PG&E will find a way to keep their profit margin.
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/15/1142927418/california-plans-t...
Subsidizing solar is a perfectly good policy choice, but net metering is ultimately an unsustainable way to implement it.
Net metering does create stranded assets if everyone does it. But not everyone does. Further, the idea that the utility gains NO benefit from net metering is wrong.
The corresponding view that rate payers are subsidizing solar by paying additional grid costs is wrong. Solar reduces grid demand. This reduces required generation capacity. Capacity is very expensive.
I joked with my neighbour that we should wire up our homes and sell my excess to him at mid point and we would both be better off.
What would seem logical to me would be a base charge, they net meter you to zero, but then you sell power at the wholesaler rate. If that wipes out your connect charge you still have them the value that they would have paid for the power you made.
Maybe the base charge would have to be higher for net metered houses, it might have some subsidy built into it based on expectations of selling power to the client.
Net metering is as good a subsidy for green energy which we DIRELY need as any.
Making perfect the enemy of the good is bad enough as a general principle but is 100x worse when the future of the planet is at stake.
In a typical grid-tied system, the setup is such that any demand is fulfilled first by solar capacity, and second from the grid. If your array can fulfill 100% (or more) of your demand, then you pull nothing from the grid.
If you don't have a net metering arrangement and you regularly produce more than 100% of your local demand, then your options are to simply throw away the excess, or use a battery system to store it for later use.
If you have a net metering agreement, then the grid acts like a giant battery, which may or may not have input and output fees (think of it very roughly like Amazon S3 pricing). Ideally you have a 1:1 arrangement, where you can feed energy into the grid for free, and pull back up to whatever you supplied at parity pricing (eg: for free). But, there is no reason a utility company has to offer that arrangement, they could charge you some fee to supply energy if they wanted, and they could charge you some fee to pull energy back.
For the most part, the most cost effective solar systems will supply about 75-80% of your average monthly demand. It almost never a good investment to overbuild your solar system on the premise of making money off of net metering, as the rate you are paid for production is essentially a wholesale price, making you a micro power plant, which is not a very profitable business. Covering the bulk of your energy usage with your own solar supply, and then pulling a minimum amount of power from the grid to fill the gaps will tend to keep you at the best supply pricing tier.
I am not so sure that is true. Seemingly a large percentage of new installation costs are fixed (paperwork, labor, inverters, etc) with only a smaller portion for the panels themselves. For a minor incremental cost, you can fully provision your house.
An alternate way to look at the CA rule change is that CA needs more installed storage to shore up the shitty grid, and incentivizing people to install solar alone via net metering isn’t a great idea anymore. Remember that peak power demand is right around and just after sunset.
https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2022/10/ratep...
This is the trade-off you take when you become a quasi-government company. You get a low, but nearly guaranteed profit. Executives still get their bonuses, employees get paid, etc.
If they want more variable rates of return then they can drop the public protections and go full private like any other regular company.
Profit margin is after deducting all expenses. A lot of corrupt spending can be included in expenses to reduce the profit margin at will while still raking in the cash. So yes, that's absurdly high given how they operate.
What we should do is pay a large flat monthly fee for the grid connection, then a lower rate for generation/usage, rather than bundling the delivery costs in. This is how many other utilities (Gas, Water, etc.) are billed, and it makes much more sense. This would also line up better for people with solar panels, as those who choose to leverage a grid connection would lay in line with their utility, or could choose to go off-grid, if they didn't want to pay for the availability of the grid.
1) it increases resilience in disaster scenarios and a lot of high usage scenarios. I especially think back to Puerto Rico getting hit by the Hurricane, or the Texas icestorms or things like that. Having a lot of homes semi-independent of the grid would help people mitigate impacts, because you can rely on neighbors for certain things while the grid is down.
2) BEVs are going to introduce a huge additional burden on the grid. But if we couple it with a lot of home solar installations, it will reduce the impact to the grid and the grid can focus on more industrial tasks like highway supercharging for semis and those big challenges.
3) aside from the solar panels, home solar means a distributed storage for the grid too.
Net metering is flawed, but there's the baby with the bathwater argument. Let's introduce better incentives before chucking the flawed ones that are working, and I don't see that happening.
And it's hard to price the incentives. Home solar panels are going to change a lot with forthcoming perovskites, and home storage is going to drastically change with production Sodium Ion, high density LFP/LFMP in the next few years, and Sulfur beyond that.
What I think is ridiculous is the pricing of home solar+storage versus what the grid buyers get. If home solar programs could have their panels bulk-purchased along with grid solar purchases and then the grid providers have to get them installed to homes, it would swap the grid providers from opposing home solar to being incented to finding people to allow the installation.
I think the real issue is that the pricing is almost completely divorced from the actual cost structure, so the whole rate system is a kludge that gives everyone the wrong incentives.
Have the power fee set realtime by a market. The price might go to zero if there is excess generation.
Have the transmission fee capped by a regulator - and charge it for any kilowatt hours that enter the power network.
Allow third parties to arbitrage and offer 'fixed rate' deals, so consumers aren't at the whims of an electricity market with occasional sky high prices.
No, it doesn't.
I have solar+battery with net metering. I buy from the electric company at ~11.5c/kWh and sell our excess to them at ~2.7c/kWh for a difference of ~4.3x
As the sole entity that you can sell to - short of regulators being involved - they set the rate. And yes, there's already a monthly connection fee.
With net metering, wealthier home owners are essentially paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid which causes higher electricity bills for those who can't afford to put panels on their roof - sort of a reverse Robinhood scheme. I recall reading that with net-metering, non-solar households in CA pay an estimated extra $115 to $245 per year to cover the subsidies given to their wealthier neighbors.
This makes the false assumption that those “fungible” dollars are somehow earmarked for solar and the homeowners wouldn’t just spend them on some other, non-solar, goods.
And you can perfectly well size your solar appropriately so that you aren't net-positive pushing electricity back to the grid at all (or only a little).
As an individual with a solar install, I think this also encourages people to use the energy they produce directly, which also seems beneficial. For example, if your house is well-insulated, you can probably pre-cool it a few degrees while your solar is producing so that you don't need as much cooling during the peak times. If you can be home during the day time, you could set your car to only charge during peak times.
NEM3.0 incentivizes exactly that. It prices exported electricity at the avoided cost rate. During the late summer and early fall, between 7-9PM that can be more than $1/kWh, or 3x the average NEM2.0 rate [1]. Of course to maximize that rate you need to store energy and sell it back at the optimal time.
The average rate with NEM3.0, however, is much lower.
1. https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc-website/divisions/energ...
What will you do when it has been raining/cloudy for weeks straight like it has recently in California? For this period, wind has dramatically outproduced solar [1]. Even in the summer/fall, when there was severe wildfire smoke in the area, my solar+battery barely produced anything.
Sure, you can set up a propane generator (very expensive at the size needed for a full house backup), but then you are dependent on the propane-distribution grid. The dirty secret of "no-sacrifice off-grid" lifestyles is how much they are dependent on propane for heating and electricity.
Also, the grid's up-time is going to be better than your home battery setup up-time both because it is constantly maintained and it has access to a greater diversity of energy sources (wind, nuclear, fossil, large-scale storage) that are firmer than anything you can attach to your house.
The fact is that modern living standards (cars, TVs, comfortable temperatures) require a much larger amount of energy and energy-availability than most people can produce on their properties with solar. The additional energy has to be imported somehow, either from the electric grid or as liquid or gaseous fuels.
1. See Renewables Trend at http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html
This is exactly my sentiment and is the reason that we have made ourselves independent from the grid.[1]
However the math gets very difficult if you need to charge an electric car ... it's a tremendous amount of electricity to keep one, not to mention two, cars topped up after daily use.
The extra panel and battery requirements for cars are such that it really does make sense to be grid-tied and arrange your charging on off-peak hours, etc. That is what makes this so frustrating for typical homeowners - there's an obvious and sensible symbiosis here that would work well for (most people).
[1] That, and the fact that I hate PG&E with the burning fire of 1000 suns.
Theoretically, the grid is supervised by the California Public Utilities Commission, which has wide latitude to set standards and regulations for PG&E and others. The Public Utility Code is the highest law in the state of California[2], so IMHO a large part of the blame for PG&E's failures fall on CPUC's failed oversight[3][4]
[1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40913
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Public_Utilities_Co...
[3]: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CPUC-head-Michael-Peev...
[4]: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/pge-probation-lift...
Of course, in 1896 an Edison company merged with the derivative of the original San Francisco Gas, to become San Francisco Gas and Electric. By 1905, that merged with something else to become PG&E.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Compa...
The wider "grid" is managed by CAISO - the independent system operator.
LA's utility is municipally run, in contrast to the big 3 IOUs in the state - PGE, SDGE, SCE.
SDGE had a 50 year exclusive franchise agreement with the city of San Diego that recently renewed under slightly different terms. Notably, and I'm paraphrasing: the city has the option after 10 years to terminate under certain conditions. [1]
Enron lobbied for, contributed to, and profited off of utility deregulation over 20 years ago. [2]
[1] https://www.kpbs.org/news/midday-edition/2020/07/27/sdges-50...
[2] https://www.consumerwatchdog.org/newsrelease/lesson-enron-el...
How does that work with new homes being required to have solar installed? Is it just a net giant win for pg&e?
I’ll also second one of the main points of the author: do NOT get a solar lease. Either finance it through a solar loan or pay cash. A good solar company will not push you into a lease. If they try, talk to someone else.
Would I do it that way again? Probably not. But I have more wiggle room now.
He never reveals actual use, only savings. Still, at 0.25$ per kwh charged and an average monthly saving of 210$, we can work out that 860 kwh/month was saved, which amounts to 10,320 kwh per year. Actual use may be (far) higher, but we don't know.
Just these savings alone is triple my total electricity consumption (in the Netherlands) in a fairly similar weather pattern. And I'm not exactly frugal with electricity: big TV, washer, dryer, powerful oven, multiple PCs, and even a few small power hungry electrical heaters (due to very high gas prices).
I'm not exactly projecting a personal situation. Our government has established that median/typical use of a dutch household is 2,900 kwh/year in order to qualify for the new price ceiling, a temporary measure to keep energy affordable.
So here we're talking about 3 times more than an above average consumer (me), and what might be a factor of 4-6 more than our median. Yet the person is unlikely to live in a mansion as he can't afford to pay for the panels in cash. I don't mean that in a judgemental way.
Large scale permanent electrical heating/cooling in every room? EV car? What would cause such enormous usage?
Again, I don't ask this to justify usage, only to understand it.
When we moved in the electric consumption per year was way higher, 35 000 kWh. We have gone through and made the house more effective, better white goods, windows, better ventilation etc. We also sold about 2 000 kWh of excess production from our solar panels.
Definitely could be the case. Your situation is interesting in that it is opposite to the order of transitioning towards a heat pump over here. Perhaps a heat pump was your starting point as there was no gas connection?
Over here we start with gas heating (almost every house) after which we try to transition towards a heat pump. They say you should first insulate your house to the maximum possible before even considering a heat pump. Fail to do this and the heat pump won't even be able to produce enough. This calculation is of course locally specific, unlikely to apply to you.
In fact, many houses will never be able to transition and will end up with a hybrid pump as the maximum achievable.
Relating to our solar panel install (refer another comment of mine in this thread) we went through with one of those plug in power meters and identified about spot and average power draw for about 80 different devices, spreadsheeted those data up to try to get a feel for where our power was being consumed -- as often times we would hit 40-50kWh/ day consumption.
Predictably (in retrospect) the biggest culprit by far was the hot water system. While we couldn't conveniently plug a meter in-line, it was fortunately wired up on its own phase (we're on 3-phase), and with the solar system install came a smart meter, which then provided some hour-by-hour insights.
A timer in the circuit-breaker box for the HWS, along with an element change (replacing the 2k4 with a 1k8 element) massively reduced consumption there -- I expect very many people have inefficient, and/or poorly configured, and/or poorly serviced electric hot water systems that are chewing through vast quantities of power.
TFA seems pretty savvy, so you'd hope this kind of low-hanging fruit isn't their problem, but OTOH you're right that those figures are very high, and you'd expect someone looking in this much detail at their power profile would be off-peaking all the high-draw systems they could.
I would recommend anyone to do such tour of the house. You're very likely to learn a lot and be in for a shock here and there. Totally agree with you that most people are far away from a state of micro managing energy, there's big wins to be had with little sacrifices in convenience.
And yes, that was the background of my question: If I'd save 210$ in electricity per month, my very first question would be why I even use that much in the first place. Could be valid reasons for it, of course.
The answer is probably that you live 5-10 degrees north of him and don’t use as much air conditioning.
It frankly worries me. Heat pumps and EVs are going to spike consumption dramatically, where even smallish price and taxation movements will have an outsized impact. Not to mention the grid being able to handle it at all, as most people can't ever generate anything close to that level.
This is happening, in a big way: https://emp.lbl.gov/utility-scale-solar/
The main limitation AIUI is grid interconnections, i.e. there are a lot of projects in the backlog that can't be built until the utility approves and prepares for it.
> The lists of projects in this process are known as “interconnection queues”. The amount of new electric capacity in these queues is growing dramatically, with over 1,400 gigawatts (GW) of total generation and storage capacity now seeking connection to the grid (over 90% of which is for zero-carbon resources like solar, wind, and battery storage).
If you look at a system-cost ROI analysis, the difference between residential and grid-scale is that the latter requires more transmission lines and provides fewer jobs (which is a key part of the political economics), but residential solar comes out looking very bad.
Explicit subsidies -- which pay a part of residential solar capital costs -- are a much smaller force.
> Utility-scale solar power generation in the U.S. is surging. This year, almost half the 46.1 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity added to the grid will be solar, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and solar has contributed more than 30% of all new capacity in five of the last six years.
https://news.sap.com/2022/11/the-take-utility-scale-solar-su...
Residential solar has no complexity for siting, transmission infrastructure, takes different skills to install, and let's relatively wealthy people move fast.
Considering that power generation depends on the cosine of the angle between the sun and the panel - angle matters a LOT. Efficiency falls off fast if your angle is bad.
1) The money spent on panel rotators can be invested into having more solar panels.
2) Affixed solar panels are significantly more storm and hurricane proof. If there’s one bad storm with rotating panels, your investment principal is gone.
3) Maintenance costs increase when these moving parts eventually break. Fixed panels have no moving parts.
During the run-up on housing prices over the last couple of years, there was a belief that an owned solar system would raise your house's sale price in much the same way that a kitchen or bathroom renovation would.
Couple that with the supply and labor constraints, which made it hard to get the panels, battery, and installers you wanted in a timely basis - that raised the perceived home value yet again, because if you wanted to add your own solar later, it wasn't seen as easily doable.
I don't know that the ROI was ever great, but with both of those factors gone today, it's worse than it ever was. (Source: shopped for homes in 2020-2021, bought in 2022, tried to get solar installed, ROI made no sense.)
Looks like a 7 year return on investment after subsidies, 10 years without.
Even the wiring is DIY. Most people think this requires a lot of skill, but you are just adding an input to your panel board on your house.
Also, be sure to do your own roof measurements when you look over their proposals. For my project, they used fairly inaccurate aerial/sat photos, which got the shape of my roof entirely wrong. Had I accepted their offer, I'd have ~33% too many panels / racking that wouldn't fit on the roof.
I ended up sourcing all the materials myself. I got much nicer inverters (1:1 Enphase IQ8+) and PV modules (455W LG bifacial) than what they were offering (2:1 APSystems inverters, 355W Bluesun panels).
The real kicker: I had enough budget left over to have a professional solar installer install all the panels for me, so I'm not the one that has to get on my steep roof, plus I have a warranty on the worksmanship of the installation. Pre-incentive, I'll have spent about $24k on my self-sourced version.
At some point I'll write up a blog post about the whole process - parts selection and sourcing, finding an installer, permitting, etc. It's really not that hard.
I understand that there are reasons for this, but as someone with the qualifications but not the certification, I hate that I have to pay someone else to do things like this.
In my opinion, a good DIY solar company site would have transparent pricing and ability to buy components. I understand there are variations in installations and pricing may be different, but they should have a pricing catalog.
There are so many ways a rooftop solar installation investment can turn against you. If regulations change, your net metering goes away. If electricity prices drop, your ROI goes negative.
Rooftop solar is a fun enthusiast project, but it's a lousy use of solar panels. Community solar or utility solar projects are far better for homeowners. And for the environment.
The only reason people do it is that there are artificial incentives; it's not actually efficient in reality.
Roof leaks that are accidental are covered by insurance, and the work to remove or replace the panels is part of that. Typically you adjust your home insurance coverage by the value of the panels when you install them to make sure everything's covered.
That just leaves the chance that the installer work will be good enough to make it ten years but not twenty, and the insurance won't cover the damage. I don't know the odds of that. It seems like it would be infrequent, but what numbers do you use?
Price of electricity more than tripled in some EU countries in the last few years. Prices going up and OP reducing consumption will work towards reducing ROI period.
Also, “subsidies” are really just a quaint term for “made the working and lower middle class that can’t pay for such exorbitant luxuries pay for it through taxes and inflation”.
I’m always a bit confused if seemingly otherwise smart people simply don’t understand something so basic, or if they simply just ignore and don’t want to acknowledge it as if that changes the fact.
Guess who else gets subsidies; someone who buys goods out of the truck of a car … wow, such a great deal.
Would anyone like to subsidize my next restaurant visit by paying for my entree? No? But making someone unknown working class person pay for my $25,000 solar install through inflation is ok?
How about we all just pay for the things we want I stead of making others pay for it? It’s immoral and evil, whether you call it subsidies or something else.
It's amazing how ignorant people can be to the world around them. Let's assume you live in the US, since the article is dealing with those subsidies.
The food you're eating - c. 20% of US farm income is subsidies [0]
The employees of the restaurant - probably, at least one of them is on a government support program to augment their wages [1]
The car you drove to the restaurant in - the US Federal government subsidized your gas (ever wonder why US gas is cheaper than Canada/EU?) [2]
So maybe instead of spending your time looking down your nose and 'not understanding why people don't understand economics,' why don't you do research on the world around you?
[0] https://perc.tamu.edu/PERC-Blog/PERC-Blog/U-S-Farm-Subsidies...
[1] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-45
[2] https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subs...
Are you surprised, truly? All right, I’ll play along.
We have a progressive tax system. So the majority of the costs are born by the wealthy and the well-off, rather than the working class. Some of the well-to-do got that way by grit and hard work; others by luck; and at least a few by fraud and worse. They’re the winners of a somewhat-arbitrary game, and I don’t see anything wrong with tweaking the rules in pursuit of a collective good, like wider solar panel deployment.
Meanwhile! We know that most industries have quite dramatic learning-by-doing and returns to scale. And yet in this fallen world transaction costs and imperfect information can prevent new technologies from getting enough scale practice to become economically viable. So temporary subsidies in the early stage have a good chance of bringing costs down for everyone.
I’m very glad to be the first to introduce you to these arguments, if I am. You don’t have to agree: I left my mind-control goggles in my other coat. But please, don’t play dumb.
Yes, it obviously is ok? Your next restaurant meal doesn't have a broad impact on the world we live in, whereas the deployment of solar panels does.
And nobody pays for anything with inflation. That's not how inflation works.
I’m based out of California, and generate excess energy. My electric bill is now just ~$100/year.
Assuming you have batteries, you discharge and charge them on a daily cycle, not a yearly cycle, to make the most money/have the most benefit. There are predictable time of day based troughs and peaks in the price that you can take advantage of.
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/08/power-your-home-with-a-water...
so OP's number of 12MWh checks out for a whole year
Though, https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/ makes me wonder how you are getting 25c/kWh prices, as author estimates. Maybe higher price tiers due to usage.
Does it, though? We don't know how much of the generated power was actually used instead of sold back into the grid, or if this is even a grid tied installation, and what the return sales rate would be.
The only way to actually compare this is to look at the actual bills. What did you pay last year, what did you pay this year? That's _actual_ savings. This is calculated plausible savings. It's not at all clear they're the same thing in this scenario.
Finally.. if you're in a position to even say you're _saving_ $233/mo, then how inefficient is your home in the first place? How many people live there to generate this large of a bill? How much of a difference would it have made to make that house more thermally or electrically efficient instead?
Additionally, if you live in a place where power is $0.20-$0.30/kWh, then $233/mo is not a particularly large amount of electricity, especially for a single-family house. At $0.30/kWh, that's only ~775kWh of electricity.
We have panels on our roof, a two story house, also in Austin Texas, not so lucky as my parents. With the area maxed out we still have to pay for about 25% of the electricity we use.
https://www.pec.coop/your-service/distributed-generation/int...
This has changed the payback equation quite a bit. I'm now incentivized to do everything I can to use the power I generate rather than returning it to the grid, whether running more A/C during daylight, running laundry during the day, or storing it on my Powerwalls for using off hours.
Although the payback equation doesn't really make sense anymore, we're still happy with our decision to install solar + powerwalls because we can run the A/C as much as we want without feeling guilty, and also get a solid backup in case of major storm events like the 2021 winter storms. We both work from home and have an infant so keeping the house comfortable is important.
This would likely incentivize storage, and could be extremely valuable with V2G technologies that are incoming.
Not making an argument either way, I just hadn't really considered if this was a factor until I read your comment.
One of my biggest questions about solar is, what happens when it snows? Do you have to get up on the roof and clean them off by hand? Or do they have built-in defrosters?
Nothing.
In northern climates rooftops usually have more of a pitch to them so snow doesn't accumulate (because you don't want the roof to collapse). The panels, because they are black, will generally collect enough heat to melt the snow in a day or 2 after a snowstorm.
If you want to clean the panels, you risk damaging them. So the common advice is don't do anything and let the sun do the work.
It's true though that the snow will melt or fall off quickly when it's not that cold anymore.
Doesn't seem like that would matter once covered by a few inches of snow. But otherwise your points seem solid.
My brother's panels in Saskatchewan don't self-clear. But that's for an average temperature of -20C.
https://www.youtube.com/c/ambitionstrikes
My issue with New England (I live there) is there that only 50 to 60% of the days are sunny - we get a lot of overcast skies. That, combined with the lack of available roof space on our Four Square style house, has kept me from thinking about installing panels.
https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Massachusetts/sunshin...
Had someone been standing underneath when it happens they would have been seriously injured.
Warranted by who exactly? A 30-year warranty from a company that’s been in existence for 2-3 years doesn’t quite have the same weight.
She had them installed when my parents were still running a GP practice together in a small village. That was only a few years before they retired though, so now half of the building is basically storage space that's barely used and unheated (also no sterilizing equipment in autoclaves, fewer fridges needed, etc). She also has a solar water heater, she cooks with gas, and her house is very well insulated. As a result of all this she ended up producing more electricity than she uses.
However, she's also still on an "old" contract with her energy provider that is quite beneficial towards her because they didn't anticipate this scenario - this will likely change soon when she has to renew it.
This is in the Netherlands, can't speak for other countries.
Net output was 10,894 kWh, inline with a 20 year estimate of 193,545 kWh. If we just divide $6200/193545kWh (ignoring additional costs!!) that'd be $0.032/kWh.
One other data-point: daily output averaged to 29.8 kWh, from this 7.56kWh array.
This is useful information that is surprisingly hard to find: if I install panels with a nameplate rating of x kW, how many kWh will I generate per day? In Bruenig's case the multiplier is just less than 4x.
The linked page provides a widely available map for "Peak Sun Hours" (defined as average hours per day greater than 1000 W/m^2 of sunlight), but it's not immediately clear how this relates to the multiple. In theory, you could figure out the efficiency of the panels and their area, but this still doesn't account for the actual curve of sunlight intensity.
Bruenig is (I think) in Connecticut, which according to the map has 4.2 Peak Sun Hours, which is only a little greater the the measured rated kW to kWh multiplier. Is it safe to assume that the "Peak Sun Hours" is always slightly more than the multiplier? Or is there a more better map somewhere that shows this conversion directly?
(At the very end of the article, some hint is given as to where the author is located.)
Those numbers - for USA, and for 2022 - seem very high.
Author obtained 7.56 kW of panels with a single phase inverter for a list price of USD$26k - which was reduced via subsidies down to USD$19k actual.
Here in Australia, 24 months ago I had 12kW of panels with a 10kW three-phase inverter installed for an on-paper price of AUD$13k (USD$9k), similarly subsidised with government incentives down to AUD$8k (USD$5k).
I'm about 200km north-west of Sydney ('regional' by any definition), and installation involved 3 guys for one full day (presumably they were a multi-day loop to customers in the area, as we're 3h from their base).
In any case, ignoring post-subsidy delta, why are the list prices so savagely different? I know all these panels and inverters come out of China, but I'd have expected stateside pricing to be much more competitive a year ago than rural Straya pricing two years ago.
In terms of finances / payback - author seems to overlook one (mostly positive) feature, which is the behavioural changes of 'free' power. It's summer here now which means regular 40C+ temperatures, and so the air conditioners (3 x 500W max draw) go on daily, automatically, for 10:00/17:00. This obviously improves QoL but also some non-obvious benefits - extends shelf life of food, takes a significant load off the fridge, etc.
Basically, a raw comparison of before/after often won't be as compelling as it assumes no changes to how you consumer power. I've got $0.33 export / $0.07 per kWh, so the trade-off is slightly simpler to calculate -- along with the installation of an $80 timer switch for the 1800W HWS (only draws power during the middle of the day) I calculate effective payback for me is in the order of 3-4 years.
Another point is that certain solar panel imports are tariffed as much as 30% in the US in order to protect the (non-existent?) domestic solar panel manufacturering industry. But it appears Biden temporarily suspended it about 6 months ago. Unclear whether this added to his purchase price.
Seems pretty unethical tbh. The solar company delivered, but now this guy is going to refuse to pay? Sure he did later, but not without blackmailing them for $5k discount.
The solar company messed up by not getting a new confirmation of loan approval prior to installation, and the author then leveraged that into a fat discount.
As a way to curb any thought about undue wait time, the company made a contract guaranteeing installation between 6 month after signing. They didn't comply and the loan lapsed. Now the company needed to negotiate a new contract with OP or go for the legal route. There is nothing unethical about this.
The company had everything to lose going the the legal option, with all the long terms procedures, paying money for a pay back that may never come. They are probably grateful that OP just asked for a discount instead.
The discount was to offset that rate change.
> my non-payment would not be a default because default is defined by a breach of contract and no such contract existed. Indeed, if anyone breached the contract, it was the solar company by not installing in the six-month period.
I like thinking about it as a near guaranteed, medium return long term investment that's good for the environment. Each year is roughly 13% returns and I should get that for at least 20 years or so.
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/topic/7?agg=0...
In Australia it's ~$7000AU (~$4000 US) for a system like this, unsubsidized - then we have a 400$/kWh subsidy.
Our 10kW solar system was $4000AU installed, and the payback period is 2-3 years...
Our little solar plant operates a small coffee plantation, 4 houses, 8 cabins, and several outbuildings , parks, and community spaces. When we do tie in we probably won’t sell power or do net metering. Instead we focus on robotic or mechanised industry where we can generate saleable goods using the excess power. (Computing power, 3d printing, dry ice manufacturing, foamed concrete block manufacturing, etc)
We also manage our utility loads like bullk water production and large scale refrigeration so that they occur during excess production periods and are normally suspended while we are operating on stored power. I’m thinking of implementing an anydrous ammonia plant and distribution system so that we can store more energy useful in air conditioning and refrigeration, which are some of our largest loads. It’s getting hard to find ways to store energy that work out cheaper than just buying more batteries though.
I’m really stoked about LiTo batteries coming down in price eventually (or similar tech not yet released) because they last 30 years + / 30,000 cycles…. And they can take a charge at a ridiculous rate, which solves other challenges.
You can walk into any major retailer, buy a space heater, and plug it into any outlet in your home. Keep in mind that your gas furnace is turned on/off using a thermostat and temperature setting, so if you reduce the set-point e.g. 1 degree, and then either locate the coldest parts of your home or areas you want to prioritize (e.g. livingrooms/bedrooms), you can then target space heaters into that location to offset the savings from gas.
In terms of deployment heating or cooling, electric heat is the cheapest and easiest. You're just thinking that it must be whole-home or nothing, which isn't the case, you can reduce your whole-home and spot-heat as needed.
This sounds like the total price of electricity, including distribution. However my understanding of net-metering means that you have to pay distribution fees to put your power on the grid, so you don't get back the full 25 cents, only around half that (the generation portion).
If the author of this post is on here, could you please clarify?
They must be in a really large home.
In Australia a 6.6kw system with 5kw inverter runs about 3500-4500AUD installed and grid connected.
The rebates in WA are fairly low for exported power (about 5c/kwh) but you can fully offset your usage during the sunny parts of the day running aircon/washing machine.
But that said, Western Power's inflexible blanket ban on any feed-in above 5kW (single phase) has had a wonderful side benefit of enabling solar companies to be ultra competitive with the 6.6/5 kW system installs because basically everybody wants the same equipment, allowing much greater standardisation.
Electricity is still dirt cheap in WA (30c/kWh) but that will soon change.
Interestingly, solar has penetrated so far in WA that there's almost no value to the grid operator of putting more daytime solar onto the grid.
*after subsidies.
Yes, but with an 8% discount rate, the PV is $26,283. It's true that the cost of electricity will probably rise over time, as he notes. But current interest rates make this a much less attractive proposition from a financial perspective (that is, assuming you don't care about solar generation for environmental reasons). The homeowner takes on significant risk, and the gain is not all that great. Your panels can be destroyed by hurricane, earthquake, or falling trees, rendering them worthless, for example.
I'm not saying this isn't worth doing, just that the financial calculations seem a bit flawed in today's economic environment.
That’s what homeowners insurance is for.
So far 10kW gas generator was able to power most of the house's essentials before resistive heater kicks in in HVAC system (two heatpump units, each has a 7.5kw resistive heater as a backup when outside temperature drops too much.) But I would feel better if I did not have to rely on availability of propane/gas and clean roads during periods like 2021 blizzard in Texas.
30kwh of batteries is about $10k wholesale, and inverters run about $1500, although most of the time you need 2 if you want to supply 240v.
Sample system: https://signaturesolar.com/off-grid-eg4-system-13kw-120-240v...
So residential solar really doesn't make a lot of sense to me on a societal level, assuming blackouts are rare.
Of course the tech for this is a real threat for utilities, so it wouldn't surprise me if they would go to any length to stop such and effort. Same could be said for any deflationary tech like micro reactors.
its a 5kwp set of panels and a 13kwhr battery. From mid march to late November, we only drew from the grid once (that was because we had a portable hottub setup, which took ~28kwhr to heat up.)
Its raining and january and december are shit months for solar, well mostly because of the short days. December we were 45% independent from the grid.
Currently we do not have heating or cooling from electricity. If that were the case we'd need 10kwp plus more storage.
https://www.chooseenergy.com/electricity-rates-by-state/
Not sure how accurate it is, but what is up with New Hampshire at $0.32?!
Hawaii seems like it could knock it out of the park with wind and solar, but they're at 45cents. Ouch.
Unfortunately our new house doesn't have a roof configuration that allows for solar panels. I wonder if new home architecture and alignment will change to make solar panels work better?
I'm curious, was your heat and stove electric or natural gas (or other)?
You can buy panels off Amazon at about £0.73/W. Add in the various bits that you need to go along with it, and that probably pushes it up to around £1.10/W, if you're doing it yourself.
I noticed (by following the solar sub-reddit) that almost every single US install has either Enphase or Solaredge inverters (which happen to be on the pricier side). I am not sure if that's an indication for the lack of competition but surely this seems like an industry where disruption is possible?
Will either pay off well or be an expensive lesson
How much did you pay for the installed kwh?
I’m not sure if you were serious with this comment, but for the sake of other readers I wanted to point out this is a legitimate strategy. Many people tend to pair solar with installing mini splits, EV chargers, or some other home upgrade that will offer value at the expense or a higher electric bill. This can make the solar investment make sense where it previously didn’t.
No thanks.
Also: the big trick to running of renewables is conservation comes first, solar second and finally the grid as a fallback for the remainder.
Here's an article about it with a few vendors, including Tesla, that might help: https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/solar/solar-shingles...
Are they insured?
Do they get damaged? Does the inverter/batteries get damaged or is there likely a circuit breaker?
You are better off if you add them to your already existing coverage for your roof. So probably yes.
> Do they get damaged?
You typically don't expect trees to fall onto your solar panels. So where should any damage come from?
> My residential-scale solar installation in New England
I can't think of any other commodity for which this is possible. You couldn't make your own steel, bread or printer paper at home and beat manufacturing at scale.
Why is electricity different?
With panels on your house the grid is still providing you a key service, providing you with any power you need in excess of what you produce, and sinking any extra for you. But with net metering you only pay in proportion to your net usage, effectively compensating you at retail rates for the power you supply to the grid.
And bread is a bad example, you can easily make that cheaper than retail price at home.
Also about half your bill is distribution fees.
And, BTW, making bread at home is cheaper than buying it. Get a bread machine, put in ingredients, wait a bit, and you have bread.
