So, last year, I spent $7k on 8.4 KW of panels (400W * 21), an inverter, and 20KWh of batteries.
It's been life-changing. I've been able to go completely off-grid. Like, I disconnected from the grid (i.e., my meter) completely. And my usage has gone up to around 50KWh daily (air conditioners, fridges, etc.) but it hums along day-after-day. That assurance that the power won't trip off while I'm on a meeting with a client has done wonders for my mental health among others. Just reliable, stable power.
And, given that I used to pay $0.12 per KWh, the whole setup will pay for itself in 2.7 years. Just under two years to go.
I live in a place with cheap and stable hydropower. There's winter time price spikes but average solar earnings compared to grid cost from solar during sunny months would be pocket change. In winter solar would give virtually nothing.
The overwhelming conclusion was that instead of buying a pile of hardware to install, configure and maintain I will earn more by clicking a button that puts it as a financial investment into anything with more than 2-3% annual yield and just paying the electricity bill and reinvesting whatever is left over.
I wanted to find an edge case that would make me feel smart for buying a multi kWh home battery but with the exception of a market apocalypse or the likes every outcome suggests that I just put it in dividend stock, high interest savings accounts or whatever else until either power prices increase tenfold or $/kWh for batteries drop tenfold.
churchill’s comment provides a similar example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41965228 (2.7 year payback in Nigeria, cheaper per kWh than utility rate of 12 cents/kWh)
The engineering of energy abundance and democratization of energy globally continues. That’s the story.
https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/solar-panel-prices-...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices
https://www.pv-tech.org/solar-lcoe-continues-to-decrease-glo...
While there's a bit about needing to replace it in 10-20 years coming out to a $83/month, this is essentially burying the $15,000 bill coming.
Also, unless their battery system is wildly over provisioned at the moment, you can't just add a bunch of new panels. Are they selling back to the grid? I don't think so, they mention grid independence wrt natural disaster. Do they have some sort of system to heat the water in the day only? Did they just take the name plate capacity of the system and multiply it by 40 years? who knows?
These "details" will make anyone buying into their big idea quite frustrated.
I also don't understand the part about chopping wood. Yes it's probably a idilic bit for the story, but that's almost one of the worst fuel sources. Dangerous, carcinogenic, and polluting.
edit: yes in the footnotes, burning wood. Getting rid of that would be the number one way to improve their impact on the earth and their community.
(In the United States, the majority of housing units are single-family houses – about 82 million out of the total 129 million occupied units in 2021)
And doesn’t mounting panels on top of a roof increase possibilities for leaks?
I really would like solar to work. But have seen too many crazy storms and even a minor tornado in the past 5 years to make me wonder about 20+ year longevity.
Unless you just mean they’re privileged in the sense that most Americans and Europeans are relatively well-off and secure by global standards, in which case sure, but what’s your point?
The shit shows unfolding elsewhere fall into hypocritical territory - concerned about climate change yet are regularly flying. For these folks here, I’m willing to be more charitable. Looking forward to seeing more photos of, hopefully, simpler life.
You're allowed to just disconnect solar panels. It's free and does not damage them.
Why not have the panels disconnect themselves in this case? Is this too small an expense to justify the cost of additional hardware to manage switching on and off?
This is literally what local and state government is for; talk to others and get policy moving on excess energy being used to generate bulk stored energy at scale for winter months, be that gas, deep thermal storage, tradable goods to offset winter costs, etc.
Yes, we still have six active bauxite mines providing feedstock for six alumina refineries ... they're optimal as pipelined processing and not great at switching on|off with energy surges.
* (< 1 millisecond for electricity but hey for the milk analogy say 10 minutes).
If there is no grid-side demand for the energy from my solar panels, then they're not going to be force-feeding it to a grid that doesn't want it.
When you plug a light bulb that's rated to draw 20 watts into a power source capable of delivering 1000 watts, it doesn't blow up your light bulb, because the light bulb only takes what it needs from the source.
US pricing works very differently, especially in Texas.
And finally electricity is a spot market. So there is agreed price for certain period and in some cases market can be distorted and that price can be negative. It could be idiotic subsidies or production that can't be ramped as effectively. Or someone does massive mistakes with their bids, think of trading bots going wrong.
This ain't gonna happen. Air conditioning will be saving lives.
Assuming an average of 4 solar hours per day, you would need a solar system capacity of approximately 7.5 kW to 12.5 kW.
Individual solar panels produce 250-400 watts. So, conservatively, 50 panels. Installed, that's currently about $25,000, including inverter but not battery backup. Battery backup will cost maybe $15,000 more. So, the whole installation is about $40,000. This is with no grid connection, power sales, or incentives. Not too bad. Costs about the same as a car.
Median US house price is $412,300.
Invested that 40k would conservatively cover over 2x our electricity bill without touching the principal (inflation adjusted).
That's a pretty hard sell for solar. Obviously incentives will improve things but it just seems less financially risky to use grid power.
Offgrid added up if you are already offgrid so that ongrid becomes a big expense when comparing.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/homeowners-guide-federal-t...
Clearly to meet demand we need solar farms and grids for most people.
If the "solar roof" people ever get their act together, that might change.
It’s cool to live off grid, but solarpunk-libertarianism is a vibe, not a meaningful policy direction for modern society
Sounds stupid on many levels to forbid it.
Using solar to heat and cool, heat water and run your dryer is quite a bit more. And generally doing the HVAC efficiently requires a large investment in insulation. Those non solar costs may dominate.
What's this based on? Don't many gas cars last that long? It seems like it depends very much on how well you maintain them.
Vs ice which easily last long, long past 200k. I'm at 240k right now and it still performs perfectly.
As a side note on the newer ice vehicles I don't see how those terrible tablets that control everything will last long enough for the other mechanical problems in the cars to show up.
Im curious as to how car batteries will be repurposed to use for energy storage. Once they degrade to the point of only holding charge for short trips, can they still be used for other scenarios that don’t require as much from them?
I'm my opinion the big problem with electric cars are the price of replacement batteries in combination with buying used.
Still, I'm kind of left wondering, where will they be in 40 years. Can life really be so predictable?
Solar panels and batteries depend on a global supply chain and take their own toll on the environment, but the life cycle emission of solar is ~40 gCO2/kWh, 25x lower than coal's 1,000 gCO2/kWh. And buying solar fuels innovation—such as alternatives to lithium-ion batteries now on the horizon.
If you want to be a real hippy
For many people in non first world countries this sort of existence is standard - not something to be blogged about with artfully composed photos carefully edited and posted to the internet.
So I guess the comment was provoked by something like that. It was certainly one of my reactions reading the piece. I also thought “oh that’s cool, I wonder how they did it” but it was very short on detail, made up for by self-congratulatory back patting.
Maybe the person making the comment lives in a developing country and finds it a little jarring to see “solarpunk” cosplay.
I think you and the other person are reading far too deep into one person's contentment with a humble living space. It's clear they are safe and comfortable; that doesn't translate in any way to suggesting other places where this living style (sans electricity or safety) should just pick themselves up by their bootstraps.
It's a particularly offensive part of white culture that fetishizes a "return to the land" while billions around the world are trapped miserably eeking out that existence with literally zero opportunity to ever have anything else.
The only reason you feel "happy" for them is because you know its a cosplay charade they could walk away from at any time. Otherwise we would call this what it is; destitute poverty.
They're trying to have a developed world quality of life in a low-resource/low-cost way. In some ways, beyond average developed world quality of life: the place they're living is stinkin' gorgeous.
I don't know if it's generally practical for most people or even as energy efficient as living in a modest apartment in a large city (the transportation issues around food, medicine, and necessities factor in), but it's not an uninteresting thing to explore.
But - cosplay - 100%
