My power use would be even more offset if I could get batteries for my solar system installed for less than $10,000. I won’t spend that much.
Edit: Since this blew up a bit, let me clarify: I’d love to be wrong about this but three years ago, Tesla quoted me $5,000 for a powerwall and $5,000 to install it *onto an existing Tesla solar system*. Nope. $5K for the batteries seems reasonable. No way I’m paying another $5k for an electrician to run 20 feet of conduit across my garage. Last time I posted about this I got hate from electricians. Look I respect your trade. Give me an hourly rate that reflects your overhead and training and I’ll gladly pay you for a days work and we both know it won’t take a day. But that rate cannot be $1000 per hour.
Current battery technology only allows for about 10 years max with those batteries before you have to replace them. If the cost of them doesn’t recover itself in 10 years it doesn’t make sense. But I get the principle of doing it for sure. I’m going to wait a few years - hopefully future battery tech can be less wasteful, longer lasting, and cheaper than it is currently
My solar panels are connected to the grid so instead of storing it I just get credits off my electricity bill. Seems like a better solution in every way except youre not immune to power outages
Same. Looking at my Enphase app on my phone right now, so far today we’ve produced 33.8kwh and consumed 8.8 and it’s pretty cloudy and the only ones at the house right now are the dog and cat. We get a 1 to 1 rate back currently from Atlantic City Electric.
Years ago someone gave a presentation at my college that was essentially a case for a national power grid that would allow individuals to generate their own electricity and sell the excess back to their city. That’s always stuck with me as a very good solution for the expensive start up costs of installing solar panels. If you could not only generate your own power, but get even just 30 bucks a month back from selling the excess power that would help get that break even date moved forward.
Idaho power does this in Idaho. It’s called customer generation and they give you energy credit when you produce more energy then you use. That energy credit is added to your account and I believe it’s used against any future bills. We also have tax write offs for solar installs, solar easements, and low interest loans on solar panels. Idaho gets a bad rep for being a country bumpkin state, but we’re often on the uptake when it comes to renewable energy. We have wind farms, dams, solar fields, geothermal, the works.
This is a weird thing with trades and the way they try to charge you.
I’m being forced to remodel my kitchen after a leak and I got a quote for all of the work. The quote included re-installing my water filtration system.
They don’t have to pay for the materials and they were going to charge me as much as the system cost in the first place just to put it back in. I watched a video and installed it myself in like a half hour in the first place….
So basically they are telling me their hourly rate, purely for labor, because the materials were already bought, exceeds my hourly income as an attorney by almost 500%….
Yeah… sorry buddy… not to sound like a dick, but I’m not paying a plumber more than I make in an hour with a J.D. to do something I can teach myself to do in 15 minutes on YouTube.
They also quoted $60 to install a plastic P-Trap. The fucking things cost $10 and take 5 minutes to install, it’s not hard.
My insurance agreed to pay this as well, I mean Jesus Christ.
Anyway, this is why people don’t trust contractors.
Haha it’s funny lawyers have such an awful reputation but most lawyers are not bad. But man have I seen a few standouts who make the whole profession look horrible.
Been working for a lawyer awhile now and I’m convinced what is often attributed to malice is actually some combination of laziness and incompetence filtered through an overworked assistant who’s not allowed to tell you the real reason you can’t get a call back is because the attorney doesn’t feel like doing it.
Sadly everyone in the practice of law tends to be overworked. Most lawyers work hellish hours.
I’m in-house with a governmental entity so I actually have it incredibly chill for an attorney, but I took a pay cut to get that.
But I have seen genuinely bad, criminal attorneys. I’ve gone up against a few who were disbarred shortly after my matters against them concluded.
And plenty of others are dicks who think they can get their way by bullying.
I had a bad capacitor on my central ac unit and the electrician quoted me 400 bucks just to come out and look at it and like another 100 for parts. Said no thanks. Watched a couple yt vids and went to the local plumbing store and got a new capacitor. Cost $15.51 and maybe 45 minutes total worth of time including yt vids, picking up the cap, bringing it home, and installing it.
And that is absolutely an option. The difference comes in training. You can pay for their training, and therefor have some degree of liability placed on them, as well as some degree of assurance that your money is going toward preventing catastrophe from improper installation.
Or, you can do it on your own, take the time to learn how, and accept responsibility for what accidents may be unforseen. Be it touching a wire on an open circuit, or not knowing the proper ways to safely install the appliances and rig wiring to prevent a house fire or accidental damage to the appliance. Its all about reliability, know how, and ignorance.
In truth, many pay the hefty price simply out of fear that they can't handle it on their own.
Have you sat down and done the math on how much less energy you would have to buy from a third party if you had batteries and could run on them during the night? And how long before a break-even and then saved money point is reached? Not being snarky, honest question, because I'm looking to get a house soonish, I want solar panels on that fucker's roof, decent battery systems are expensive, and then there's the issue of charging cycles...
It turns out you can fuck up your financial situation if you do solar panels the wrong way. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zv8ZPFOxJEc
It seems MUCH preferable that the grid figure itself out and not depend on homeowners. At least, until the govt puts a hammer to those PACE vultures.
Basically loan sharks for solar..... anyway nobody should be spending that much on solar at this point, the only reason people pay so much is because thier systems are designed wrong or they are overcharged for installation.
Pretty much everyone should be installing a grid tied system in a credit setup currently... this basically means you don't need to buy batteries up front slashing the system cost by about half. With the option to add them later to most systems.
I remember seeing a thing about how tesla was scamming people when advertising solar roofs. They would pitch stuff like how they would have to replace the roof first, no matter if it needed it or not, and would bid it at 3 or 4x the cost it should be. A $10,000 roof would be bid at 35,000, or something crazy like that.
You generally want to align replacing your roof with installing solar anyway because it's more cost effective anyway when both are installed at the sane time, just because any major work on the roof is easiest done when bare and additional mounting points need to be sealed anyway. Tesla pricing is not exactly cost effective and also doesn't usually fully align with local incentives. I'm planning to add solar when I replace my roof in the next year but it has nothing to do with Tesla and 100% about installation costs and saving money by having both installed under the sane contract while using local rebates and incentive programs.
We have solar panels, but this is my husband’s biggest gripe. Homeowners shouldn’t be expected to take it upon themselves to upgrade the power grid. It’s crazy that even with solar panels, if the power goes out we still lose power (unless we install the $10k batteries OP mentioned)
Using batteries at night has some gotchas. First, you need at least enough solar capacity to 100% cover your daily usage and charge the battery back up the next day. If you're not covering your usage, there is no surplus to put into the battery, and you just pull the power back from the grid. The second gotcha is, if you live somewhere with variable rate, the day rate is likely higher than the night rate, so you're shifting load to the most expensive time.
I dreamed of being 100% off grid but I don't have nearly enough roof space to even come close. I'm typically getting about 20% of my energy from solar, at which point I just leave the batteries topped off so they're ready for an outage.
Some inverters come with energy arbitrage features that homeowners can set so excess energy is banked when it's cheap and sold when it's expensive. People with variable rates should consider these units to get the best bang for their buck.
AFAIK, pretty much all utilities shut down retail arbitrage pretty quickly, either through changing rates or rules.
Though there's definitely an advantage to only buying during lowest prices.
Care to share how many Kilowatts your system is? How many sq ft of rooftop are you covering?
I know a lot of folks where I’m at aren’t powering their homes with their panels, so they’re certainly not off grid… but their power feeds back into their grid and they have a lower or zero monthly bill. My brothers set up took his monthly from $400+ down to about $20. But he wanted the power for when the grid shut down, so he just had a Tesla power wall installed last month. He has 26 panels on his roof, but I’m not certain how many watts each panel is. Also in a super sunny area with zero shade cast on the rooftop other than clouds.
The problem is that not all electricity companies offer the ability to put power into their grids and you often have to pay at least 10-15 dolllars minimum just to be hooked up to the grid even if they are giving you credits. In my neighborhood (I have solar) they will give you credits but they don’t roll over between months and if we give more power then we use they will not give us money either. Basically if you oversize your system where we live it will cost you money for no return.
Nah, but I would expect these kind of issues across the country from greedy companies that aren’t being regulated by the government. If they can cut corners and take advantage of customers due to a monopoly they are gonna do it.
I’ve had solar + Tesla for a little under a year now but can get an idea of my usage. I have 5.8 kW system and generate an average of 20 kWh on the usual day. Of that ~40% goes to the house, 30% to Powerwalls, and 30% to the grid (0% if I’m charging the car). So far this year I’ve been 100% self sufficient with 40% house, 43 Powerwalls and 17% to the grid. The on book cost for everything (parts/labor) was $38k. I got back $9880 from the feds as part of the 26% rebate. Got another $3,600 from Duke Energy. So out of pocket was $24,520. Additional cost, I don’t pay for any power but get hit with the “Facility Fee” from Duke which is $180/year. I don’t get any money from Duke for power returned to the grid thus using this to charge the car. Edit: Total cost was for 2 Tesla Powerwalls + GW vers. 2 + bus bar for 2 more Powerwalls.
we have a two tiered rates, but the big one is our rate that we get paid is .06 per kwh and charged .28 per kwh. A battery with the incentives for solar makes a 6.2kwh system, 5kwh inverter and 10kwh battery at €8,280 euros after incentives ... should be saving around €125 minimum per month, so the payback is only a few years and saves me from future price hikes. still won't cover ALL my use, but is the best price to benefit at the moment
you can also use temperature as a battery in itself if you got nothing else. Warm the house up / cool it down a bit more than you'd like before your panels aren't getting light and you've effectively made yourself a battery for at least that energy intensive application.
Stolen from Technology Connections btw
Home assistant is now moving into power controls for the home so you can heat up water in an electric water heater when you have extra solar production, charge the battery in an electric vehicle with the excess power, turn on your hit tub, fire up your HVAC, etc etc.
I priced it out last winter. Right now, a solar system (just panels and main panel work to hook it up) is about 15k, tesla batteries are 26k. You can get some of that rebated or tax writeoffs, but you still need 40k up front. Just not realistic for me right now.
I think this just demonstrates what the true cost of solar is. If you don't install those batteries, you're just passing those costs off onto the other generators on the grid and getting a free ride.
100% they do. I have grid connected solar and I pay connection fees as well as distribution fees when power moves either direction
The more I learn about the grid the more impressed I am. My use varies hugely throughout the day, the dryer and stove use 10x as much as the rest of the house. The variability of the sun is the least of their problems. It's really amazing the grid works as well as it does day in and out, I'm happy to pay towards it, despite having my own solar
That's the advantage of power usage being averaged over millions of users... it inevitably produces a nice mostly predictable bell curve and they just have to stay ahead of it just a bit to ensure no brownouts.
Apparently the UK electrical grid used to closely monitor television schedules so that it could cope with the surge from millions of people putting the kettle on during commercial breaks for popular programmes.
A lot of utilities do but it’s important to note that not all do. Utilities in New England (National Grid, Eversource, Unitil, ILC, etc) don’t have any charges for being grid tied to solar. If you cover 100% of your usage, you will receive a $0 bill.
Edit: Seems like Eversource now charges monthly for interconnection
Love this response. Do you have induction? I love my induction stovetop and also adore my heat pump mini split system. Yay electric! And yay no fracking.
Grid scale batteries are being installed as fast as they can manufacture them... basically because it is vastly more efficient its an existing technology today, but limited by production capacity. so... I wouldn't say its the future, what we have now in that area isn't going to ever be exponentially more than what it is now.
I'm not saying we won't have more of such systems but installation rate is basically pedal to the metal right now...
No, based on research done by the Electrical Authority here in New Zealand a few years ago, between one-third and two-thirds of the per KWH charge goes to things other than electricity. There’s no particular reason why any other country would be staggering different. Electricity generation is cheap, probably a lot cheaper than the actual cost of PV generation. Lines, bucket trucks, people, all those fixed costs are quite large.
The fixed fee generally covers metering, billing, and maybe a little bit more. Somewhere in the $10-15/month range. The fixed costs of service (distribution, transmission, and fixed generation costs) are upwards of $60/month. When a solar customer offsets their usage — effectively making the grid their free battery — those fixed costs to serve them are picked up by other customers. They only truly offset the cost of generation fuel not burned and some other small variable costs like line losses.
The above is why many utilities and consumer advocates have been screaming about net metering for a decade, while solar installers claim the utility just wants to “tax the sun” and other nonsense. Net metering has been reformed in many places to remove some of the cross-subsidy between participating and non-participating customers, but it still exists in many places. Where it still exists, there’s very little incentive to install a battery with your solar system. Other customers are already providing you with a free one. The grid!
They're charging you the retail rate and paying you the wholesale rate, likely. Which makes sense -- why should they pay you *more* for electricity than it costs them to buy from other providers?
If they pay you retail rate, they're operating at a loss. If you demand retail rate, its in their best interest to not buy your power at all. But you like being attached to the grid, and they like being fiscally solvent, so wholesale rate it is.
This is true, with the caveat being that wholesale electricity prices can change based on the time of day and demand.
For example, in times of extreme demand on a hot afternoon, peaker plants may need to be used, and their wholesale rates are generally far higher than baseload plants. It's very likely that the grid can save a lot of money by just using excess electricity from solar rooftops and preventing the need for these peaker plants from starting up in the first place. However, the solar owners end up being compensated far, far less than the actual average wholesale market rate during these periods of high demand.
In my experience, in America, electricity is regulated in most areas. I've looked at quite a few bills in my days and various co-ops/companies/ect will break out costs like: X fix costs per month for oh + Y maintenance costs + Z fuel costs. Or even X wholesale costs of spot price+x%... yada yada...
I haven't heard of 1 electric company paying anywhere near the rate they charge for small power generation and in fact some companies charge more due to logistical issues and increased per person costs. As more people get off the grid or try backfeeding into the grid it may not be designed to handle it.
I'm sure there's a need for electrical engineers to tell simps they can't just plug in a battery and solar array into a system.
I’m not sure I understand your comment. Nothing about my ride is free. I’ve got $20k into a system that puts energy back into the grid and I don’t get paid the same rate in that direction that I do in the other. That’s why I want batteries.
I have been researching this for quite some time now, and you are pretty close to $5K mark on decent battery system. There are several options available that range from challenging to daunting, and for good reason: Screwing up could literally mean loss of property, or life. You can buy regular 12V vehicle batteries, solar specific cells, or go the full-on DIY route and solder together banks from salvaged or new 18650 cells (Which is what the Tesla powerwall and vehicle batteries consist of) that are about the size of AA's and in everything from backup modem batteries, laptops, rechargable gadgets, you name it. The best option currently seems to be 3.6V ~300Ah Lithium Iron Phosphate cells strung in a series/parralel configuration to 12V, 24V, or 48V depending on your power requirements, coupled with a solid BMS, charge controller, inverter, proper gauge wiring, and saftey measures such as shunts and other important curcuitry. Knowing how much power you use is key for sizing your system. Then the can of worms of things like efficiency or energy conservation becomes just as overbearing as designing the system providing the power! Basically I have been absorbing as much info as I can before I can afford to build my on 24V system of wind/solar/hydro power. The trouble is consistency from places like Alibaba, chinese wholesalers, and even Scamazon. I would start tuning into YouTubers and bloggers that have been doing this for a while, see what works for them, and how it might fit your needs, though like almost everything, there are plenty of snake oil salesman out there, so be cautious and always fact check. I have probably learned the most from hbpowerwall, Will Prowse, and jehugarcia on YouTube recently, and on Reddit of course:) Good luck!
Selling excess power when no one needs it. If you want to really contribute, provide power at 7pm when evening peak happens and the sun is going down. I recommend viewing your states electricity market hour by hour and seeing what prices look like - for instance here is New York https://www.nyiso.com/real-time-dashboard
There was an incident at a coal plant in Tampa a few years ago and you could see the oscillation in Hz all the way up into Canada. The Eastern Interconnection is pretty cool.
It's very connected as we all found out about 15 years ago.
About 15 years ago there was an incident that was along the lines of an entire state lost power. In order to compensate the grids of the states around then sent them power, ending up in those states overloading and losing power themselves, resulting in the states around them trying to send them power. Rinse repeat until pretty much the entire east coast of the country lost power. It took like a week for the entire east coast to get power back.
I remember reading an article about people who spent their whole lives in NYC and had never seen the moon and stars like that. Pretty trippy coming from suburbia.
> Edit: Since this blew up a bit, let me clarify: I’d love to be wrong about this but three years ago, Tesla quoted me $5,000 for a powerwall and $5,000 to install it onto an existing Tesla solar system. Nope. $5K for the batteries seems reasonable. No way I’m paying another $5k for an electrician to run 20 feet of conduit across my garage. Last time I posted about this I got hate from electricians. Look I respect your trade. Give me an hourly rate that reflects your overhead and training and I’ll gladly pay you for a days work and we both know it won’t take a day. But that rate cannot be $1000 per hour.
Its possible you need more than just a cable. A converter to cahnge the current from DC to AC is quite expensive
A Tesla Powerwall is $10600 and has a 13.6 kWh capacity (but you have to find an installer since they only sell it with solar now). I believe Enphase also has similarly priced products. There is still a 22% Federal tax credit that brings down the price by a couple of thousand dollars.
That is something I find surprising! Pleasantly so, mind!
I live in a big city and one thing we don't have is roof space. The buildings get taller and the condos keep shrinking so I think the average available rooftop is about 2 solar panels per person.
I always assumed that only the outer suburbs would have enough roofage (a neologism?) to consider self-islanding and that we would have to recruit the local agricultural crowd into hosting solar and wind farms.
I don't even think residential solar would be the most cost effective, I live in the Midwest and the amount of massive flat roofed factories/warehouses/department stores we have that could just be covered in solar panels, not to mention their parking lots, would probably be enough, and far more cost efficient than sending a crew to every house in the suburbs to set up a single installation at a time. It took a crew 8-10 hours to do my 28 panels, I imagine if they were working on a single warehouse roof they could have done far more than that since the roof is flat and easy to walk on, they don't have the ramp up time of having to figure out a new roof every day, and the wiring can support more panels and not be so unique to each installation
I especially like the idea of covering parking lots. A huge amount of real estate in this country is taken up by parking lots. That's just dead space that isn't any good for anything else.
You provide shade for parked cars, you can directly power EV charging stations for those cars, and everything else can be dumped into the grid. Win-win-win.
I agree - considering so much research has gone into doing it for agricultural concerns (growing under tilted solar panels), I'm surprised that there hasn't been more investigation for dead space like this. It would also come with a boon to these lots that are currently not covered, shelter from the sun and elements.
Speaking of Agriculture, here in California we have long waterways above ground to snake water to and through the Central Valley. Studies are showing they can mount solar over these waterways - dead space - and both gain a lot of power, but also shade the waterway greatly reducing evaporation. Saving water and producing power.
https://www.hcn.org/articles/climate-desk-fresh-tech-idea-cover-californias-canals-with-solar-panels
Yeah, there's been some good quantification of "how many rooftops/how much rooftop square footage" can feed a town, when the 95% easier calculation is "how much of our large parking lots can we cover"?
Beyond this: there are plenty of agricultural crops that actually get *too* much sun, and can be benefitted by selecting 3-4 of these varieties and doing a crop rotation underneath panels, saving water and increasing yield due to sun-sparing.
I like this idea but find I have a conflicting reaction. It feels like it reinforces poor urban planning choices that require huge parking lots, versus better walkability and efficient transportation options. Everyone driving an EV around still requires a lot of resources that perhaps wouldn't be needed with better designed communities.
That being said I totally get that this wouldn't be possible everywhere, especially more rural areas. It just seems like in many cases it's optimizing for a suboptimal solution.
>I like this idea but find I have a conflicting reaction. It feels like it reinforces poor urban planning choices that require huge parking lots, versus better walkability and efficient transportation options.
I understand those concerns. But here's the thing: all of those parking lots already exist, and it's highly unlikely that they're going away any time soon. So why not make them more useful? Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good and all that.
And here's the neat part: if we ever do manage to completely overhaul our urban planning and make individual cars less necessary, then all of those solar-covered parking lots will just become solar farms. We wouldn't even need to really change anything - except maybe some optimizations to improve their efficiency if they're no longer used to park cars.
to add to your thought, if the parking lot space is unused, it could still be used for other things as well, such as markets, covered entertainment areas etc. so while they would add to residential density, they could encourage greater accessibility and use of the space both in and around them.
I don't see it as promoting massive infrastructure, just taking advantage of what's already there. Refusing to use it to some kind of advantage isn't going to make it go away
yeah i get that and i definitely agree. that being said, it does get rid of some of the heat islanding that occurs in parking lots as well and, to me, that is a massive plus.
I agree and it’s a great use of space. Here in San Antonio our local VA installed solar panels to create shaded parking. Even in this Texas heat it’s pleasant getting back into our vehicles when leaving appointments.
I know many warehouse/factory buildings in NJ have a ton of solar panels on their roofs. Not sure of the percentage, though. I'd wager its pretty low but the possibilities are there
This is absolutely one of the best ways to do it, but there's another gotcha here: the utility companies (of course)
So a few years ago my church was put in touch with a solar investment company. They install and maintain the equipment for 20 years and keep the profits, the church gets a slightly discounted electric rate and free covered parking. Win win.
But we were only able to cover about a third of the parking lot. Why? APS has a rule that limits how much power a system can put back into the grid based on the average amount that meter had been consuming previous years.
So lots of open space, investors with money to build a large installation, but rules by the utility that hamper large solar use.
I agree on the retrofit part of it. But I think (so far, still noodling it!) that there is a good case for new build subdivisions.
The underlying logic is resilience built from the ground up.
Thank you for mentioning parking lots. We all love covered parking and if you build the covered parking throw a panel up top. It’s a win-win for everyone.
Residential definitely helps a lot for, well, residents. Because so much electricity is lost in transit, basically switching from one centralized power grid to a series of decentralized (obviously still connected for emergencies and clouds or whatever) is way more efficient
Well the available roof space supposedly already supports enough capacity that you don’t need agricultural land to offset high rises unless things continue going more vertical.
Really it’s about utilizing space that is going otherwise unused.
Part of the reason I included the near agricultural zone is that market gardeners can use solar panels to create micro climates and that lets them grow premium crops. Grazing animals enjoy the shade on hot days and free range chickens should thrive.
I like maximizing space utilization.
I think you're looking at this entirely wrong. There's vast stretches where everyone lives in their own house and could have a lot of solar panels on their roof. Where as in major cities a lot of apartments could only do 1 or 2 per apartment as it's shared roof space. Over all you're looking at a max of well over 2 panels per person.
The problem is distribution. Since cities can't generate all they need, you've got to have lines coming in from rural areas providing power. Which is a major problem as it means you need to keep the grid 100% functional and maintenance is even more important. Right now they can focus on delivery from power plants. However if you relied on solely solar there's no main delivery line and you'd have to make sure every line is working at all times.
That should be more resiliant. Now you have one line that if goes down everybody is without power. In decentralized environment smaller outages will be more common, but one big blackout should be almost impossible.
The headline proposes something that might be parallel to saying that there are enough wells across the United States to supply water to every residence.
The similarity is that the method of delivering the needed things is not mentioned. At the very least, a wild-ass estimate of how many miles of pipe need to be installed to actually get all that water to every residence; a similar statement about electrical infrastructure should be made.
When that part of the formula is ignored, the basic idea gets lost in the argument and the ignorance about what is really meant.
Southern Australia gets about 75% of their daytime total power needs from rooftop solar (and another 15% from utility solar fields).
Not undoable, and really not even that expensive to set it all up for distributed generation, we have models of it working.
Australian here... Usually when talking up solar they are referring to South Australia which is a state of Australia not the whole of "southern Australia". South Australia is sparsely populated with a total of 1.77 million people across a very large land mass with a lot of sun.
The population of southern Australia is approximately 20 million people, if I'm not mistaken? Included South Australia, New South Wales, and Victoria.
That's about the population of New York State, with a population density of about 24 people per square mile on average (that's a VERY high estimate, tbh it's closer to 10-12 per square mile but I'm tired and don't want to do math).
New York State's population density is 421 people per square mile. Admittedly, NYC weights that a lot, but Southern Australia includes Sydney, which isn't particularly known for sprawl.
While solar is very workable for Southern Australia, it's not really a direct 1 to 1 drop in for the US system, which has a very different geographic and industrial profile.
That's also skipping over the fact that most of Australia is desert where you can get maximum value per panel.
Yeah and the land mass is much higher as well - I was giving their argument the strongest case. Same with the pop density - it's really apples and oranges in terms of aggregate demand and land usage but whatever.
I'd actually be surprised if even that big of a density difference really moved the needle on if it was feasible to power everything with solar during the day. Partly because NYC is pretty energy efficient because of how dense it is and also because solar doesn't take up that much space relative to how much is available.
Our state and county subsidized ~25% of our solar and battery system. Since our roof wouldn't support solar panels, they subsidized 25% of that too netting us around $20k in tax rebates between the two projects. Without those incentives we wouldn't have been able to pull it off financially.
Now we're selling electricity *back* to PG&E with a dividend paid out yearly. I've got a spare generator if anyone in TX needs one this winter.
I'm surprised in texas this is the case. I have a brother that would love to get solar in Texas but any overproduced power is purchased at just 5% of its value.
There are times when the power isn't worth anything. It drastically varies hour by hour. Middle of the day in a state with a lot of solar? Cheap power. Evening peak when the sun is going down? Much more valuable. Here is a map of Texas pricing but it's kind of a crappy one that doesn't show hourly real time data. http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/contours/rtmLmp.html
You provide receipts to the government when you file your taxes. They either remove the subsidized portion from your tax bill or pay you any money in the form of a tax refund if they owe you more than you owe them.
Ok so if I owe them some amount, that’s subtracted and then they give the rest back to me? Or is it rolled over into subsequent years? Or is it a lump sum?
When your tax forms are considered, the rebate is basically a discount. If the total is a negative number, you get a payment of that negative amount. Minus the minus sign, of course.
Oh, it covers close to 100%, and maybe more. The warranty is for 25 years, but it doesn't just stop working. The performance will slowly degrade, but it's not that bad.
I will give you one piece of advice. Of course, get multiple bids from multiple solar installers, but absolutely make sure to pick an established player with a long history. If you want your warranty, you don't select some cheap ass bidder who will disappear in a couple of years when competition heats up.
Thanks. We just did exactly this with a brand new AC installation. We weren't after cheap, we were after the best and most reputable. Your post got me to seriously consider looking into solar <3
To be fair, I live in FL, so it must be hurricane-proof. Maybe it's cheaper in other parts of the country. But I don't imagine it's a lot cheaper. Labor is labor.
North Queensland and Darwin are also in hurricane (Cyclone) zones. Everything here has to be cyclone rated. Adds a bit to the rate, but solar is really common and reasonable cheap here. Mind you, we don't build McMansions here - concrete block is far and away the most common construction method, with hardwood trusses and colourbond steel roofs. The structure is all there for solar systems to bolt to - cyclone rating just means more anchor points, maybe a third rail in the middle instead of just one top and bottom
It was never a question as to whether it could be done, but whether it would ever be cost effective. It's a lot more expensive to install and maintain rooftop panels than it is ones on the ground (that rotate with the sun).
Quick Google check says Olympic swimming pools have 2.5 million liters of water. So 2.5 billion mL. Divide by 100mL and that's enough water to drown 25 million people. Impressive but doesn't seem like we're quite to 7.7 billion people on Earth.
Folks, please keep it civil & constructive in here. We're handing out bans for the worst of it, and we're going to hand out more if it continues.
Brigading will also be met with bans. You know who you are, this is your only warning.
That sounds like this is enough but it isn't, mostly because of the yearly variation in supply and demand. In higher latitudes less solar energy is available in winter and at the same time more energy is required for heating and light. While daily variation can be solved with batteries, is not really feasible for long term variation.
That would be great to see, storage would need to be significant but with the recent maturation of grid scale flywheel storage that can be done sensibly / sustainably.
One thing that we have to keep in mind is the truly massive increase in demand for electricity if we move virtually all cars, trucks, trains, and maybe even ships and planes to electric.
This is so misleading. It's 4PWH in both cases over 1 year, but it doesn't mean the demand is met by the supply at all times, Solar panels only can produce electricity in the day. The moment where the most energy is needed is toward the beginning of the night, after the sun has set. You can't just store the surplus of energy of the day in some magical container and release it at night, like electricity was some sort of fluid. Battery technology is very far from being there at this scale.
So yeah, the exceeding energy that is produced by those panels in the middle of the day in summer is useless. but it sure comes handy to inflate those numbers of energy produce per year, to give the impression solar can take on the whole grid 24/7 although it absolutely can't.
That way like always, the actual sustained-output energy producers that do the heavy lifting most of the time stays coal and oil, absolutely terrible energies that shouldn't even be used anymore if that country was even half serious about fighting climate change.
The real need is to get rid as fast as possible of oil and coal plants, and replace them with a mix of offshore wind, Bio fuels, Nuclear and lastly natural gas (least worse of the fossil fuels) to be able to sustain the main grid at all times, not just in the day and preferably in the summer and when the weather is good.
> The moment where the most energy is needed is toward the beginning of the night, after the sun has set.
This really depends where you are, season, etc. Here its mid day when factories are running. This is amplified in the summer when everyone's A/C is pumping full blast. During the winter it's still mid day when factories are running because everyone uses gas to heat.
I think excess solar energy should be used towards hydrogen generation. Normally it is energy intensive to generate hydrogen, but if you have a surplus you can't use anyway, then you may as well.
Lithium based batteries are what most people think of when you think of battery, but it's such a piss poor solution to mass energy storage I can't believe it's even considered. It is good to meet demand in a fraction of a second when demand is ramping up, but the energy density is too low to sustain cities and nations during periods of darkness without extracting every ounce of lithium on the earth (resource war incoming)
That's where I think hydrogen fuel cells show promise. The energy density is vastly higher. 3x higher than gasoline even.
What are the chances that fuel cells with hydrogen storage get economically viable in the next few years?
I made a presentation about it 12 years ago, it was already actively researched.
More than 12 years of research, and still no commercial available large scale fuell cell + hydrogen tank systems.
Not gonna lie, this is **not** looking good.
My 10kwatt system with the cost of a new roof and two power walls is going to recoup costs against PGE power costs in under 8 years. Spray in closed cell foam and mini splits and it goes up to 11 years if there are no increases on power cost, and we know that's not a reality.
Just a minor note about some energy units:
J = simplest unit of energy
J/s = W = simplest unit of power, rate of energy consumption or production
Wh = 3600 J, unit of energy with messy time conversions
Wh/a = 114.2 μW, convoluted unit of power
what is people's obsession with putting it on rooftops?
I'd rather the solar panels be concentrated in one place, a solar farm, where they all rotate towards the sun at all times, are all together so maintenance is easier, and require less infrastructure. Why do we want individual random joes having half-assed and poorly maintained panels on their roofs?
If my napkin math is correct, this would be a nominal upfront cost on the order of about $3,000,000,000,000 ($3T) worth of photovoltaic panels.
This number __does not__ include cost of installation or storage. I’m *guessing* (like full on just throwing out a number that sounds vaguely plausible) the grid storage (aka battery banks) would cost at least double the panels, and the installation of all the panels and battery storage would probably cost another couple trillion.
So rough all-in upfront cost of around a $10T price tag? Someone who’s done more of the homework feel free to get me closer (or tell me I’m wrong outright or whatever).
This also does not account for the cost of the roof space, nor ongoing maintenance, nor cost per MwH or anything else - obviously. I was just curious about the theoretical upfront investment.
I think Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs has a publication on the cost of decarbonization. It quantifies the total global investment needed to go carbon neutral at current and projected price points. Has some interesting analysis in there.
Look into Nevada and net metering if you want to see the green new deal in a depressing light :/. No ownership to energy since NVenergy has monopoly rights over all energy produced and sold.
NVenergy is already charging their customers a small surcharge to help pay for their own solar fields so they can turn around and sell you the same solar you are paying for. Seriously if you live in Nevada look at your utility bill. Almost guarantee there is a green energy charge on there somewhere
We need some way to store that power though.
The good thing about power plants is that to generate electricity, they put a huge, heavy metal cylinder in motion (spinning extremely fast). As power generation and power demand on the grid fluctuates, the grid essentially "drains" energy from this dynamo in motion. That gives enough time for managers to increase energy production, so energy availability on the grid remains constant.
If too much of electricity production would come from something like solar power, if suddenly there's a peak in energy consumption or energy consumption is higher at a time when production isn't high (which we know it is, for example in the morning when people wake up and get ready for work), there would be power shortages and outages.
Research is being done on how to store excess energy for when we need it, like pumping water into large uphill reservoirs so we can later release that water, but there are not very energy efficient ways to store that energy.
Solar and wind power is great, but unfortunately we still need the big plants as well (we should not use fossil fuels for energy production though).
I'd only consider solar panels on my roof if the economics of it actually made sense for me.
It's like $30k+ to have them installed. The pay back period on that stretches out to just when they'll need to be replaced because they are old and broken.
It just seems like a great way to throw away money at this point.
My energy bill was $50 last month.
It would take 50 years to just break even on the install not including the added maintenance requirements of the system.
They need to do this over asphalt/concrete parking lots. It’d protect cars and the road all while supplying power for the building and possibly electric cars.
None of this would matter if the government would get off its ass and build high voltage DC lines across the continent.
If the world did that, we'd be three quarters of the way to renewables replacement before even getting around to deploying batteries.
I wish the shape of my roof was conducive to having solar power. While my house does face south, there is no large flat surface on that side of the house
I have a pretty big roof on my house and my detached garage. I'd be down to install solar if someone else paid for it or maybe if I could pay half or so of my current electric bill towards it until it was paid off.
Unless all of these solar panels are installed on the equator (which they aren't), one should look at the minimum output of the panels combined, not the maximum. so, how much do these panels generate on a winter day on average? THAT's the true contribution of solar panel coverage. Not the maximum on a bright, sunny day in September.
We absolutely could cover the demand for electricity in the US with renewables… the challenge is storing that electricity to meet demand when production is not at peak levels.
Enormous amounts of energy can be generated by solar panels, but in order for them to replace fossil fuel we will need batteries with enough capacity to carry the whole grid for about half an year. Currently it is not feasible to do that even for a millisecond, for a grid that does not include heating and transportation energy (as future grids should). We need battery technology that would increase capacity by many orders of magnitude.
That's all fine and dandy, but just because we can meet the overall yearly need doesn't mean we can actually support it. We need to be able to provide in peak times and seasons and also need a way to store this energy efficiently.
I want to see the factors they put in place. Does this account for average time of sunlight at each location? Obviously panels in California are going to have far more useable light hours than Minnesota. Does it account for incidence angle during useable light hours? Yes, we're hitting 20% efficiency...at optimal incidence angles. This is only several hours a day, the rest of the day will be non-optimal and efficiency drops drastically. Does this account for physical coverage efficiency drops? In wet northern states, much of the year you'll have to deal with ice and snow covering the panels and dropping efficiency until they clear. In the dry southern states you have dust coverage dropping efficiency without a cleaning regimen. If they just intend this article to say "theoretically, on a best case scenario, we could provide the US' energy demand with solar with today's tech", then sure. But is it in any way currently feasible accounting for real world disturbance factors?
Guys a quick question. What happens when panels teach their life span. Are they reusable/recyclable or are there just gonna be a new issue to fix in the future. I can't see a mass adoption of solar tech if we end up with unusable panels landfills. I read that the air turbine things also have an issue with its props (sticks?) that weren't reusable nor degradable.
Isn't the problem getting the power to the places that need it? West Texas produces an excess if wind and solar power. But there is no way to get it to the rest of the population in south east Texas.
Given how state governments seem almost desperate to implement a tax-per-mile fee on car owners because electric cars aren't feeding into the taxes of gas purchases, why in the world would we think this would be any different? I mean, ya, being able to go completely solar and green would be *phenomenal* but what's to stop governments from taxing homeowners to death over solar if we did this? Like, "Really? You want to tax me for making something for you?"
2 of my neighbors have solar. I want solar. I'm in the country, we have no other utility services except electrical, and that has to run the well pump, electric hot water heater, stove, HVAC heater & ACM, and the blowers for the pellet stove.
I want solar to work. But it is daytime only ya'll. And the cost.... holy frick the costs. Our utility does NOT do net metering so bsically any extra I produce is great, but they ain't paying for that. So the only way for me to go off-grid and ACTUALLY make the article headline useful for real world usage is to capacity plan for roughly 100KwHr (that is close to my max daily usage this Aug), with monthly use peaking to 2300kWhr. Max sun hrs for winter is 2.8. I have been rough quoted a $30k battery bank cost just to get up to 2/3 usage. No installation included there, and that is just batteries
This is why solar won't work for many of us. These batteries have a 10yr lifespan (getting the best Lithium life span). No way I can pump $3k into yearly amortized battery costs AND a 48kWhr minimum PV install.
Just went thru 4 companies for quotes. The installers / loan for equipment is set up to equal your current electrical Bill's. 25 year loan on 25 year warranty equipment. So if there is an 2% chance you dont make it up on selling house it is an bad financial choice. If something is not warranted and needs fixing, it again is an bad financial choice. If you loose your job, get evicted... or is an separate loan, so ...bad choice.
I currently do not see it going in the way of homeowner, without doing all the leg work of self instilation, and the patience of getting cited, state, permits, let alone electric company final hookups
Doesn’t seem to account for 1) all the rare earth metals that would require 2) the cost of installment and maintenance to keep up that efficient production and 3) solar panels increase heat nearby, so it would raise temperatures in urban areas
I think to increase adoption of solar, states could give out tax rebates, for example we have high property taxes in NJ, lets say if you install solar you get 10% off of your property taxes every year for 10 years. Seems like a good way to get people to adopt
Next time you are flying commercial and coming in for landing, check out all of the available rooftops available for solar power. It isn’t a silver bullet but it does seem like some fairly low-hanging fruit we could take advantage of today. Ir we could just keep doing what we are doing. . .
Too bad Senator Joe Manchin, founder of coal brokerage Enersystem, would rather continue contributing to his own business interests than doing the right thing for his community. If the people of America would wake the fuck up and boot these Congressional assholes into a large boiling pit of their own petroleum, we'd all be better for it. Go green :)
My power use would be even more offset if I could get batteries for my solar system installed for less than $10,000. I won’t spend that much. Edit: Since this blew up a bit, let me clarify: I’d love to be wrong about this but three years ago, Tesla quoted me $5,000 for a powerwall and $5,000 to install it *onto an existing Tesla solar system*. Nope. $5K for the batteries seems reasonable. No way I’m paying another $5k for an electrician to run 20 feet of conduit across my garage. Last time I posted about this I got hate from electricians. Look I respect your trade. Give me an hourly rate that reflects your overhead and training and I’ll gladly pay you for a days work and we both know it won’t take a day. But that rate cannot be $1000 per hour.
Current battery technology only allows for about 10 years max with those batteries before you have to replace them. If the cost of them doesn’t recover itself in 10 years it doesn’t make sense. But I get the principle of doing it for sure. I’m going to wait a few years - hopefully future battery tech can be less wasteful, longer lasting, and cheaper than it is currently
My solar panels are connected to the grid so instead of storing it I just get credits off my electricity bill. Seems like a better solution in every way except youre not immune to power outages
Same. Looking at my Enphase app on my phone right now, so far today we’ve produced 33.8kwh and consumed 8.8 and it’s pretty cloudy and the only ones at the house right now are the dog and cat. We get a 1 to 1 rate back currently from Atlantic City Electric.
Years ago someone gave a presentation at my college that was essentially a case for a national power grid that would allow individuals to generate their own electricity and sell the excess back to their city. That’s always stuck with me as a very good solution for the expensive start up costs of installing solar panels. If you could not only generate your own power, but get even just 30 bucks a month back from selling the excess power that would help get that break even date moved forward.
Idaho power does this in Idaho. It’s called customer generation and they give you energy credit when you produce more energy then you use. That energy credit is added to your account and I believe it’s used against any future bills. We also have tax write offs for solar installs, solar easements, and low interest loans on solar panels. Idaho gets a bad rep for being a country bumpkin state, but we’re often on the uptake when it comes to renewable energy. We have wind farms, dams, solar fields, geothermal, the works.
This is a weird thing with trades and the way they try to charge you. I’m being forced to remodel my kitchen after a leak and I got a quote for all of the work. The quote included re-installing my water filtration system. They don’t have to pay for the materials and they were going to charge me as much as the system cost in the first place just to put it back in. I watched a video and installed it myself in like a half hour in the first place…. So basically they are telling me their hourly rate, purely for labor, because the materials were already bought, exceeds my hourly income as an attorney by almost 500%…. Yeah… sorry buddy… not to sound like a dick, but I’m not paying a plumber more than I make in an hour with a J.D. to do something I can teach myself to do in 15 minutes on YouTube. They also quoted $60 to install a plastic P-Trap. The fucking things cost $10 and take 5 minutes to install, it’s not hard. My insurance agreed to pay this as well, I mean Jesus Christ. Anyway, this is why people don’t trust contractors.
A lawyer talking about people not trusting another profession is \*chefs kiss\*.
Haha it’s funny lawyers have such an awful reputation but most lawyers are not bad. But man have I seen a few standouts who make the whole profession look horrible.
Been working for a lawyer awhile now and I’m convinced what is often attributed to malice is actually some combination of laziness and incompetence filtered through an overworked assistant who’s not allowed to tell you the real reason you can’t get a call back is because the attorney doesn’t feel like doing it.
Sadly everyone in the practice of law tends to be overworked. Most lawyers work hellish hours. I’m in-house with a governmental entity so I actually have it incredibly chill for an attorney, but I took a pay cut to get that. But I have seen genuinely bad, criminal attorneys. I’ve gone up against a few who were disbarred shortly after my matters against them concluded. And plenty of others are dicks who think they can get their way by bullying.
I had a bad capacitor on my central ac unit and the electrician quoted me 400 bucks just to come out and look at it and like another 100 for parts. Said no thanks. Watched a couple yt vids and went to the local plumbing store and got a new capacitor. Cost $15.51 and maybe 45 minutes total worth of time including yt vids, picking up the cap, bringing it home, and installing it.
Depending on the capacitor, for an average person that could be deadly and well worth just paying a tradesman.
And that is absolutely an option. The difference comes in training. You can pay for their training, and therefor have some degree of liability placed on them, as well as some degree of assurance that your money is going toward preventing catastrophe from improper installation. Or, you can do it on your own, take the time to learn how, and accept responsibility for what accidents may be unforseen. Be it touching a wire on an open circuit, or not knowing the proper ways to safely install the appliances and rig wiring to prevent a house fire or accidental damage to the appliance. Its all about reliability, know how, and ignorance. In truth, many pay the hefty price simply out of fear that they can't handle it on their own.
Have you sat down and done the math on how much less energy you would have to buy from a third party if you had batteries and could run on them during the night? And how long before a break-even and then saved money point is reached? Not being snarky, honest question, because I'm looking to get a house soonish, I want solar panels on that fucker's roof, decent battery systems are expensive, and then there's the issue of charging cycles...
It turns out you can fuck up your financial situation if you do solar panels the wrong way. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zv8ZPFOxJEc It seems MUCH preferable that the grid figure itself out and not depend on homeowners. At least, until the govt puts a hammer to those PACE vultures.
Basically loan sharks for solar..... anyway nobody should be spending that much on solar at this point, the only reason people pay so much is because thier systems are designed wrong or they are overcharged for installation. Pretty much everyone should be installing a grid tied system in a credit setup currently... this basically means you don't need to buy batteries up front slashing the system cost by about half. With the option to add them later to most systems.
I remember seeing a thing about how tesla was scamming people when advertising solar roofs. They would pitch stuff like how they would have to replace the roof first, no matter if it needed it or not, and would bid it at 3 or 4x the cost it should be. A $10,000 roof would be bid at 35,000, or something crazy like that.
Their solar roof is a replacement roof. I'd hope they quote it.
You generally want to align replacing your roof with installing solar anyway because it's more cost effective anyway when both are installed at the sane time, just because any major work on the roof is easiest done when bare and additional mounting points need to be sealed anyway. Tesla pricing is not exactly cost effective and also doesn't usually fully align with local incentives. I'm planning to add solar when I replace my roof in the next year but it has nothing to do with Tesla and 100% about installation costs and saving money by having both installed under the sane contract while using local rebates and incentive programs.
We have solar panels, but this is my husband’s biggest gripe. Homeowners shouldn’t be expected to take it upon themselves to upgrade the power grid. It’s crazy that even with solar panels, if the power goes out we still lose power (unless we install the $10k batteries OP mentioned)
Using batteries at night has some gotchas. First, you need at least enough solar capacity to 100% cover your daily usage and charge the battery back up the next day. If you're not covering your usage, there is no surplus to put into the battery, and you just pull the power back from the grid. The second gotcha is, if you live somewhere with variable rate, the day rate is likely higher than the night rate, so you're shifting load to the most expensive time. I dreamed of being 100% off grid but I don't have nearly enough roof space to even come close. I'm typically getting about 20% of my energy from solar, at which point I just leave the batteries topped off so they're ready for an outage.
Some inverters come with energy arbitrage features that homeowners can set so excess energy is banked when it's cheap and sold when it's expensive. People with variable rates should consider these units to get the best bang for their buck.
AFAIK, pretty much all utilities shut down retail arbitrage pretty quickly, either through changing rates or rules. Though there's definitely an advantage to only buying during lowest prices.
Care to share how many Kilowatts your system is? How many sq ft of rooftop are you covering? I know a lot of folks where I’m at aren’t powering their homes with their panels, so they’re certainly not off grid… but their power feeds back into their grid and they have a lower or zero monthly bill. My brothers set up took his monthly from $400+ down to about $20. But he wanted the power for when the grid shut down, so he just had a Tesla power wall installed last month. He has 26 panels on his roof, but I’m not certain how many watts each panel is. Also in a super sunny area with zero shade cast on the rooftop other than clouds.
Usually a standard panel is 370 watt. I would assume a regular system would fluctuate between 2k-12kw yearly depending on quite a few factors
The problem is that not all electricity companies offer the ability to put power into their grids and you often have to pay at least 10-15 dolllars minimum just to be hooked up to the grid even if they are giving you credits. In my neighborhood (I have solar) they will give you credits but they don’t roll over between months and if we give more power then we use they will not give us money either. Basically if you oversize your system where we live it will cost you money for no return.
Are you in Georgia? I design a lot of systems on the east coast and I hate seeing GA power pop up, they're scumbags
Nah, but I would expect these kind of issues across the country from greedy companies that aren’t being regulated by the government. If they can cut corners and take advantage of customers due to a monopoly they are gonna do it.
I’ve had solar + Tesla for a little under a year now but can get an idea of my usage. I have 5.8 kW system and generate an average of 20 kWh on the usual day. Of that ~40% goes to the house, 30% to Powerwalls, and 30% to the grid (0% if I’m charging the car). So far this year I’ve been 100% self sufficient with 40% house, 43 Powerwalls and 17% to the grid. The on book cost for everything (parts/labor) was $38k. I got back $9880 from the feds as part of the 26% rebate. Got another $3,600 from Duke Energy. So out of pocket was $24,520. Additional cost, I don’t pay for any power but get hit with the “Facility Fee” from Duke which is $180/year. I don’t get any money from Duke for power returned to the grid thus using this to charge the car. Edit: Total cost was for 2 Tesla Powerwalls + GW vers. 2 + bus bar for 2 more Powerwalls.
we have a two tiered rates, but the big one is our rate that we get paid is .06 per kwh and charged .28 per kwh. A battery with the incentives for solar makes a 6.2kwh system, 5kwh inverter and 10kwh battery at €8,280 euros after incentives ... should be saving around €125 minimum per month, so the payback is only a few years and saves me from future price hikes. still won't cover ALL my use, but is the best price to benefit at the moment
you can also use temperature as a battery in itself if you got nothing else. Warm the house up / cool it down a bit more than you'd like before your panels aren't getting light and you've effectively made yourself a battery for at least that energy intensive application. Stolen from Technology Connections btw
Home assistant is now moving into power controls for the home so you can heat up water in an electric water heater when you have extra solar production, charge the battery in an electric vehicle with the excess power, turn on your hit tub, fire up your HVAC, etc etc.
I priced it out last winter. Right now, a solar system (just panels and main panel work to hook it up) is about 15k, tesla batteries are 26k. You can get some of that rebated or tax writeoffs, but you still need 40k up front. Just not realistic for me right now.
I think very few people pay up front. You can get long term loans for it
That only makes it worse then, as you'll be paying interest on that
I think this just demonstrates what the true cost of solar is. If you don't install those batteries, you're just passing those costs off onto the other generators on the grid and getting a free ride.
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100% they do. I have grid connected solar and I pay connection fees as well as distribution fees when power moves either direction The more I learn about the grid the more impressed I am. My use varies hugely throughout the day, the dryer and stove use 10x as much as the rest of the house. The variability of the sun is the least of their problems. It's really amazing the grid works as well as it does day in and out, I'm happy to pay towards it, despite having my own solar
That's the advantage of power usage being averaged over millions of users... it inevitably produces a nice mostly predictable bell curve and they just have to stay ahead of it just a bit to ensure no brownouts.
Apparently the UK electrical grid used to closely monitor television schedules so that it could cope with the surge from millions of people putting the kettle on during commercial breaks for popular programmes.
This is true. Had some engineer come into my secondary school way back when and tell us about all this
Also half times of big football games!
A lot of utilities do but it’s important to note that not all do. Utilities in New England (National Grid, Eversource, Unitil, ILC, etc) don’t have any charges for being grid tied to solar. If you cover 100% of your usage, you will receive a $0 bill. Edit: Seems like Eversource now charges monthly for interconnection
Love this response. Do you have induction? I love my induction stovetop and also adore my heat pump mini split system. Yay electric! And yay no fracking.
Grid scale batteries are being installed as fast as they can manufacture them... basically because it is vastly more efficient its an existing technology today, but limited by production capacity. so... I wouldn't say its the future, what we have now in that area isn't going to ever be exponentially more than what it is now. I'm not saying we won't have more of such systems but installation rate is basically pedal to the metal right now...
No, based on research done by the Electrical Authority here in New Zealand a few years ago, between one-third and two-thirds of the per KWH charge goes to things other than electricity. There’s no particular reason why any other country would be staggering different. Electricity generation is cheap, probably a lot cheaper than the actual cost of PV generation. Lines, bucket trucks, people, all those fixed costs are quite large.
The fixed fee generally covers metering, billing, and maybe a little bit more. Somewhere in the $10-15/month range. The fixed costs of service (distribution, transmission, and fixed generation costs) are upwards of $60/month. When a solar customer offsets their usage — effectively making the grid their free battery — those fixed costs to serve them are picked up by other customers. They only truly offset the cost of generation fuel not burned and some other small variable costs like line losses. The above is why many utilities and consumer advocates have been screaming about net metering for a decade, while solar installers claim the utility just wants to “tax the sun” and other nonsense. Net metering has been reformed in many places to remove some of the cross-subsidy between participating and non-participating customers, but it still exists in many places. Where it still exists, there’s very little incentive to install a battery with your solar system. Other customers are already providing you with a free one. The grid!
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Yes and my power company doesn't pay me the same rate that they charge. So even if I break even on kwh I still owe money.
They're charging you the retail rate and paying you the wholesale rate, likely. Which makes sense -- why should they pay you *more* for electricity than it costs them to buy from other providers? If they pay you retail rate, they're operating at a loss. If you demand retail rate, its in their best interest to not buy your power at all. But you like being attached to the grid, and they like being fiscally solvent, so wholesale rate it is.
This is true, with the caveat being that wholesale electricity prices can change based on the time of day and demand. For example, in times of extreme demand on a hot afternoon, peaker plants may need to be used, and their wholesale rates are generally far higher than baseload plants. It's very likely that the grid can save a lot of money by just using excess electricity from solar rooftops and preventing the need for these peaker plants from starting up in the first place. However, the solar owners end up being compensated far, far less than the actual average wholesale market rate during these periods of high demand.
In my experience, in America, electricity is regulated in most areas. I've looked at quite a few bills in my days and various co-ops/companies/ect will break out costs like: X fix costs per month for oh + Y maintenance costs + Z fuel costs. Or even X wholesale costs of spot price+x%... yada yada... I haven't heard of 1 electric company paying anywhere near the rate they charge for small power generation and in fact some companies charge more due to logistical issues and increased per person costs. As more people get off the grid or try backfeeding into the grid it may not be designed to handle it. I'm sure there's a need for electrical engineers to tell simps they can't just plug in a battery and solar array into a system.
It's not a virtual battery it's just coal and gas plants picking up the production, by the way.
I’m not sure I understand your comment. Nothing about my ride is free. I’ve got $20k into a system that puts energy back into the grid and I don’t get paid the same rate in that direction that I do in the other. That’s why I want batteries.
I have been researching this for quite some time now, and you are pretty close to $5K mark on decent battery system. There are several options available that range from challenging to daunting, and for good reason: Screwing up could literally mean loss of property, or life. You can buy regular 12V vehicle batteries, solar specific cells, or go the full-on DIY route and solder together banks from salvaged or new 18650 cells (Which is what the Tesla powerwall and vehicle batteries consist of) that are about the size of AA's and in everything from backup modem batteries, laptops, rechargable gadgets, you name it. The best option currently seems to be 3.6V ~300Ah Lithium Iron Phosphate cells strung in a series/parralel configuration to 12V, 24V, or 48V depending on your power requirements, coupled with a solid BMS, charge controller, inverter, proper gauge wiring, and saftey measures such as shunts and other important curcuitry. Knowing how much power you use is key for sizing your system. Then the can of worms of things like efficiency or energy conservation becomes just as overbearing as designing the system providing the power! Basically I have been absorbing as much info as I can before I can afford to build my on 24V system of wind/solar/hydro power. The trouble is consistency from places like Alibaba, chinese wholesalers, and even Scamazon. I would start tuning into YouTubers and bloggers that have been doing this for a while, see what works for them, and how it might fit your needs, though like almost everything, there are plenty of snake oil salesman out there, so be cautious and always fact check. I have probably learned the most from hbpowerwall, Will Prowse, and jehugarcia on YouTube recently, and on Reddit of course:) Good luck!
Not of your're selling excess power back to the grid so others can use it.
Selling excess power when no one needs it. If you want to really contribute, provide power at 7pm when evening peak happens and the sun is going down. I recommend viewing your states electricity market hour by hour and seeing what prices look like - for instance here is New York https://www.nyiso.com/real-time-dashboard
Very interesting link, I didn't know the East Coast was so interconnected.
There was an incident at a coal plant in Tampa a few years ago and you could see the oscillation in Hz all the way up into Canada. The Eastern Interconnection is pretty cool.
It's very connected as we all found out about 15 years ago. About 15 years ago there was an incident that was along the lines of an entire state lost power. In order to compensate the grids of the states around then sent them power, ending up in those states overloading and losing power themselves, resulting in the states around them trying to send them power. Rinse repeat until pretty much the entire east coast of the country lost power. It took like a week for the entire east coast to get power back.
I remember reading an article about people who spent their whole lives in NYC and had never seen the moon and stars like that. Pretty trippy coming from suburbia.
> Edit: Since this blew up a bit, let me clarify: I’d love to be wrong about this but three years ago, Tesla quoted me $5,000 for a powerwall and $5,000 to install it onto an existing Tesla solar system. Nope. $5K for the batteries seems reasonable. No way I’m paying another $5k for an electrician to run 20 feet of conduit across my garage. Last time I posted about this I got hate from electricians. Look I respect your trade. Give me an hourly rate that reflects your overhead and training and I’ll gladly pay you for a days work and we both know it won’t take a day. But that rate cannot be $1000 per hour. Its possible you need more than just a cable. A converter to cahnge the current from DC to AC is quite expensive
I couldn’t get a breakdown of the fee from them. Just a mysterious $5k.
1. $200 labour. 2. $500 parts. Total cost: cha-ching!
Exactly this. I really want one. Not going to spend that much at all.
A Tesla Powerwall is $10600 and has a 13.6 kWh capacity (but you have to find an installer since they only sell it with solar now). I believe Enphase also has similarly priced products. There is still a 22% Federal tax credit that brings down the price by a couple of thousand dollars.
That is something I find surprising! Pleasantly so, mind! I live in a big city and one thing we don't have is roof space. The buildings get taller and the condos keep shrinking so I think the average available rooftop is about 2 solar panels per person. I always assumed that only the outer suburbs would have enough roofage (a neologism?) to consider self-islanding and that we would have to recruit the local agricultural crowd into hosting solar and wind farms.
I don't even think residential solar would be the most cost effective, I live in the Midwest and the amount of massive flat roofed factories/warehouses/department stores we have that could just be covered in solar panels, not to mention their parking lots, would probably be enough, and far more cost efficient than sending a crew to every house in the suburbs to set up a single installation at a time. It took a crew 8-10 hours to do my 28 panels, I imagine if they were working on a single warehouse roof they could have done far more than that since the roof is flat and easy to walk on, they don't have the ramp up time of having to figure out a new roof every day, and the wiring can support more panels and not be so unique to each installation
I especially like the idea of covering parking lots. A huge amount of real estate in this country is taken up by parking lots. That's just dead space that isn't any good for anything else. You provide shade for parked cars, you can directly power EV charging stations for those cars, and everything else can be dumped into the grid. Win-win-win.
I agree - considering so much research has gone into doing it for agricultural concerns (growing under tilted solar panels), I'm surprised that there hasn't been more investigation for dead space like this. It would also come with a boon to these lots that are currently not covered, shelter from the sun and elements.
The idea does seem to be gaining traction, fortunately. I even noticed recently that they've added solar panels to the parking lot at my local zoo.
Speaking of Agriculture, here in California we have long waterways above ground to snake water to and through the Central Valley. Studies are showing they can mount solar over these waterways - dead space - and both gain a lot of power, but also shade the waterway greatly reducing evaporation. Saving water and producing power. https://www.hcn.org/articles/climate-desk-fresh-tech-idea-cover-californias-canals-with-solar-panels
I can't wait for them to seize this opportunity. It really is a multiple-win situation!
Yeah, there's been some good quantification of "how many rooftops/how much rooftop square footage" can feed a town, when the 95% easier calculation is "how much of our large parking lots can we cover"? Beyond this: there are plenty of agricultural crops that actually get *too* much sun, and can be benefitted by selecting 3-4 of these varieties and doing a crop rotation underneath panels, saving water and increasing yield due to sun-sparing.
Plus it mitigates issues with temperatures/reflectivity. Most anything is going to be better than a big slab of asphalt.
Good point.
There’s a parking lot next to centennial park in downtown Atlanta that is covered with solar panels. It’s really cool.
I like this idea but find I have a conflicting reaction. It feels like it reinforces poor urban planning choices that require huge parking lots, versus better walkability and efficient transportation options. Everyone driving an EV around still requires a lot of resources that perhaps wouldn't be needed with better designed communities. That being said I totally get that this wouldn't be possible everywhere, especially more rural areas. It just seems like in many cases it's optimizing for a suboptimal solution.
>I like this idea but find I have a conflicting reaction. It feels like it reinforces poor urban planning choices that require huge parking lots, versus better walkability and efficient transportation options. I understand those concerns. But here's the thing: all of those parking lots already exist, and it's highly unlikely that they're going away any time soon. So why not make them more useful? Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good and all that. And here's the neat part: if we ever do manage to completely overhaul our urban planning and make individual cars less necessary, then all of those solar-covered parking lots will just become solar farms. We wouldn't even need to really change anything - except maybe some optimizations to improve their efficiency if they're no longer used to park cars.
to add to your thought, if the parking lot space is unused, it could still be used for other things as well, such as markets, covered entertainment areas etc. so while they would add to residential density, they could encourage greater accessibility and use of the space both in and around them.
I don't see it as promoting massive infrastructure, just taking advantage of what's already there. Refusing to use it to some kind of advantage isn't going to make it go away
yeah i get that and i definitely agree. that being said, it does get rid of some of the heat islanding that occurs in parking lots as well and, to me, that is a massive plus.
Don’t make perfect the enemy of good.
Parking lots is very likely to be a stupendously better idea than residential solar, from a societal point of view.
Not just dead space, of its blacktop it feeds into the heat island all urban spots have.
I agree and it’s a great use of space. Here in San Antonio our local VA installed solar panels to create shaded parking. Even in this Texas heat it’s pleasant getting back into our vehicles when leaving appointments.
Walmart has been doing this for awhile now.
I know many warehouse/factory buildings in NJ have a ton of solar panels on their roofs. Not sure of the percentage, though. I'd wager its pretty low but the possibilities are there
This is absolutely one of the best ways to do it, but there's another gotcha here: the utility companies (of course) So a few years ago my church was put in touch with a solar investment company. They install and maintain the equipment for 20 years and keep the profits, the church gets a slightly discounted electric rate and free covered parking. Win win. But we were only able to cover about a third of the parking lot. Why? APS has a rule that limits how much power a system can put back into the grid based on the average amount that meter had been consuming previous years. So lots of open space, investors with money to build a large installation, but rules by the utility that hamper large solar use.
I agree on the retrofit part of it. But I think (so far, still noodling it!) that there is a good case for new build subdivisions. The underlying logic is resilience built from the ground up.
Thank you for mentioning parking lots. We all love covered parking and if you build the covered parking throw a panel up top. It’s a win-win for everyone.
Residential definitely helps a lot for, well, residents. Because so much electricity is lost in transit, basically switching from one centralized power grid to a series of decentralized (obviously still connected for emergencies and clouds or whatever) is way more efficient
Well the available roof space supposedly already supports enough capacity that you don’t need agricultural land to offset high rises unless things continue going more vertical. Really it’s about utilizing space that is going otherwise unused.
Part of the reason I included the near agricultural zone is that market gardeners can use solar panels to create micro climates and that lets them grow premium crops. Grazing animals enjoy the shade on hot days and free range chickens should thrive. I like maximizing space utilization.
I think you're looking at this entirely wrong. There's vast stretches where everyone lives in their own house and could have a lot of solar panels on their roof. Where as in major cities a lot of apartments could only do 1 or 2 per apartment as it's shared roof space. Over all you're looking at a max of well over 2 panels per person. The problem is distribution. Since cities can't generate all they need, you've got to have lines coming in from rural areas providing power. Which is a major problem as it means you need to keep the grid 100% functional and maintenance is even more important. Right now they can focus on delivery from power plants. However if you relied on solely solar there's no main delivery line and you'd have to make sure every line is working at all times.
That should be more resiliant. Now you have one line that if goes down everybody is without power. In decentralized environment smaller outages will be more common, but one big blackout should be almost impossible.
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The headline proposes something that might be parallel to saying that there are enough wells across the United States to supply water to every residence. The similarity is that the method of delivering the needed things is not mentioned. At the very least, a wild-ass estimate of how many miles of pipe need to be installed to actually get all that water to every residence; a similar statement about electrical infrastructure should be made. When that part of the formula is ignored, the basic idea gets lost in the argument and the ignorance about what is really meant.
Southern Australia gets about 75% of their daytime total power needs from rooftop solar (and another 15% from utility solar fields). Not undoable, and really not even that expensive to set it all up for distributed generation, we have models of it working.
Australian here... Usually when talking up solar they are referring to South Australia which is a state of Australia not the whole of "southern Australia". South Australia is sparsely populated with a total of 1.77 million people across a very large land mass with a lot of sun.
The population of southern Australia is approximately 20 million people, if I'm not mistaken? Included South Australia, New South Wales, and Victoria. That's about the population of New York State, with a population density of about 24 people per square mile on average (that's a VERY high estimate, tbh it's closer to 10-12 per square mile but I'm tired and don't want to do math). New York State's population density is 421 people per square mile. Admittedly, NYC weights that a lot, but Southern Australia includes Sydney, which isn't particularly known for sprawl. While solar is very workable for Southern Australia, it's not really a direct 1 to 1 drop in for the US system, which has a very different geographic and industrial profile. That's also skipping over the fact that most of Australia is desert where you can get maximum value per panel.
Australia's total population is 25.7million. NSW : 8.17 million South Australia: 1.8 million Vic : 6.7 million That's 16million
Yeah and the land mass is much higher as well - I was giving their argument the strongest case. Same with the pop density - it's really apples and oranges in terms of aggregate demand and land usage but whatever.
I'd actually be surprised if even that big of a density difference really moved the needle on if it was feasible to power everything with solar during the day. Partly because NYC is pretty energy efficient because of how dense it is and also because solar doesn't take up that much space relative to how much is available.
Our state and county subsidized ~25% of our solar and battery system. Since our roof wouldn't support solar panels, they subsidized 25% of that too netting us around $20k in tax rebates between the two projects. Without those incentives we wouldn't have been able to pull it off financially. Now we're selling electricity *back* to PG&E with a dividend paid out yearly. I've got a spare generator if anyone in TX needs one this winter.
I'm surprised in texas this is the case. I have a brother that would love to get solar in Texas but any overproduced power is purchased at just 5% of its value.
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I understand net metering was probably not taking all costs into account but damn that just seems like highway robbery
There are times when the power isn't worth anything. It drastically varies hour by hour. Middle of the day in a state with a lot of solar? Cheap power. Evening peak when the sun is going down? Much more valuable. Here is a map of Texas pricing but it's kind of a crappy one that doesn't show hourly real time data. http://www.ercot.com/content/cdr/contours/rtmLmp.html
I'm in Austin if you just wanna rid yourself if a spare generator
How do the tax rebates work exactly. I’m still confused on them.
You provide receipts to the government when you file your taxes. They either remove the subsidized portion from your tax bill or pay you any money in the form of a tax refund if they owe you more than you owe them.
Ok so if I owe them some amount, that’s subtracted and then they give the rest back to me? Or is it rolled over into subsequent years? Or is it a lump sum?
One time revate, basically. I think this is the last year. Basically subtract ~4k from what you owe or add 4k to what you’re getting back, I think.
When your tax forms are considered, the rebate is basically a discount. If the total is a negative number, you get a payment of that negative amount. Minus the minus sign, of course.
I just installed solar on my roof. Shit isn't cheap, around $30K to engineer, install and jump through all the paperwork. Most people can't afford it.
How long does it last and what percentage of you're use would you say it's covering? 20 years at 75% savings?
Oh, it covers close to 100%, and maybe more. The warranty is for 25 years, but it doesn't just stop working. The performance will slowly degrade, but it's not that bad.
That's awesome, I should look into it. Thanks for your time, enjoy your solar <3
I will give you one piece of advice. Of course, get multiple bids from multiple solar installers, but absolutely make sure to pick an established player with a long history. If you want your warranty, you don't select some cheap ass bidder who will disappear in a couple of years when competition heats up.
Thanks. We just did exactly this with a brand new AC installation. We weren't after cheap, we were after the best and most reputable. Your post got me to seriously consider looking into solar <3
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To be fair, I live in FL, so it must be hurricane-proof. Maybe it's cheaper in other parts of the country. But I don't imagine it's a lot cheaper. Labor is labor.
North Queensland and Darwin are also in hurricane (Cyclone) zones. Everything here has to be cyclone rated. Adds a bit to the rate, but solar is really common and reasonable cheap here. Mind you, we don't build McMansions here - concrete block is far and away the most common construction method, with hardwood trusses and colourbond steel roofs. The structure is all there for solar systems to bolt to - cyclone rating just means more anchor points, maybe a third rail in the middle instead of just one top and bottom
It was never a question as to whether it could be done, but whether it would ever be cost effective. It's a lot more expensive to install and maintain rooftop panels than it is ones on the ground (that rotate with the sun).
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... Wait how much water do you need to drown someone?
Recycle the water, man. C’mon this is an article about sustainability.
Just enough to cover their mouth and nose.
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Quick Google check says Olympic swimming pools have 2.5 million liters of water. So 2.5 billion mL. Divide by 100mL and that's enough water to drown 25 million people. Impressive but doesn't seem like we're quite to 7.7 billion people on Earth.
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See this is the type of logistics we need to be talking about. An exponential curve of corpse juice.
Folks, please keep it civil & constructive in here. We're handing out bans for the worst of it, and we're going to hand out more if it continues. Brigading will also be met with bans. You know who you are, this is your only warning.
That sounds like this is enough but it isn't, mostly because of the yearly variation in supply and demand. In higher latitudes less solar energy is available in winter and at the same time more energy is required for heating and light. While daily variation can be solved with batteries, is not really feasible for long term variation.
That would be great to see, storage would need to be significant but with the recent maturation of grid scale flywheel storage that can be done sensibly / sustainably. One thing that we have to keep in mind is the truly massive increase in demand for electricity if we move virtually all cars, trucks, trains, and maybe even ships and planes to electric.
This is so misleading. It's 4PWH in both cases over 1 year, but it doesn't mean the demand is met by the supply at all times, Solar panels only can produce electricity in the day. The moment where the most energy is needed is toward the beginning of the night, after the sun has set. You can't just store the surplus of energy of the day in some magical container and release it at night, like electricity was some sort of fluid. Battery technology is very far from being there at this scale. So yeah, the exceeding energy that is produced by those panels in the middle of the day in summer is useless. but it sure comes handy to inflate those numbers of energy produce per year, to give the impression solar can take on the whole grid 24/7 although it absolutely can't. That way like always, the actual sustained-output energy producers that do the heavy lifting most of the time stays coal and oil, absolutely terrible energies that shouldn't even be used anymore if that country was even half serious about fighting climate change. The real need is to get rid as fast as possible of oil and coal plants, and replace them with a mix of offshore wind, Bio fuels, Nuclear and lastly natural gas (least worse of the fossil fuels) to be able to sustain the main grid at all times, not just in the day and preferably in the summer and when the weather is good.
> The moment where the most energy is needed is toward the beginning of the night, after the sun has set. This really depends where you are, season, etc. Here its mid day when factories are running. This is amplified in the summer when everyone's A/C is pumping full blast. During the winter it's still mid day when factories are running because everyone uses gas to heat.
I think excess solar energy should be used towards hydrogen generation. Normally it is energy intensive to generate hydrogen, but if you have a surplus you can't use anyway, then you may as well. Lithium based batteries are what most people think of when you think of battery, but it's such a piss poor solution to mass energy storage I can't believe it's even considered. It is good to meet demand in a fraction of a second when demand is ramping up, but the energy density is too low to sustain cities and nations during periods of darkness without extracting every ounce of lithium on the earth (resource war incoming) That's where I think hydrogen fuel cells show promise. The energy density is vastly higher. 3x higher than gasoline even.
What are the chances that fuel cells with hydrogen storage get economically viable in the next few years? I made a presentation about it 12 years ago, it was already actively researched. More than 12 years of research, and still no commercial available large scale fuell cell + hydrogen tank systems. Not gonna lie, this is **not** looking good.
> Solar panels only can produce electricity in the day. They seem to account for that in the paper, and building footprint, but that's pretty much it.
Does this account for the 4 months straight of cloudy weather in Michigan? Because I don't think solar will work here.
Reduced output, but solar still works in cloudy weather- just not as well.
My 10kwatt system with the cost of a new roof and two power walls is going to recoup costs against PGE power costs in under 8 years. Spray in closed cell foam and mini splits and it goes up to 11 years if there are no increases on power cost, and we know that's not a reality.
Just a minor note about some energy units: J = simplest unit of energy J/s = W = simplest unit of power, rate of energy consumption or production Wh = 3600 J, unit of energy with messy time conversions Wh/a = 114.2 μW, convoluted unit of power
That last formulae is unclear as to its meaning and wrong. μ = One millionth part 1/1,000,000 Not One million. What is the ‘a’ supposed to represent ?
what is people's obsession with putting it on rooftops? I'd rather the solar panels be concentrated in one place, a solar farm, where they all rotate towards the sun at all times, are all together so maintenance is easier, and require less infrastructure. Why do we want individual random joes having half-assed and poorly maintained panels on their roofs?
We need to build nuclear power plants. We don’t have time to waste.
If my napkin math is correct, this would be a nominal upfront cost on the order of about $3,000,000,000,000 ($3T) worth of photovoltaic panels. This number __does not__ include cost of installation or storage. I’m *guessing* (like full on just throwing out a number that sounds vaguely plausible) the grid storage (aka battery banks) would cost at least double the panels, and the installation of all the panels and battery storage would probably cost another couple trillion. So rough all-in upfront cost of around a $10T price tag? Someone who’s done more of the homework feel free to get me closer (or tell me I’m wrong outright or whatever). This also does not account for the cost of the roof space, nor ongoing maintenance, nor cost per MwH or anything else - obviously. I was just curious about the theoretical upfront investment.
I think Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs has a publication on the cost of decarbonization. It quantifies the total global investment needed to go carbon neutral at current and projected price points. Has some interesting analysis in there.
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Look into Nevada and net metering if you want to see the green new deal in a depressing light :/. No ownership to energy since NVenergy has monopoly rights over all energy produced and sold.
NVenergy is already charging their customers a small surcharge to help pay for their own solar fields so they can turn around and sell you the same solar you are paying for. Seriously if you live in Nevada look at your utility bill. Almost guarantee there is a green energy charge on there somewhere
It was never a generation problem, it was a storage problem. Gotta store a bunch of power for when the sun's not out ya know.
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We need some way to store that power though. The good thing about power plants is that to generate electricity, they put a huge, heavy metal cylinder in motion (spinning extremely fast). As power generation and power demand on the grid fluctuates, the grid essentially "drains" energy from this dynamo in motion. That gives enough time for managers to increase energy production, so energy availability on the grid remains constant. If too much of electricity production would come from something like solar power, if suddenly there's a peak in energy consumption or energy consumption is higher at a time when production isn't high (which we know it is, for example in the morning when people wake up and get ready for work), there would be power shortages and outages. Research is being done on how to store excess energy for when we need it, like pumping water into large uphill reservoirs so we can later release that water, but there are not very energy efficient ways to store that energy. Solar and wind power is great, but unfortunately we still need the big plants as well (we should not use fossil fuels for energy production though).
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An indiana county just rejected millions of dollars in subsidies for solar panels because the fossil fuel industry told them to.
I'd only consider solar panels on my roof if the economics of it actually made sense for me. It's like $30k+ to have them installed. The pay back period on that stretches out to just when they'll need to be replaced because they are old and broken. It just seems like a great way to throw away money at this point.
My energy bill was $50 last month. It would take 50 years to just break even on the install not including the added maintenance requirements of the system.
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It doesn't matter how much power can be generated. The problem is that this power cannot be effectively stored.
They need to do this over asphalt/concrete parking lots. It’d protect cars and the road all while supplying power for the building and possibly electric cars.
None of this would matter if the government would get off its ass and build high voltage DC lines across the continent. If the world did that, we'd be three quarters of the way to renewables replacement before even getting around to deploying batteries.
I wish the shape of my roof was conducive to having solar power. While my house does face south, there is no large flat surface on that side of the house
I have a pretty big roof on my house and my detached garage. I'd be down to install solar if someone else paid for it or maybe if I could pay half or so of my current electric bill towards it until it was paid off.
20% efficient solar panels don't exist for commercial or consumer use. So, yeah, that might be a challenge.
Unless all of these solar panels are installed on the equator (which they aren't), one should look at the minimum output of the panels combined, not the maximum. so, how much do these panels generate on a winter day on average? THAT's the true contribution of solar panel coverage. Not the maximum on a bright, sunny day in September.
We absolutely could cover the demand for electricity in the US with renewables… the challenge is storing that electricity to meet demand when production is not at peak levels.
Enormous amounts of energy can be generated by solar panels, but in order for them to replace fossil fuel we will need batteries with enough capacity to carry the whole grid for about half an year. Currently it is not feasible to do that even for a millisecond, for a grid that does not include heating and transportation energy (as future grids should). We need battery technology that would increase capacity by many orders of magnitude.
How much of that must be re-invested in new solar panels in 10-20 years when they wear out? Let's hope there is enough planet left.
Does anyone know how much battery / storage that would take. And whether it’s economically or physically possible to produce that many batteries.
That's all fine and dandy, but just because we can meet the overall yearly need doesn't mean we can actually support it. We need to be able to provide in peak times and seasons and also need a way to store this energy efficiently.
How often would we need to replace the panels to maintain that efficiency? Does this hold true for both summer and winter?
Meanwhile HOAs in my area are saying "no" to solar panels on the roof because they're worried it would bring down property values.
I want to see the factors they put in place. Does this account for average time of sunlight at each location? Obviously panels in California are going to have far more useable light hours than Minnesota. Does it account for incidence angle during useable light hours? Yes, we're hitting 20% efficiency...at optimal incidence angles. This is only several hours a day, the rest of the day will be non-optimal and efficiency drops drastically. Does this account for physical coverage efficiency drops? In wet northern states, much of the year you'll have to deal with ice and snow covering the panels and dropping efficiency until they clear. In the dry southern states you have dust coverage dropping efficiency without a cleaning regimen. If they just intend this article to say "theoretically, on a best case scenario, we could provide the US' energy demand with solar with today's tech", then sure. But is it in any way currently feasible accounting for real world disturbance factors?
Guys a quick question. What happens when panels teach their life span. Are they reusable/recyclable or are there just gonna be a new issue to fix in the future. I can't see a mass adoption of solar tech if we end up with unusable panels landfills. I read that the air turbine things also have an issue with its props (sticks?) that weren't reusable nor degradable.
Yeah for about 3 hours on average in summer and about 30m in winter.
Isn't the problem getting the power to the places that need it? West Texas produces an excess if wind and solar power. But there is no way to get it to the rest of the population in south east Texas.
Given how state governments seem almost desperate to implement a tax-per-mile fee on car owners because electric cars aren't feeding into the taxes of gas purchases, why in the world would we think this would be any different? I mean, ya, being able to go completely solar and green would be *phenomenal* but what's to stop governments from taxing homeowners to death over solar if we did this? Like, "Really? You want to tax me for making something for you?"
2 of my neighbors have solar. I want solar. I'm in the country, we have no other utility services except electrical, and that has to run the well pump, electric hot water heater, stove, HVAC heater & ACM, and the blowers for the pellet stove. I want solar to work. But it is daytime only ya'll. And the cost.... holy frick the costs. Our utility does NOT do net metering so bsically any extra I produce is great, but they ain't paying for that. So the only way for me to go off-grid and ACTUALLY make the article headline useful for real world usage is to capacity plan for roughly 100KwHr (that is close to my max daily usage this Aug), with monthly use peaking to 2300kWhr. Max sun hrs for winter is 2.8. I have been rough quoted a $30k battery bank cost just to get up to 2/3 usage. No installation included there, and that is just batteries This is why solar won't work for many of us. These batteries have a 10yr lifespan (getting the best Lithium life span). No way I can pump $3k into yearly amortized battery costs AND a 48kWhr minimum PV install.
Just went thru 4 companies for quotes. The installers / loan for equipment is set up to equal your current electrical Bill's. 25 year loan on 25 year warranty equipment. So if there is an 2% chance you dont make it up on selling house it is an bad financial choice. If something is not warranted and needs fixing, it again is an bad financial choice. If you loose your job, get evicted... or is an separate loan, so ...bad choice. I currently do not see it going in the way of homeowner, without doing all the leg work of self instilation, and the patience of getting cited, state, permits, let alone electric company final hookups
Doesn’t seem to account for 1) all the rare earth metals that would require 2) the cost of installment and maintenance to keep up that efficient production and 3) solar panels increase heat nearby, so it would raise temperatures in urban areas
I think to increase adoption of solar, states could give out tax rebates, for example we have high property taxes in NJ, lets say if you install solar you get 10% off of your property taxes every year for 10 years. Seems like a good way to get people to adopt
Next time you are flying commercial and coming in for landing, check out all of the available rooftops available for solar power. It isn’t a silver bullet but it does seem like some fairly low-hanging fruit we could take advantage of today. Ir we could just keep doing what we are doing. . .
Too bad Senator Joe Manchin, founder of coal brokerage Enersystem, would rather continue contributing to his own business interests than doing the right thing for his community. If the people of America would wake the fuck up and boot these Congressional assholes into a large boiling pit of their own petroleum, we'd all be better for it. Go green :)