to drive to work would have to live very far out to use solar as a way to charge his car as they would need acres to do so. This is not very good as it leads to sprawl more congestion, and negates most of the money saved by trying it.
Except that this is wrong. A Nissan Leaf stores about 20kwh. If you needed to completely charge it every day, you would need a solar system with a rated capacity of about 8kw [[that is generous, but I'm making allowances for Michigan's unusually bad solar conditions), so you would need around 1000 sqft of solar panel. That is a lot, but it is only a bit more than 2% of an acre.

I have read about geothermal which I see as 'niche', if Harry Homeowner wants to install it and save money on his monthly bill. I'd think that geothermal is best in more temperate climates like N.C., Tenn, Georgia, etc. I assume it is only applicable for those with heat pumps. Right?


Household geothermal is great in places like Michigan--it can save you a huge amount on both heating and cooling, but as was said by other people, it still requires electricity to run the pumps and the heat pumps. In warmer climates air-exchange heat pumps work fine, but in Michigan you can't efficiently heat with those in the winter, whereas a geothermal one will work well. The problem with household geothermal is the installation cost--you need a substantial amount of piping buried, either horizontally or vertically, and you need an appropriate site, usually one which isn't too rocky and where the water table isn't too deep, although I don't think that is generally a problem in Michigan.