Yeah....what he said. But on the whole solar thing...the state of Florida just this year started with the 30% rebate for adding solar panels, up to a maximum of about $3,000. So not much help for doing a whole home system and as I said before, they are sold out of PV panels.

The idea to do it came to mind right after the 3 hurricanes of 2004. After each one the weather was beautiful, lots of sun, no electricity. Generators need gasoline but all the stations were closed, no electricity to pump it. It also would have been nice to have a wind generator as soon as the power went out, while it was blowing 80-120! But will solar panels stay attached to your roof in 120 mph winds?

Most of you now in your 40's, who grew up in the US, remember the oil shortage of 1974. We were told then that by now (30+ years later) we would all be driving electric cars, or little 100 mpg diesels, like they do in Europe. We were also forced to learn the metric system because we were going to be using that by the 1980's...don't get me started.

My parrents bought a VW Diesel Rabbit back in 1978, for $8,000. It got 50 mpg. Wish I could find one today! The new Diesel Jetta gets about 48 mpg, but costs $21-23,000. A Toyota Carola gets 41 mpg on gasoline, for about $13-16,000. Diesel is about $.20 more expensive than gas (why is that? It used to be twenty cents cheaper. Taxes?)

Still, I would rather ride the train the 85 miles to work, like most do in Europe, but we don't have them in rural US, only in a few major cities, like Chicago, NY and Boston. That way I could read or sleep.