Google invests $75M (more) into home solar power. | Hacker News Reader

Google invests $75M (more) into home solar power.

googleblog.blogspot.com

78 pointsjeffool40 comments

Our local utility company just hooked up our new solar setup to their grid yesterday afternoon. In exchange for a hefty rebate on the installation, we had to agree to be hooked up to their grid for 10 years.

What this means is: power we generate goes to a very nearby facility and we buy back power. Our setup allows me in real time see how much power we are generating, how much we are selling back to the utility vs. how much we are using. For most of today, it looked like we were generating about 800 watts more than our house was using. The installer looked at our historic electricity bills and installed enough panels so that we would get paid back some money every year, but not a lot. So, I expect maybe a "negative" electricity bill of about $400 a year, instead of a yearly "positive" bill of about $1000.

With the rebate and state and federal tax savings, our break even point is supposed to be in 5 or 6 years. I think it may be sooner than that because the contractor did not account for rising electricity costs.

Anyway, this is fun - part of the value.

Same here, got my install finished just a month ago. The inverters we used aggregates the data (to warn us of problem) which I have made public http://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/public/systems/TTAL25069 We also expect a payback of around five years (in MA). After running the numbers it was pretty clear in MA that solar is a very decent (300% return in ~10 years)* and safe investment. Just too bad that you can only really invest ~15K before you produce more than you need.

Edit:

  *
  100% return in SREC + no electric bill in 3-5 years
  Several more years of SRECS,
    easily 50% of the original investment
  The longer you stick in the house, the no electric
    bill once again pays back (With no tax!) the initial
    investment 100% after ~15-20 years
  100+% back when you sell the house (as they are
    depreciated on the initial 30K+ install cost, not
    your post tax incentive cost and probably still
    worth in the 20's) and solar seems to be causing
    houses to sell quicker to boot.

If I was going to retire soon and needed to start moving investments to a more predictive safe place to put some cash getting panels seems a win all around and removes one more unknown bill from my life. But again it is only ~10-20K of a retirement fund, but hey every bit helps.

300% ROI for 10 years is about a 11.6% annual ROI... pretty much guaranteed. I have a feeling that companies will be springing up that match up investors who want that kind of a low-risk ROI (almost everybody) with people who want solar power on their roofs for free, with similar electric bills as they're paying now (also almost everybody in much of the continental US).

This is why solar power will quickly dominate soon, IMO.

I agree with your math but disagree with your conclusion :)

this is why Google is funding it -- getting an 11% return is great if you have giant piles of cash sitting around doing nothing. Those margins become substantially thinner if your cost of capital is 7%, 8%, 12%, etc.

edit to add: BTW, there's some great research that suggests when people "do the math" and figure out how much energy-efficiency/renewable energy technology will save, that they usually require ROI's of 50-100% -- i.e., "if your fluorescent bulbs/solar panels/low-flow shower head won't pay for itself within a year, i won't bother". It's sad, but it's a real obstacle.

"if your fluorescent bulbs/solar panels/low-flow shower head won't pay for itself within a year, i won't bother"

I'd guess this is largely caused by our psychological tendency to overly discount future gains combined with loss aversion (people are used to things failing after a year, so if it hasn't paid for itself by then, it never will (example: I just had a 4-year fluorescent bulb I installed one year ago fail, about a month after I threw away the packaging with the warranty info on it)).

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hyperbolic_di...

My CFLs haven't lasted very long since production of most of them shifted to China. They last a year or two, which is a bit longer than the bulbs they replace, but not much. There's no place to dispose of them safely though so they are just stacking up in boxes for now. I found with the warranties that you have to ship the bulbs back at your own expense to an address, which because of the weight of the ceramic base costs more than the bulb did originally. This means in practice they don't really have a warranty, so you did the right thing throwing the warranty packaging out.

With the stock market down, there should be a lot of cash sitting around, waiting to be invested in something else than treasuries and gold.

Thanks for providing that link, it's been really difficult in the past to find hard data with actual numbers from real installations.

To clarify, as your total cost including everything $15k or $30k, I see both numbers in your post, and was that the actual prices, or were there subsidies as well?

The invoice for the install was 34K. You get back 33% from the fed. ~25% from the MA rebate, and another $1K back from MA taxes. I only had to write a check for the 34K minus the MA rebate (which MA writes a check to the installer before the work starts) so ~25K, but with the other tax rebates (already modified my W4 so "getting back" the fed 33% right now and not waiting until next April) the total I have to invest will be ~15K.

More notes on the whole install

http://benjamin-meyer-home.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panels...

http://benjamin-meyer-home.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panel-...

Thanks a bunch for the followup, that's extremely interesting.

Is the technology too new or are they able to provide you with estimates for (i) the useful life of the equipment and (ii) recurring maintenance costs?

Barring vast economic collapse, a bet on rising energy prices strikes me as relatively safe compared to many other investment alternatives. It's definitely very interesting and really appreciate you sharing your experience!

There is a manufacturer's guarantee that the system will still put out 80% power in 20 years, and is guaranteed for 25 years. If, the manufacturer stays in business...

I feel the title here is misleading as it suggests that Google is investing in developing some sort of solar systems with this specific $75 million. But reading the article, we see they are actually investing in funding a bank (finance company) which will be offering loans with interest for PV rooftop installations, for which they will receive payments with interest from the homeowners purchasing said systems at full cost. So they are investing in the same way that Chase invests in credit card debt by offering people credit cards, or that GM finance invests in cars by offering auto loans.

The claim that the monthly loan payments will be "often less than paying for energy from the grid" is certainly false and I'd be willing to bet money that it will not be established that people are generating solar energy for less than the cost of buying it off the grid.

Finally, if one was really interested in green technology, either installing a roof top solar hot water heater and/or a geothermal heat pump will save more energy than a rooftop residential PV installation will generate, but at a much lower cost.

10,000 homes sounds like a lot but it's tiny compared to the US population, only enough to make a press release make the news really. And very tiny next to the world population now approaching the 7,000,000,000 mark. The simple fact is that no energy that needs subsidies or other fiddling in the west is going to fly with anyone else.

Surely they know enough now about thin-cell solar to invest into more R&D for it. Give the 75 million to 75 professors to have 5 new PhD students each and a bag of money for experiments. Given the history so far[1] I don't think a few percentage points more from 375 PhDs is out of the question. Those few points would have a far more dramatic effect in the long-run than just helping to finance installation of current technology for the equivalent of one small town.

[1]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/PVeff%28r...

It sounds like they are trying to create a market. They are providing financing, so they will actually make money. The initial money plus the interest can be applied to the next 12,000 homes, for example, then to 15,000 home, then to 25,000 homes... This can be done indefinitely...or at least for a couple of decades.

The market of suppliers will grow to meet the consumer demand, and suppliers will invest some of their profits into R&D and manufacturing. And I believe Moore's Law applies to the manufacturing of solar cells.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/devices/ph...

Create a market and let private industry handle the rest. Space, robotics, cheap energy, etc.

The hard part is not to make higher efficiency solar cells (within limits), the hard part seems to be to make them cheap enough so they're commercially viable.

For instance, these 35+ % efficient cells have been available for two years now:

http://gizmodo.com/5388795/sharp-triple-layer-solar-cell-set...

But you wouldn't be putting them on your roof unless you wanted to achieve a specific number of Watts on a small surface.

The figure to monitor is $/Watt, and that's where any gains will come from. Any decrease in the price per Watt is real, immediate gain. Increases in efficiency are only good if they lead to a lower price per Watt.

In a typical installation, the cells aren't the major cost anymore. Because of that, efficiency does decrease $/Watt, even if the $/Watt price of the cells isn't lower.

"homeowners pay a monthly payment for the system, at a price that’s often less than paying for energy from the grid."

Is Google claiming that this is profitable overall? As in the lifetime costs for installing the solar panels on my house are less than the equivalent cost of electricity from the grid? If so, shouldn't someone be offering to pay me to install this on my house and then selling the electricity back to me directly?

There are many companies doing just this (sunrun, solarcity, etc). There's currently some loophole that as a business they get paid more for their electricity than a homeowner would (due to subsidies to encourage businesses to use solar). So they get a price that you alone could not get. I think that's why it works.

bigethan -- that's not necessarily how it works. It does work differently in different state & local markets, so it's possible that there's a market that works that way. I don't know of any, personally.

Usually the deal is something called a PPA -- Power Purchase Agreement. It's usually set up that you agree to pay some fixed price-per-kWh, and that price escalates by some regular way over the life of the contract. That price could be higher, or lower, than the prevailing rates for electricity in that market, and that escalator could be higher or lower than rates at which energy prices increase -- but either way, they're locked in from the start.

There's no "loophole" - but the US tax code doesn't all you as a homeowner to use the accelerated depreciation deduction the way a third party for-profit business can if they own the system and lease it to you or sell you the power it produces.

It's really well established that home solar PV installations are currently substantially more expensive in dollars per kilowatt hour than grid energy.

I was following through some of Google's references and eventually found a graph without units perhaps explaining their reasoning behind this claim. It shows the cost of grid electricity undergoing massive exponential hockey stick growth from 2020 to 2030. So, if that happens, and you have a fixed percent 20 year mortgage on these panels, then sure, you might end up doing great compared to the suckers paying $100 a kilowatt hour (or whatever their exact number is since the y axis is not labelled) in 2030. On the other hand, an analysis that simply shows such apocalyptic increases in the cost of energy and considers no other factors is overly simplistic since in such an end times scenario mass-starvation, cannibalism, revolution, and the overthrow of the government would be likely accompanied by this situation and those homeowners with PV panels who did not have their own private armies and weapons stash would have long been dispatched and robbed of their valuable panels by those who do.

I figure it's a risky bet for them to make an investment based on the cost of electricity going up that much. Someone could just figure out a way to burn coal and capture the carbon and use it as fertilizer and the whole investment falls apart. That's probably why they are not sinking more money into this.

Well the loans are contracts to pay back with interest backed by collateral (probably even including the house equity), so it's guaranteed profit for Google. Since the savings are placed so forward in time and are not guaranteed at all, by the time the problem becomes a concern the money will already have been made. Let's say a homeowner starts a blog showing that they are paying much more for power with their new system than from the grid and questions it. Google then points out that the savings will come in 2030 at the end of the loan. If a journalist looking into this is persistent and good they will get a commitment to show exact numbers, which can then be directly discussed as to likelihood. But more likely the graphs will continue to have unmarked y axes, and those doing an analysis of how much the systems cost and what it means to charge 11% interest for 20 years will be discounted as not having the right facts, but no details as to what facts are incorrect and what the correct facts are will be forthcoming. Then, in 2030 the articles will either say how forward thinking the purchasers were to have bought in before electricity skyrocketed, or there will be a retrospective on how they got ripped off. In both cases, Google will have made their money back on their investment in collateral backed AAA rated debt securities.

I want to do solar power but I am terrified that as soon as I buy it it will immediately become outdated.

Here's some advice I got earlier: http://www.jig.com/need/solar-power-for-my-house-near-los-al...

Still haven't done anything. Any advice?

Thanks for posting that link, the numbers they discuss are similar to numbers I am familiar with and thus I don't have to make any claims to use them.

So his system cost $51,000 and produces 7500kWh of energy per year. If he were to have set up with this Google Finance system that offers 20 year 11% financing, and assuming 1.25% property tax where he lives (PV panels will increase the value of his home after all) then his monthly payments will be $579.54, or $139,089.86 in payments through August of 2031, with a total of $75.339.86 in interest paid to the finance company Google is investing in. This is a good, safe investment for Google.

For the homeowner, the 7500kwH per year will cost him $750 to buy from the grid at 10 cents a kWh. Instead he will be paying $579.54 * 12 = $6954.48 for the power, nearly ten times as much.

Google's claim that you save money assumes that the cost of electricity will increase so dramatically in the future that the overall cost will be less with solar, not including your cost of financing, and not including any money you might have made from investing your money elsewhere for 20 years, but considering that the average price of electricity between now and 2030 will be more than 92.7 cents per kilowatt hour.

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Solar PV is fine and sometimes the only choice if you are living completely off the grid, but it comes at a cost, and works best when you massively reduce consumption, switch all interior lights to 12V, realize you can't run high wattage things like microwave ovens or toasters, you'll need a kerosene powered refrigerator, and you have a costly bank of toxic batteries to maintain and periodically replace. I have done this.

For grid connected living if you are interested in going green I would strongly recommend taking a look at these things:

- rooftop solar heater - free hot water, which otherwise is costly to heat

- dry all clothes on clothesline. Don't even own an electric or gas dryer. These use a lot of energy. If living in an area that prohibits line drying, move to an area that permits it or accept that your community does not support green living and perhaps lobby to change things.

- geothermal heat pump if you need conditioned air. This one depends on climate. Electric fans throughout the house are a better option than air conditioners. (Also do note that many estimates of typical household electric use which are used in calculating recommended solar size installations assume that gas heat is used and electricity is not used for heating during winter. This may be true, but the gas heat is an additional part of the total energy cost. With a properly designed geothermal heatpump you reduce your cost of heating significantly compared to either gas or electric.)

- if building from scratch, do a passive solar design. Properly done (not easy to find those who can do this), you can have zero costs for heating and cooling year round.

Implementing even a few of these changes can save much more than the 7500kWh of energy that is generated by the PV panels year round in the example, and at considerably less cost.

Has solar reached a point where further price declines are not highly likely? If not, then most people I've talked to would hold off on going this route.

If prices will decline significantly in a year, then it would make sense to wait and deploy solar systems until further price declines are unlikely.

It's more a question is the returns this year > decline over this year vs any given gain. AKA I could wait 10 years and buy a beastly computer but I would have to use a 'crappy' PC for those 10 years.

Why not nuclear power?

If I had to guess I'd say 3 reasons.

1. Nuclear is unpopular because of the Japanese Earthquake incident. Fair or not theres a lot of baggage that comes with nuclear energy these days.

2. Second, the regulation surronding nuclear is a nightmare. A plant hasn't been built in the US since something like the early 80's because of this reason.

3. The financing approach makes a lot of sense for Google. They can make a lot of money without building any sort of infrastructure.

The financing approach makes a lot of sense for Google. They can make a lot of money without building any sort of infrastructure.

Solar is more hype than anything, and it's good press. Is anyone making money from solar?

FSLR is profitable.

Those that sold shovels during the gold rush, made money too.

There's a video of Bill Gates making a mathematical case why solar will not solve our problems. We need another nuclear plant, the name escape but I think it uses all the nuclear waste.

thorium

I believe you're referring to thorium reactors. Though I remain optimistic about future developments in solar (particularly if we can capture it in space and beam it back to earth), I agree that building next-gen nuclear is clearly the best plan for humanity's energy future.

That scenario always makes me think back to simcity (2000?) where as you'd advance, you could build these microwave beam powerplants, and occasionally they'd lose tracking and start burning down your city...

I do wonder how RF power transmission is progressing, and what issues will come with it, as I imagine that's the most feasible way to transport energy from space to earth, although wikipedia also mentions laser transmission - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_energy_transfer

Yes, we are. The numbers can work in a couple of different ways in a couple different markets. It's neither hype, nor press, but thanks.

I'm surprised Google is able to make residential PV contracts make sense: my guess is that the consumers here are either paying more than the prevailing market rates, or they are locked into a very long contract (20+ years?), or both.

By contrast, we target the commercial market, have shorter contracts (10 years), and guarantee a discount relative to the utility co's.

They are probably subsidizing them. 20 years is a long time, especially when people move often and technology changes.

Yeah the article said that they charge on a variable price for the electric and say that it's on average cheaper than the electric company. I imagine that they probably have either long contracts, or high interest to cover the cost. Would it be feasible that the provider of the panels is willing to take an upfront loss that they'll recoup in maintenance?

Residential is the most profitable part of the solar market because residential rates are by far the highest, so your PPA or lease revenue, even at a discount to grid, is still fairly high. Sure it costs more to install residential than commercial or utility scale, but the higher revenue more than offsets this. Also all PPA or leases are long term arrangements where the provider includes an escalator of at least 2% a year. If utility rates don't rise at least that fast, the long term contract is a bad deal for the buyer.

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