Ikea's New Solar Panels: Sunshine Optional, Subsidies Required (opens in new tab)

Hmmm, that seems broken. I installed 5.2KW of panels on the roof of my Bay Area home in 2002, at the time panels were a lot more expensive but the subsidies were better too, I ended up paying just about $20,000 for the complete system (after rebates and with all parts, labor etc). The system is grid tied (meaning it feeds back into the grid) and we switched our billing to a watt for watt basis (not time of use as my kids were being home schooled and we were in the house 24/7). My electricity bill is now annual (the net power usage is computed from the Anniversary date, and any power I've used in excess of my generation is charged at a flat fee). My typical annual power cost is < $200 and occasionally less than $100. There is zero maintenance other than rinsing the panels off twice a year, and trimming the trees to avoid shade.

By calculating my what my electricity bill would have been vs what it was, they have saved me more than their cost (at some point I should go back again and get exact numbers).

Its entirely unclear how much "additional" value they give the resale value of my house. It is clearly some, but I don't have a good way of knowing if it is $20,000 or more.

At the time we financed the purchase as part of a refinancing of the house, so we did know the interest cost for the money, we also went through the great Recession so in traditional financial analysis (the 'do nothing' option) we would have predicted our money would have had a better return than it actually did, although that didn't really change the math all that much.

So I can't see how you don't get it paid off in < 10 years these days. At this point I'm thinking of adding another string to offset the addition of an electric car.

If you're sincerely interested in solar panels you should look into doing it yourself. It's not as complicated as many of the solar retailers want to make it out to be.

Step 1) Buy panels direct with mounts Step 2) Mount the panels yourself. They aren't super heavy, just fragile. The tricky part here is measuring and drilling the holes you need to get them secured to your roof properly. Or buying a slanted frame if you have a flat roof. Step 3) Hire a licensed electrician to wire them up.

That's pretty much it. Total cost for a 9kw system will run about 13-15k after the electrician. You'll get 30% (almost 4k) back in rebates bringing your total cost out somewhere around 10k. That's a 5-7 year payback for your average american home.

There are a number of online solar panel distributors that are reliable and have been in business for quite some time.

Can you take advantage of the shade from the Solar Panels?

If you can install solar panels above the ceiling with enough space to keep the air flow, it can help you keep your house fresh and comfortable during the day. Specially in a hot and dry climate.

I look at it from another perspective.

Many people in the bay area have expensive homes and cars. People do not think twice about over bidding 50-150K when buying a house. In fact, that's the only way to get one here, and that's what we did. Its also common to spend crazy amounts on home renovation.

Then people also get an expensive Tesla or some other car that costs 50K or more.

But far fewer people would rather spend the 25K on solar and see a guaranteed return of investment of 150-200$ a month for the next 20 years. And the energy cost is guaranteed to be the same per watt throughout that period.

Regardless of whether you buy or rent, you _have_ to pay a power bill. Mine regularly crossed 150$ a month while renting. And I will continue to have a power bill till I die (40-60 years?). Why not lock in the price for the next 20 years at least?

That calculator is assuming $10,000 per Kw of capacity. Decent Chinese panels are $500 per Kw on eBay. Can the balance of system (inverters etc), permitting and installation be that expensive?

Are you factoring in that you can stay hooked up to the grid and sell extra power back to the energy company?

Do you factor in an increase of the price of your home when you sell it?

I find it disheartening that every technology that takes us in the right direction, but which is not yet cost effective, is constantly pissed on by people who expect immediate solutions and who fail to see that these things are not going to develop themselves.

Sure, it is a tax dodge for rich middle class people, but if people could just keep their envy in check for the decade or two it is going to take to bring costs down and sustainability up, this is going to benefit a lot of people.

How else are we going to incentivise companies to develop better solar panels? Seriously, I really want to know.

We are seeing the same thing with the Tesla Model S in Norway right now. On one hand people dismiss electric cars because they are not yet as sustainable as we would like them to be. On the other hand they get their panties in a bunch because you can now buy a really good car (with amazing performance) at the same price as a regular car. In Norway the Model S costs ~550k NOK. A petrol-powered car with the same performance figures costs ~1,500k NOK -- nearly 1,000k NOK being taxes. (Interestingly, the Model S is the first electric car that many people would consider buying as their only car. So far, electric cars have been toys for people who can afford a second or third car, and who want to park for free and use the public transport lanes).

It is going to take a lot of development to make solar panels sustainable. The more of a market we can create for them, the quicker development will take place and the quicker they will become available to broader segments of consumers. And we'll just have to tolerate that to push the industry forward, we will have to dangle some incentives in front of those who are able to take part.

A business sector has arisen to address this issue- companies will pay for and install the panels for free, allowing the household to consume the electricity for free, whilst the company will profit from the subsidy for the generation.

Of course, those with the capital themselves are going to do better still, but that is the very nature of capitalism, hardly unique to this issue.

Will this create a scale economy to drive down the cost? Which may end up helping the (not rich) middle class.

> rich middle class people

That is an oxymoron. By definition, middle class is in the middle, not rich.

It does if you factor in the extremely expensive, yet largely unaccounted for, costs associated with generating electricity from coal.

Calling it a subsidy seems weird to me. Every state I've lived in will pay you if you generate more electricity than you use. You are providing power back into the grid, of course you should be paid for it. That doesn't sound like government support to me.

In Ontario you get 39.6c per kWh fed into the grid, down from 54.9c per kWh last year. Worth noting that when you hook in and sign up, your rate is guaranteed for, I believe, 25 years (meaning reductions, which are surely going to continue, impact new builds). It is completely unsustainable and is not rational pricing, but instead is built around the notion of bootstrapping the industry through subsidies, and it does seem to be working -- solar panels are getting more efficient and less expensive as a result of programs like this, which would never have happened had they been left to their own merits.

I should add that the Ontario program also demands a percentage of domestic content of installs as well, again trying to bootstrap a domestic industry rather than simply benefiting foreign manufacturers. As a result various solar manufacturing businesses have arisen here.

This seems fairly straightforward to understand compared to the tax avoidance strategy Google employs in Europe ( http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/... )

I don't see how that's relevant to the article in hand.

Bravo!

A key under-discussed factor therein: making it work necessitates a deep change of lifestyle. 110v always-on >50 amp service normalizes comforts and conveniences ("OMG I have nothing to wear tomorrow" laundry, smooth-top electric stoves 'cuz they look nice, no concern about peak usage, weather awareness, gratuitous A/C usage, vast non-12v product availability, etc.), and most people really don't want to give that up. I grew up on wood heat & other off-grid norms in a cold climate; much later in life I realized that what I considered normal and pleasant, most [sub]urbanites recoil from in horror.

I could do the same myself and certainly will next year. The only appliance I have that consumes mega power is the washing machine. I've got a gas Aga that can be converted to solid fuel if need be and provides most of the heating as well and the only other things already work on 12v.

I don't own a toaster, dryer, kettle, microwave or massive television. I have LED lighting everywhere as well and have programmed my family to turn the lights off.

3 children, 2 adults, 2 guinea pigs = £230 a year in electricity!

Not bad for a tech family.

only problem is losses associated with 12v wiring.

I probably don't have to fish out €6000 either for my needs.

One place to look for numbers more solid than people just claiming they would pay more, could be in areas with deregulated markets for home electricity, like Texas, where people have a choice of generation provider. Since generation is decoupled from transmission and maintenance, providers don't compete on reliability, but mainly on price and environmentalism. The "green" plans are typically $0.02-$0.04/kWh more expensive than the cheapest plans. Would be interesting to know what proportion of people opt for one.

Examples of such a provider and the plans: http://www.greenmountain.com/texas-oncor

The government in the UK is by far the biggest player in the energy market. For example in any offshore energy development they are the land owner, planning authority, biggest planning consultee, regulator, and may tax and subsidize.

Market competition in energy is arguably more about access to capital than consumer choice. Currently individuals provide most of the money through tax and bills but only large energy companies can easily access the resulting capital. It is wrong to criticize individuals for wanting access to this money.

More constructive criticism would be to offer some information on the expected efficiency of these panels as opposed to just dismissing them.

Is that true for these particular subsidies? Or has the UK government committed to them over the coming 15-20 years? I thought the latter.

Depending on hardware, you can get a PicoPSU or similar ATX power supply at ~$50, but they are usually limited to 160-200W - so no fancy quad core desktop CPU or powerful graphics, but 200W is plenty for a normal PC.

Some LED displays also have an external power brick - if that's 12V then you can wire them to your grid. Unfortunately most of them will have higher voltage to reduce wire costs and losses.

If you can replace at least part of the AC power with 12V DC power, you can then buy a lower power (cheaper) inverter for the AC power.

I've seen a few 12 volt ATX power supplies available -- seems to be a bit more expensive ($200 - $300 range), since they are lower volume (specialty) items. Another option would be to use a smaller inverter like you get for a car (they are around 150 to 400 watts, priced about $30 or so), and have one of them for each device you want to power.

Just remember if you are running 12-volt DC, it requires fairly thick wiring to get the same current as you would with 120 volt AC.

> Remember that UK prices include sales tax @20%

Solar panels are charged only 5% VAT, not 20%.

Although I can say that nothing I've bought at Ikea has lasted a terribly long time.

Tend to go for non chipboard and non UV sensitive plastic stuff now that you can actually clean and leave in the sun without destroying it.