We’ve all seen the ads. Some offer “free” solar panels. Others promise nearly free energy if you just purchase a solar — well, solar system doesn’t sound right — maybe… solar energy setup. Many of these plans are dubious at best. You pay for someone to mount solar panels on your house and then pay them for the electricity they generate at — presumably — a lower cost than your usual source of electricity. But what about just doing your own set up? Is it worth it? We can’t answer that, but [Brian Potter] can help you answer it for yourself.
In a recent post, he talks about the rise of solar power and how it is becoming a large part of the power generation landscape. Interestingly, he presents graphs of things like the cost per watt of solar panels adjusted for 2023 dollars. In 1975, a watt cost over $100. These days it is about $0.30. So the price isn’t what slows solar adoption.
The biggest problem is the intermittent nature of solar. But how bad is that really? It depends. If you can sell power back to the grid when you have it to spare and then buy it back later, that might make sense. But it is more effective to store what you make for your own use.
That, however, complicates things. If you really want to go off the grid, you need enough capacity to address your peak demand and enough storage to meet demand over several days to account for overcast days, for example.
There’s more to it than just that. Read the post for more details. But even if you don’t want solar, if you enjoy seeing data-driven analysis, there is plenty to like here.
Building an effective solar power system is within reach of nearly anyone these days. Some of the problems with solar go away when you put the cells in orbit. Of course, that always raises new problems.
Where do you see the free solar panel ads?
Never seen any of them.
In witch country of the entire world do you see free solar panels? O_o
Solar Zero, in New Zealand, is one example.
Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. You can even search the internet to learn about things you know nothing about.
Unfortunately, Solar Zero recently went bust, but, you know, it’s still a viable business model. Probably.
Solar Zero went bust, but they weren’t really free, you still had to purchase the electricity you used off them for 20 years
Do you avoid streaming video services and run an adblocker on your web browser?
I certainly can’t speak for the whole world but these seem pretty common (and annoying) throughout the predominantly english-speaking world in north america/the uk/australia.
Of course the panels are not really free, there is just (supposedly) no up-front cost to the homeowner in whatever scheme/arrangement is being advertised.
and by “these” being annoying I mean the ads, not necessarily the services. One business model is essentially that you agree to let a solar company install panels on your roof, and in exchange you agree to pay them a fixed rate for the power their panels generate for a certain period of time. Of course this is just an abstract form of lease or loan, but it’s not necessarily better or worse than a regular lease or loan.
If the lease payment is structured as payment for power consumed it at least incentivizes the provider to maintain a working solar power system. That avoids a common (well publicized?) problem of shady operators doing poor work and leasees paying for inoperative solar panels.
“…throughout the predominantly english-speaking world in north america/the uk/australia.”. 3 countries from 200+ in the world…
The world it’s a little bigger than 3 countries…
You got an answer to your question, and now you’re complaining?
Now take a step back and look at the first couple of sentences of the article. Then look at Leonardo’s original question. Get it now? No, we haven’t all seen the ads.
ziew – pshaw you have too seen the ads
I’m well aware that there’s a big, beautiful, wonderful world beyond those borders, and I’m glad that its inhabitants visit Hackaday too.
I answered, because I took your question as a serious one, and thought it might be relevant that it happens in a few countries that collectively account for about 20% of the world population (and the majority of hackaday readers, I believe).
(also.. there’s more than one predominantly english-speaking country in North America)
Australia. We had energy companies offering free installation, but you’d end up paying twice or three times the price over 10 years.
It’s much better on the second hand front. I see them listed on Facebook marketplace a lot. 200w panels that are 15 years old but still functional, offered in stacks of 5 or 10. It’s a daily occurrence, to the point that I want to get a couple dozen and use them to shade my walls. But I haven’t figured out how to use them to power an AC without being super unstable or involving batteries.
I installed a small solar system eight years ago, and the panels’ output was supposedly not to decrease more than about 10% in 25 years. Well, now after only eight years, their output has decreased about 40% (and yes, that’s when they’re clean). So if you get used panels cheap, just prepare to buy and install a lot more than you thought you needed.
I had like 14x 255Watt panels on the house i bought. They are worthless here so i gave them away for free including the inverter. New 440Wp solar panels cost here as low as 40 to 50 euro per panel. They are dirt cheap. Its simply just dumb not to buy them.
“Rent-a-roof” was a thing in the UK some years ago. The solar panel company leased space on the homeowner’s roof and installed their solar panels. The homeowner had free use of the electricity but the company kept all of the Government subsidies. When the subsidies ended the scheme died.
And the aftermath is that their houses are now virtually unsellable.
The rent a roof conditions mean that you cannot remove the panels, turns out the small print says even for maintenance of the roof.
Gee…. I guess it sounded too good to be true.
DON’T BUY those solar panels ! If you live in one of the following regions, the governement will offer them for free. Click for more info.
Typical french ad on internet.
In the UK too.
I had a salesman come to the door just yesterday peddling such an idea. Claiming no cost to me up front, they install the panels and I buy from them at a rate less than the utility company. If the moron new anything about what he was selling he would have seen I have little roof space that faces south.
This was in Michigan, USA , where our sun accounts for 4 hours a day on average.
They have signs and ads up everywhere where I live, but it is a lie. They install solar panels on your house for free, then charge you a little less than your electric provider for the electricity that you use. You still get a electric bill every month from the company that installed your solar panels instead of a bill from your local electric provider.
What part of that is a “lie”? If you’re getting your electricity cheaper AND you didn’t have to pay for the panels or installation (or maintenance), why would you not want to take advantage of that?
They were big in the UK for a while due to government incentive schemes, they’ve died out now though as solar + battery has gotten very cheap.
You don’t have to have the ‘sell your electricity to the grid’ special arrangement to be grid-tied.
A hybrid system will use your power when you have it, and ‘top it up’ with grid power if necessary.
This means you don’t have to build for peak capacity. Indeed you could just have a couple of hundred watts, which will offset that much previous grid consumption. You can gradually expand your system as you go.
yeah you don’t have to have a perfect solution to the storage problem, you can have a vaguely good-enough solution to the storage problem instead. but man net metering, for the customer, truly is the perfect solution. that’s why it was mentioned as one extreme of the range of solutions.
I started off with 2 x 300 watt panels, then doubled it. Then I had six x 400 watt panels added. Photos can be found here:
https://www.quora.com/Today-is-Earth-Day-How-are-you-contributing/answer/Steve-Heckman-1
In California, the CEO of PG&E recently admitted that rooftop solar plus everyone switching to energy-efficient appliances (LEDs, heat pumps etc) is a major cause of the electricity rates soaring to 50c/kWh and beyond.
You see, they are legally bound to deliver profit to shareholders. And since they’ve been selling less electricity to energy-efficient and solar-enabled customers, they have had to raise the prices on everyone in order to make line go up. This isn’t speculation, this was stated publicly in an open letter to customers.
That means customers chasing efficiency is zero-sum, or worse…they’ll raise the rates to ensure you keep paying more, even as you use less and less energy.
PG&E will say that since solar doesn’t produce during the night, solar-enabled homes still need to pay into the infrastructure. What they conveniently ignore is that California used to have rolling blackouts in the summer, especially during heat waves, as air conditioning took a heavy toll on the grid. We haven’t had those blackouts in years. Even with the heavy adoption of EVs, rooftop solar is infrastructure paid by private individuals that is solving their infrastructure problem for them.
You’d think that would offset the language of subsidies and characterizing people (who paid 30k+ for solar installations) as leeches on the infrastructure. We could keep going, and make a distributed grid.
But they don’t acknowledge anything that doesn’t make line go up.
Looks like macegr gets it and spelled it out well. The utilities have been on a 150 year old gravy train. The State regulators make sure the utilities make their profits year after year but it’s worst, it’s a growing profit of over 9% more each year. So there will never be a way to decrease bills unless:
1) you go off-grid and some counties have laws preventing that and it doesn’t help the rest who are grid-tied.
2) your local government purchases the infrastructure and creates a local Municipal Utility. There are many across the country already and I think I read that Berkeley just voted to go that route.
3) your State representatives pass laws rewriting the contracts with the utilities eliminating the perpetual profit growth. Unlikely since so many have retirement funds heavily vested in the utilities.
How can you stop someone going off-grid, even with legistaltion? Surely you own your own fusebox and house wiring.
Same way that in many USA states its illegal to collect and store the water landing on your roof from the sky.
Land of the free
In nearly every populated place in the USA one needs an electrical connection to obtain a Certificate of Occupancy. However there is nothing requiring one to actually use grid supplied electricity.
Even if they were operating on a no-profit basis, this would still happen.
Solar power puts strain on the transmission infrastructure, and generators that are needed to supply the power during the absence of solar sell less energy (lower utilization factor). Larger and faster changes in the demand curve mean you have to use different kinds of generators for load following, which are more costly to operate.
Even if you just keep the same equipment and infrastructure, but you sell less energy for it, then the unit price of the energy must go up to pay for everything.
People treat the power infrastructure as if you can just ignore the cost of the system in the calculation for the cost of the energy. It’s like counting your cost of mileage by the gasoline alone, ignoring the purchase and the maintenance of the car. Imagine if you owned two cars: one “solar car” and one “regular car”, but you don’t drive twice as many miles in a year for it – what happens to the cost of driving?
And if you just increase your usage charges to offset the decreased demand from users who are turning to local generation, you create a positive feedback loop where the price incentivises people to reduce their grid usage even further. Splitting the maintenance charges into a fixed fee for each connection decouples it from market forces and is fairer than just pushing more and more of it onto a smaller and smaller proportion of grid customers.
A fixed fee split among customers puts heavy grid users at an advantage over people who use very little grid power. That creates a tragedy of the commons situation where everyone is incentivized to make the maximum use of the grid while everyone else is paying.
I cannot follow your reasoning. The cost of the grid is independent of usage. Maybe if you’re thinking “hey, a heavy user is only paying 5% of their bill for connection and a light user is paying 50%, so the light user is paying more” which is completely bogus reasoning. They’re paying the same number of dollars in both cases, because it’s a fixed fee.
He meant fixed fee for maintenance charges, not for the total energy use. That would still be an extra per-kWh charge.
The benefit to the user is dependent of usage. If the infrastructure cost is divided evenly among grid connected users as flat fees regardless of the amount of usage, then the total unit cost of power (fixed plus variable) becomes greater for those who use less of it, and less for those who use more.
That means the people who are trying to save energy would be subsidizing people who aren’t.
Now that is bogus reasoning. Your cost of power is the amount you have to pay to have it. Your real unit cost per kWh is all the fixed fees plus variable fees divided by the number of units you use. Obviously, if there are fixed fees, then the real unit cost goes down the more you use.
This is exactly the error in thinking I’m trying to point out: ignoring the fixed costs as if they don’t exist. People are saying silly things like, “Wind power is free because the wind costs nothing”, omitting the fact that they just paid a million dollars for the turbine.
That’s why you need to have two parts on the electricity bill: one for the kWh (which is zero for solar and very low for wind), and one for the kW (which includes all costs for balancing, storing and maintaining the grid, and the building cost for solar and wind). No matter how you combine these two together to get “one” price for electricity, the combined price will rip someone off.
Funny you should mention maintenance in this context. The utility above was simply skimming profits from rate increases rather than maintaining their lines as we all expected. The deadliest wildfire in California was caused by a known wear item that hadn’t been replaced in approximately one hundred years.
The “strain on infrastructure” argument rings hollow when in fact, reliability has increased during times when the power has historically been catastrophically unstable. Rooftop solar doesn’t export to a grid that doesn’t need it, and the demand curve for heat wave induced air conditioning surges closely lags the irradiance curve. All this on top of widespread EV adoption, which naysayers also claimed would strain the grid.
It’s not as simple as all that, and a lot of work has been happening some places while neglected in others. But the plain fact is that power in California is nearly five times more expensive than other states, which are also experiencing rooftop solar installation and EV adoption.
All the above totally glosses over the bald statement by PG&E’s CEO that we are, in fact, using less energy, due to switching to energy efficient appliances and rooftop solar. Which they actively encouraged us to do, and then raised rates so that they wouldn’t lose money. The best bootlicking that can be done here is that they grossly mismanaged communication, and failed to extrapolate the outcome of their own policies.
Yes, but that’s a different problem.
Yes, because of new investments in the grid infrastructure. Not all of it has been neglected. New transmission capacity is built constantly in order to sell solar power to other states – otherwise it could not generate any profit. You can’t claim that simply adding solar power alone has solved all the problems without anyone doing anything to the grid – that’s simply bullcrap.
I admitted that it was an oversimplification above. But the truth is going to be somewhere in between, especially if you compare energy rates with a few other utilities operating in California.
They’re getting generation capability that they didn’t have to pay for. They’re installing battery plants, and selling ungodly amounts of energy at high rates to new customers such as multi-megawatt-capable EV fast charging networks.
A cynical person could note that they seem to be making big moves in directions that maximize profit.
In fact, just today, PG&E asked the CPUC to authorize the another rate hike. The justification was plain and simple: it wasn’t for undergrounding lines, it wasn’t to build infrastructure to handle solar. The stated reason was that they thought shareholders should receive more of an investment return because of (this monopoly’s) risks of doing business. https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/pge-rates-20230429.php
Now that is very expensive. The batteries alone cost 2-3 times the average cost of power on the grid on a unit of energy basis. The only reason it makes economic sense is because of the peaking grid prices when power is not available.
Which generates power that they have no use for, and is preventing them from selling any of their own. See the duck curve.
So we got two problems stacked up. The truth isn’t somewhere in the middle – the truth is simply that there are two problems and solving one doesn’t solve the other.
Suppose we didn’t have the monopoly issue and the power market was free and competitive, but we’d still be pushing subsidized home solar and net metering etc. The power utilities would still have to charge you more for losing their sales while having to build and maintain extra infrastructure, such as bigger and longer transmission lines, back-feed capable distribution transformers, load shedding devices, batteries, monitoring systems… so you’d be looking at the power prices and still complaining, “Hey, why are we paying double over the average? Who’s skimming the fat?”.
The point here is, the rate hikes would happen anyways because the need for the infrastructure doesn’t go away.
The difference is just how much extra profits they’re skimming off top. If you throw away the corrupt businessmen, the extra cost of a system of having essentially two sets of generators each doing half-duty doesn’t magically go away. Maybe instead of paying five times as much as the rest of the US, you would “only” pay 2-3 times as much.
It the 70’s and 80’s AT&T was regulated [monopoly] utility and they were allowed to make a certain percentage of profit above their operating costs. — Which meant the more they spent, the more they made with no incentive to control expenses.
Many electric utilities still operate under this model.
But we did get Bell Labs, so…
Yeah, the energy company is directly responsible for the fire! They provided the electricity for the direct energy weapon system! We could be talking about how to make solar more practical or affordable instead of shocking (or boring) each other by talking about how rich the greedy energy companies are, and will forever be rich and greedy!
Seems there are several ways of addressing the problem ( https://chatgpt.com/share/67dd6ba4-adcc-8005-9167-16ce93430e47 ).
The difference between demanding ever greater profits and the increase in cost to deliver each unit to the grid supplier is often orders of magnitude! Yes with lots of local generation the grid infrastructure will get less used and may end up running faster to react but more expensive to run powerstations etc. But that isn’t even close to the mark ups many of these companies seem to be doing, largely because they can bigger profits better… Though your national laws, the companies involved etc do mean this isn’t a universal problem.
Which has to be one of the best arguments for just going off-grid in many places. The extra batteries and/or occasionally expensive to run generator are somewhat expensive upfront but it doesn’t take all that long for it to be paying you back and then some. Though the situation isn’t that bad everywhere, as not all the power companies are so unregulated and thus exploitive, so from the POV of doing your bit to help green the grid, not spending more than you need to on your own system etc having a grid connection is still something I’d hope most people will find a viable choice.
The cost of a regular transmission system is roughly at par with generation costs. Doubling the infrastructure cost puts 50% on top of the energy prices, and doubling the generation costs puts another 50%, doubling the cost to deliver power to you.
Meanwhile, the profit margins aren’t 100% on the price. The common gross margin on the energy market is around 50% and that’s before taxes and business expenses. The net profit margin is around 8-10%. That better than for many industries, but not wildly abusive despite the monopolistic conditions.
It’s easy to speak in hyperbole to make a point, but that comes with the danger of believing in your own BS and losing touch with reality.
Except with local power generation the cost of the transmission systems doesn’t generally change anyway. As you are actually demanding less transmission as a rule with more local generation the existing infrastructure can cope unchanged, and much of that infrastructure is almost zero maintenance cost.
Which when these most toxic companies are just flat out not investing in providing the service of their secure monopoly anyway… It is a cost that doesn’t count really, as the money isn’t actually being spent. As long as they get your money because you have no other option but to pay them and they can make ever bigger profits they don’t care if your lights are only one 1 hour a day with rolling brownouts or the grid is 24/7 reliable – its all about the profits and you get more of those by not bothering to do that pesky investment to provide a good service (till the system collapses anyway, but that doesn’t matter to the suits – one golden handshake later and they can move on to ruining another company’s longer term prospects in the pursuit of ever greater profit).
So really it is only the generation cost increases that can be justified in passing on, and those are pretty marginal in increase in cost per unit terms. As the cost to them of the fuel etc doesn’t generally change per unit produced very much, yes the more intermittent nature does cost more and across whole cities worth of power generation a few pence per unit becomes a pretty big number, but it is still only a few pence extra cost per unit, figure a 25% profit margin on that extra few pence of costs for good measure and your still talking in terms of a few pence, maybe into the tens of pence – which is just peanuts compared to the extra the customers (in some places anyway) are being charged on the thinnest of excuses.
That doesn’t negate the point. Solar enabled homes still need to pay into the infrastructure. If the infrastructure works better on some point because of solar power, good, but the infrastructure does not go away or become free to use because of that one point.
I’m saying that private rooftop solar owners contributed to a peak capacity response capability that PG&E didn’t have to build. Assuming PG&E even wanted to extend capacity to cover air conditioning peaks, how much would enough peaker plants cost, to be sitting unused most of the year? And here is a generation source that happens to overlap with the majority of the problematic demand.
The rest of the year, we can gobble up excess generation at 3 cents per kWh and then sell it at 40 cents per kWh to EV fast charge operators, or bank it in a storage plant and sell it back to the owner who generated the energy at 10x profit.
Macegr,
You seem to be a solar owner and that is commendable. Don’t let the fact you spend your own money to build out your system cloud your judgement on what it costs to maintain a traditional power generation system for the popularion. From the land purchase or lease to equipment and it’s maintance, whether running or idle it still need to be maintained. Not to forget the personnel and their equipment who must show up 24/7 365; weekends and holidays.
Yes I have read PGE has failed to maintain their easements and allowed overgrowth. This is failure of prioritizing maintance. Look to the fires in Houston as an example of similar behavior.
While that’s bad faith with a monopoly utility it does not mitigate their cost to operate the infrastructure and power generation for the masses they server.
Power lines dont grow on trees. Sometimes trees grow into power lines.
I actually don’t have solar. I would like to, but the power company has us on a treadmill where no matter how much we spend on rooftop solar, battery storage, efficient appliances…they’ll still get their money. Don’t let the power companies cloud your judgement on how much rooftop solar and appliance replacement cost to homeowners, it’s they who are getting something for nothing, not the rooftop solar owners.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting here with ever increasing power bills…I have seen over $900 in one month for a 3br/2ba with the thermostat set to 62 in the winter, and according to PG&E’s own data for my neighborhood that wasn’t untypical usage. Literally shivering while the power company raises energy rates at a pace that cannot be accounted for due to the reasons they publicly state, and internet shills parrot. I also get to stare down the barrel of increasing or cancelled home insurance due to wildfires they caused.
Again: they are getting access to significant infrastructure that they didn’t build. That needs to be acknowledged as something closer to a wash, rather than blaming solar owners for leeching off the system.
That’s false. Solar does not “respond” – it’s non-dispatchable generation that does not contribute to PG&E’s load response reserves.
But solar is well predictable, so it cannot be difficult to balance things out. It will take some effort from the energy companies and end their ‘money for nothing, chicks for free’ way of working.
That’s also false. You don’t have the storage plants. Nobody has – not to the extent that it would make any meaningful difference.
The system is presently working by the “virtual battery” principle, which is exporting the power at the low price to get rid of it (and collect the REE subsidies from the state), and then buying the expensive power back from other generators and other states when needed.
One extra E in REE, but you get the point. The producer gets state and federal subsidies for simply generating the power, so they can make profit even if they just give it away. Someone in a different county or off-state gets to use it, and then when you need it back they charge you the full price in return.
Homeowners get net metering, so while the value of the power to the utility is essentially zero at times of over-production (again, see, duck curve), they still have to generate the power back at full price and give it to you for free. That also counts in the price hikes you see: the cost of the power you get for free is added to everyone else’s bills.
“the cost of the power you get for free is added to everyone else’s bills.”
It wasn’t free. It costs tens of thousands of dollars, much like appliance upgrades and other energy efficient practices that PG&E openly encourages, and then admits it will not reduce our bill because they will just keep increasing rates to keep the profit coming.
I am tired of you responding with “that’s a different problem, but I’m going to ignore it and talk about how infrastructure costs money.” I’m not stupid, I understand that rates will adjust depending on how infra and energy sales are distributed. The problem you want to ignore is exactly the thing I am trying to bring up. The rate increases are not based on actual cost, nor do they acknowledge the cost of private investment in distributed energy generation, nor do they account for added and demonstrable grid resiliency due to privately owned micro installations.
In my ideal world, utilities would be publicly owned and if enough distributed generation and storage was installed to allow ramping down residential traditional power grids into microgrids, then that would be done. I would wish for such operations allow the concept of obsoleting themselves if better solutions arise. Currently, these companies operate as a monopoly and actively discourage competition and better solutions, they must grow but there is no more room in the market or our wallets.
Beware a few electric companies don’t like private solar panels. They might pay you only 2 or 3 cents per kWh back if your panel produces excess electricity into the grid. (and I pay over 14 cents per kWh off demand and 24 cents during peak time, DTE sucks)
This is the situation I’m in but its not the power company its government corruption in the US anyway. They have these “power pools” in in SPP jurisdiction. They negotiate with Mexico to buy the power Northern power pools negotiate with Canada. The problem is they negotiate for s*** like “a lower price for avocados if we give them power for next to nothing” I don’t get any avocados, I don’t benefit from the avocado trade, and I’m not subsidized by the government for the avocados to in light of everybody else is getting for a lower price for avocados. I don’t even eat guacamole! but here we are eating >75% hit to our power sales to keep guacamole cheap…
Of cource it’s avocado! Not idiots who elected goverment…
That’s purely supply and demand. Just because a customer has solar panels and excess generation doesn’t mean the grid has anywhere to send it. And grid generation and consumption must always be perfectly balanced, or things literally explode. If the price for exporting to the grid is low or negative, that’s not the grid trying to steal your generated power, it’s the grid telling you to STOP forcing them to take it.
This is literally the same mechanism they use for the big power plants – the only way to get an independent entity to stop pushing power into the grid is simply to make it unprofitable for them to do so. Households shouldn’t get special treatment.
We just need more flow batteries tied to the grid. Whether that’s at the spot of power generation (the homeowner’s system) or at the central power utility could be argued (who pays the cost, where is it most efficient/safe, etc.), but the argument, “Oh, we just have too much (clean) power being generated and dumped into the grid…” is a little wanting. (If homeowners were dumping CNG into the grid you darn well know utility companies would find a place/method to store it.)
And lots of them. The only problem is cost – even flow batteries aren’t exactly cheap as they rely on materials that become short in supply if you start building them.
The issue is that the price of things like vanadium will hit the roof if you try to build the batteries, because they’re materials that are not economical to mine by themselves. The production is coupled to other mining, because they’re found in mineral deposits that are mined for copper, zinc, iron, etc. so the production volumes are coupled to those primary metals. If you want to increase just the production of vanadium, or whatever special metal you need for the flow batteries, the whole cost of the operation shifts to that metal and the price goes up 100-fold.
That’s why they’re trying so desperately to invent organic flow batteries that don’t need these special materials. It’s a field of study that’s only 10-15 years old, so we’re still waiting for that breakthrough.
While it is disappointing to have such a huge discrepancy it really isn’t that big a problem for the solar household. The reason to go solar is rather more you don’t pay that 14 or 24 cents, and many days might not pay anything at all to the power company! So any money you get back for exporting extra energy is just a bonus really.
And as the company does have to maintain the infrastructure… In effect the energy company middle man between your export and consumer is extracting some value that helps cover the infrastructure costs you are otherwise benefiting from while not paying for in the same way as the conventional purely consumer household.
It’s beneficial to the solar household, but detrimental to others. The cost to others is presently greater than the benefit to you.
I try to use all the energy I generate. My electricity provider buys (aka the electricity I export) at a much, much lower rate than they sell me units.
You’re all forgetting one thing.
Never mind the CEO, the board of directors, the shareholders, company owner, whatever.
It ultimately comes down to the folks on the front line.
The INSTALLERS (and / or designer of the system being installed).
I’ve seen way too many installs where the work quality is pure horse manure !
Homeowner has some monkey punching holes in their roof.
The holes end up being improperly sealed, and you have leaks going on.
Leaks that ultimately destroy the roof years after the fly-by-night installer is long gone.
Or improperly installed electrical work (the micro-inverters, the grounding straps, etc).
Even the switch gear.
Yeah, the AHJ is “supposed” to inspect and sign off in accordance with local codes.
Lately been witnessing “approved” work that is absolutely worthy of the wall-of-shame.
Had one roof collapse because of the weight of the panels + snow load exceeded the
design limits of the roof. Installer/company, no where to be found. Senior homeowner
left holding the bag.
Industry certification bodies for solar installers ? ha ! paper certification mills. Just
show up, pay the tuition, you’re a “ceritified solar tekkneshhun” ! (yeah, this is how
you plug in the connectors – what about doing a structural assessment of the
existing roof rafters and the type of plywood used, can it support the weight of
the panels ? what about torque values for the bolts ? how about the type of
metals and the possibility of galvanic corrosion ?).
Yeah, good luck rolling the dice on getting a qualified and conscientious
solar installer. Even if you’re a licensed P.E. with a masters in EE and work for
a utility company as a transmission engineer – the home owner insurance
companies would prefer you let some highschool drop out who attended
a week long class on “solar electric installs” do the work – again, they’re not
a roofer – or architect (to calculate loading on the roof rafters, etc).
The entire industry is the wild west right now.
Re: the installers.
All good points, and it rewinds back to the Taylorean speudo-scientific “efficiency” employing the cheapest procured labor that barely meets the minimum requirements (finished high school … can read and write and follow some of the simple directions when told to) for the employment.
That and the inevitable “separation of knowledge/expertise” that comes built-in with any enterprise. The contractors paining the house walls “in any color you want” could care less if the drab green walls induce depression and maniacal thoughts – he is not a therapist.
As far as I could tell the solar installs I’ve personally witnessed (nearby enterprise covered their entire roof with solar panels) it is more of a craft that pays the salary than a profession that require thorough education.
(as a side note, some of EE certified pplz I’ve known were guilded craftsman, literally, but not professional engineers who can troubleshoot, say, stray electricity zapping one through the water flowing through grounded metal pipe in an old house – that was way beyond their expertise; the story continues – grounding ALL the pipes that led to the mentioned bathroom faucet didn’t fix the zapping, which continued on and off for some years until the next dry spell – the water table eventually fell low enough so as to make this disappear – I learned about the low water table from a serviceman fixing a natural gas pipe leak, according to him, ALL the manholes in the area are now permanently water-free, and have been for the last decade or so).
Point being, what pays the salary hires whoever applies, high school grads, etc. Just look at the average manager in the average more-or-less-large-US-corporation and pray tell me he/she/it is worth the salary paid (on the basis of merit, no less) :-]
I’ve seen couple cases like that, and the common fault is that the electrician who installed the house had plugged the grounding wire to the wrong terminal at one socket, leaving the washer-dryer or some other appliance without a ground connection, so the power supply of the machine leaks electricity through the water pipe and electrifies the entire plumbing. When the water table goes down, the soil becomes less conductive and you stop feeling the zaps because the concrete floor you’re standing on no longer conducts the current through your feet.
The person who inspected it and signed it off was not checking the connections as they should have.
Solar pannels are guaranteed to be profitable, when properly installed
and of course after due dilligance and research, as would be done with any other financial investment.
Then there are additional benefits, such as the peace of mind that comes from getting ludicrously low power bills, and the satisfaction of knowing how this increases the saleability of a home, in any market conditions.
Today when considering building, or buying a new home, coosing a site that has proper solar orientation, and roofs that co-incide with the standard 40″~1m width and local average solar inclination, is money in the bank, as a “solar ready” home. Go thenext step, and dial everything in with passive solar heating and cooling, and ultra high efficiency heat pumps etc, with enough roof area to contribute to car charging, and then
enter a whole different relationship with energy costs.
In times of economic uncertainty, it’s good to have that capability plus solar doesn’t always have to go on the roof ( https://youtu.be/WDSggkcnnic )and can be mounted in other orientations. ( https://youtu.be/LqizLQDi9BM ), using different materials ( https://youtu.be/3GIzZwQw4nc ).
Also (like me) do it (hack it) yourself!
400W solar panels for £50 each, secondhand. It’s not rocket science.
Yeah solar panels are dirt cheap. 40 to 50 euro per 440Wp. I also bought 2 EV car batteries from the junkyard for almost nothing. Hook them up to a hybrid inverter. And i literally have a negative energy bill. Lol best decision i ever made. I save a lot of money. Insane. I dont get why people are so stupid to not install solar panels.
i think it’s neat that if you live in a desert then your storage solution is basically cold air. run the A/C while the sun shines, and then turn it off at night.
not as perfect a solution if it’s not as sunny (insufficient solar power), or not as hot (you don’t have an all-day load to feed), or not as dry (your cold air reservoir won’t last through the hot night). but great for LA and Phoenix.
Well since some deserts get cold at night. Store that for the daytime.
I wired 4x (series) second-hand panels directly to one of the two elements on my water heater. No inverter needed. I designed a simple circuit that alternates the element polarity so the thermal switch contacts don’t fuse together (learnt the hard way). The other line-powered element is on a $20 timer. It activates right before we typically use the water, in case it’s not hot enough. That element is used in the winter a little. Works perfect and I save ~$700 in hot water ever year. ROI = weeks. I also connected the hot water’s thermal switch NO contact so that when the hot water doens’t need power, the solar electricity is diverted to a modified space heater. In the winter, this heats the house. In the summer, the thermostat keeps it off.
In Australia the most common way to do it is to buy a solar system from an installer (under a deal where you assign the up-front solar installation subsidies/rebates/whatever it is to the installer in order to reduce the cost of the setup) and then you get paid by the grid for excess solar and pay the grid when you need more power than your panels can provide.
Batteries are becoming more popular as an add-on to the system (i.e. store your excess solar in the battery and use it later rather than selling it to the grid at a low price and buying it back later at a much higher price) but they aren’t as popular because of the high cost and lack of subsidies.
Going truly off-grid with no grid hookup at all mostly isn’t a thing in Oz unless you are out in the deep bush somewhere with no grid access (and most people in that situation are people who were already off-grid with generators and stuff and are adding solar to the mix).
I wonder if it’s more cost effective to buy a Tesla power wall or equivalent, charge it at night on the ultra low rate off peak power pricing at $0.02/kwh, then shut off the mains during the day during peak periods at $0.25/kwh and use the battery system to power the home
I’m with a wholesale energy provider and my bill is mostly negative (have house battery, so are self-sufficient and mostly export excess), so what’s in it for the energy provider? How do they turn a profit for there shareholders if more people were in the same position? I guess they increase the monthly fee.
Also, is anyone concerned about the orbital solar comment? 😬
Dyson swarm made of solar panels would make Earth uninhabitable, suggests study.
https://phys.org/news/2025-03-dyson-swarm-solar-panels-earth.html
That’s called energy arbitrage, and is highly dependent on your area, your utility company, the energy mix in the area, and your finances. Some of those factors are out of your hands and can change dramatically over the period of time it might require to earn back your investment.
Probably won’t ever make sense with the powerwall, as they’re on the higher end of price/kwh, but with the right circumstances it’s possible for it to make sense. With the big factor being up front cost, if you can get the battery, you can typically get a solar system as well, which can give you even cheaper electricity than the grid and it can make even more sense.
We have huge numbers of solar panels on rooftops in Australia, it was all a conjob, we are now being told we will have to pay a fee to sell our spare electricity back onto the grid, even though we are already getting below market rates for the feed-in tariffs. I have solar and will soon have a lot more, but only so I can not worry about the stability of the grid, which has gotten worse recently and is unreliable during summer thunderstorms. Any spare power I have after the batteries are full will go into opportunistic computation loads, either AI inference or cryptocalculations etc.
A used Chevy Bolt 64 KWHr Battery can be purchased for under $3,000. Sounds like a good start for a Solar Power Storage Hack.