> Michael Lorrey <retroman@together.net> wrote:
>
> [...]
> >However, my story is an excellent example of how government takes good
> >ideas an
> >royally fucks them up so that the policies that are suppose to attain
> >those ideas
> >actually impede them.
>
> Interesting story! Checking out your site now. A question for you - How do
> you think your technology would have fared in a market without any gov't
> subsidies? Why wouldn't the short-sight human nature to buy cheapest now,
> instead of cheapest long-term been even more strongly expressed?
Considering that in areas where there were no subsidies, all it took was
forward thinking building owners (Boeing, for example, even though Seattle City
Light & Power had run out of funding for the year, bought 1000 kits from us in
one order.) to make a sale. Usually building owners who are in the money
/finance business immediately saw that we were a great deal. I had a bank in
Texas that wanted to finance any customer of ours who wanted the kits, sight
unseen. Basically, our cost of conservation was less than 0.5 cents per
kilowatt hour saved, so not only were we the cheapest 'source' of power around,
but also 1/3 that of the average government run conservation program which
averaged around 1.5 cents per kwh saved.
We also fared better in the few areas where rebates were proportional to the
energy saved.
Before I had this business, I was a Republican through and through. You can now
see why I'm a libertarian. There is absolutely no idea or ideal in the world
that is so great that it can't be FUBARed by a government program.