Hacker News Reader

Comment by irrational | Hacker News Reader

> You will never be able to produce enough power just from solar panels on your roof

What do you mean by this? Our solar panels produce enough electricity that we never* draw from the local grid. We have a 4,000 sq foot home with 8 people living it. At least a few people are home all the time. We have 2 AC units and 2 furnaces. We have an electric water heater.

* Well, we surely do at night, yet we generate so much more than we use that the credits from the overage feeding back into the grid more than compensates for whatever we use at night. Our monthly electric bill is never higher than the $12 hookup fee.

View on HN

Net metering is classic privatize-the-benefit-but-socialize-the-cost. You are using the grid as a giant battery without paying for a battery, its installation and maintenance.

Isn't that covered in a flat monthly fee you pay on top of consumed electricity?

Yeah, net metering is exploitation of those who can not do the same... We really should just do away with that fully and only do spot prices without limit. So make it possible for price to go infinitely negative too and if someone's system pushes power to grid at that time make them pay.

Who cannot do the same? We have a loan to pay for the panels, but the monthly payment for the loan is quite a bit cheaper than what we ever paid for our monthly electric bill in the past years before getting panels.

For example renters, those who live in apartment buildings?

All energy has externalities, fossil fuel externalities are much worse. Why object to the externalities of solar in particular here but not the externalities of what it replaces?

An honest comparison would only judge the externalities of solar in the light of the externalities of fossil fuels it is replacing, and not in isolation as you are doing.

While solar may use the grid as a giant battery, fossil fuels are using the atmosphere as a giant garbage dump. One of these is obviously much worse.

If you're grid tied, then that obviates the argument that you can exist on local solar generation. The grid is subsidizing your system.

And is your solar on the roof? Do you get up their and clear it off after it snows so you can get power? And what happens when you need a new roof? Did you factor in that cost?

When you add in the required extra panels (to account for charging and drawing power at the same time, and for overcast days), batteries, inverters, regulators, permitting, installation, and many other things, you start to realize that renewable power is a lot more expensive than just the panels. And if you have a system on your property, its a lot more hassle than just paying a bill.

Snow? It doesn’t snow here, but it does rain 9 months out of the year. We put on a 50 year roof just before installing the panels. The roof will outlive me.

You can definitely generate a large percentage of the electricity you use - there are diminishing returns for the last portion because it isn't worth paying for extra panels etc that you will only need for a couple of months of the year. It's a significant percentage more expensive to be off-grid then to generate 90% of your electricity say. It is hard to estimate when a system will have paid for itself because any estimate depends on electricity prices but you are looking at about ten years. So you probably want to be fairly confident you plan to stay in the same place for that timespan.

The advice given is to check that your roof isn't going to need repairs before you get them installed. But a roof usually lasts decades and decades so doesn't feel that is a big factor.

Our panels definitely don't feel like hassle! There were lots of decisions getting them installed (no permitting where we are for they size of system we have), but now they are up there, they just do their thing.

Smoke + mirrors.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com