Why is solar more expensive in the U.S. than in other countries?
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I got a copy of my friend's permit application from a professional installation, learned a bit about the equipment and tools needed, started a spreadsheet of parts, and modified my "permit template" with details about my installation and house. My permit application was stamped on my first try (Manhattan Beach in LA County), so I placed my order.
It was a little tricky to get all my supplies on the roof of my two-story house. I settled on carrying things up the stairs, putting them on a balcony, and pulling them up a ramp I built out of some cheap wood. See pics here [1].
I probably went overboard on quality of parts to compensate for inexperience and not knowing which corners it's OK to cut, but my final cost ended up at $1.64/watt, including about $1000 for my electrician to pull some copper, ground everything, and connect to my panel.
[1] https://github.com/hamikm/solar-report#pictures-from-my-firs...
Your personal benefit is a function of your weather and latitude. High temps reduce efficiency, as do, more obviously, cloud cover and shading. With TOU plans, your benefit will also depend on your usage habits and schedule.
In my case, the benefit was mainly psychological. I never wanted to use AC before, but I started to use it liberally after I turned on my solar system. My wife and child were grateful!
Pre-installation
* June 2019: $160.92
* January 2020: $252.59
Post-installation
* June 2020: $-4.11
* January 2021: $115.27
Including freight it was $1120.
- Recommended from solar forums: https://jaysenergy.wixsite.com/jaysenergy. I haven't bought anything but have communicated with them and gotten a few quotes.
- Santan solar (is where i bought mine from) via ebay (prices were cheaper than their website).
- Craigslist. Occasionally I see posts for people "parting" out used solar panels in bulk.
Yeah this is the only thing you cannot DIY out of the whole process, knowing where your rafters are is like 50% of the problem especially if it's an older home where warpage is known to happen; the rest is pretty straight forward with snap/rack installs and learning how to bend conduit and making misc brackets.
If anyone is in interested in learning how to do this before giving it a go on their own home, you can join a few installs to get the process down by signing up for Grid Alternatives [0], they allow you to help with an install process up until the tie-in. Hell, you can probably even make friends and get one of the local electricians to come by and do it for a nominal fee if you get on a few good crews.
The paperwork and approval is the real issue these days, especially in CA, because the install process has been pretty much been simplified as much as it can be at this poin.
Well done in the install, it looks pretty clean and especially well done for taking the time to map out your rafters on a roof that looks to have had work done on one side (non shingled). Most installers would probably just eyeball it and hit-miss and then use flashing(s) to hide the messiness which always ends up with some leaks down the line.
11k total install (solo job?) is pretty good especially with how energy prices have soared since your install.
That depends on the state.
In Idaho, you absolutely can. I 100% DIY'd my ground mount install (documented in depth here: https://www.sevarg.net/tag/solar2020/), including all the wire runs and hookups.
A neighbor of mine who I've helped out and has done electrical work has done a more in depth project, including replacing a panel in his house with a different one (225A busbar, derated main breaker on it), 100% himself.
The limits out here are that you have to do it on your primary residence - I can do anything I want (with permits and inspections) where I live, but I can't legally do electrical work on a rental. Nor can I do electrical work on anyone else's house (though, of course, I can provide a set of hands to help them out with wire pulls and such).
Nicely done though.
Sometimes the workaround is to go on the two day course and get the certification yourself. That's even easier when the course is 'online' and you can just have the video call running while doing your day job.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/magazine-archive/chinas-monocrys...
See also:
> "The new tariff, which went into effect on February 7, 2018, will likely increase home installation prices of solar panels by $500-$1000 for the typical household. Due to the increased costs of obtaining both solar panels and the technology necessary to create solar panels, the amount of solar installations in the US is expected to decrease by 11% by 2022; some experts in the industry predict that installations will decrease by more than 25%. This major hit to a growing industry could result in a decrease in American jobs; layoffs at solar panel manufacturing plants are expected."
https://compareelectricity.com/research/impact-solar-panel-t...
> To a large degree, it appears the lack of regulatory oversight has allowed for the cheap installation of sub-standard solar panel systems, from the solar equipment and components used in the installation to the actual installation of the solar panels. Interestingly, the same policy and market forces that have helped deliver inexpensive solar to Australian residents are also responsible for the issues observed with Australian solar installations. Though these policies have reduced the time to installation, they’ve also reduced the opportunity to catch errors in installation or issues with equipment.
So, TCO for 20-25 years of service might be a better metric to be using here.
Given the high level of maturity that quality products have achieved and the significant degree of self-protection and fault-isolation that have been built in, I'm inclined to let any random person install with zero oversight and let them deal with any problems that arise.
Probably the only thing really worth doing is ensuring that products available in a marketplace actually implement requisite user-safety, grid-safety, and self-protection mechanisms. It's too easy in most places to get shady garbage equipment.
I think you're missing the whole point of inspectors. They aren't primarily there to be experts for the well-intentioned contractors to use to catch honest oversights they made (although they can do that too sometimes). They're there to catch the less scrupulous people who take advantage of an ignorant homeowner by making the job seem to be done well but in fact actually doing it dangerously and/or poorly. There is a massive incentive to do this kind of work poorly, because it leads to being able to do it quickly and fitting in more jobs means making more money.
The inspection is because electrical systems can burn houses down if they’re not installed correctly.
It has nothing to do with the source of the energy at the other end of the wire.
Or, apparently USA requires inspection of all electrical installations. But where I live they don't do that you just need a licensed electrician during the installation, and I looked it up and home fires due to electricity are just as common in USA as here (about 1 electricity caused home fire per year per 7k people) so it seems like those inspections are worthless for preventing accidents.
Does USA has some way to evaluate whether all these regulations really are necessary and cut down on them over time? There seems to be so many strange regulations that fills no purpose there.
You can also frame good regulations to look unreasonable. Ultimately, you can't solve real-world problems by sitting in a chair and not doing any kind of observation. In this case, we know because there are actually problems with existing solar installations that we can point to. In the hypothetical you refer to, we could find out when news media interview an inspector who says "yeah we just rubber stamp everything, it's a scam" in nicer language.
I really, really want to go see some "contractor installed" solar installs in my area, open up all the panels, see how it's done by the "pros."
Because multiple inspectors have now commented on multiple homeowner installs I've been connected with about "how neat and clean this all is compared to the usual contractor stuff." I assume they're not just buttering up homeowners for no reason (they certainly find things to correct when they're not perfect out of the gate), but... what I consider fairly standard, tidy electrical work gets comments from inspectors. So I have to wonder what sort of crap they're seeing elsewhere.
It's like software development. Good developers are well paid and work on large, interesting projects. Bad developers are doing piecework small jobs for lower pay.
Professionals who know the code to the letter will happily build a rats nest that meets the code to the letter and rightfully tell the inspector to F-off if they get uppity.
Homeowners try to make their stuff look nice because they are dependent on the inspectors good graces because they do not have the requisite knowledge to argue with them so they try to stack the deck in their favor by making the inspector's job easy. (And they know the next person dealing with the panel will probably be them so they have another incentive to make it clean).
I'm just wondering how bad a typical solar install is, that what I consider "sane and reasonable wiring I can visually trace without heroics" is worth mentioning specifically.
Any neanderthal who's had the code beat into them can do the wiring just fine. I would be far more worried about "professionals" drilling holes in dumb shit to save 5min or mounting components in dumb places for convenience than I would be about them doing a bad job at connecting it all together with copper.
Thats not at all how that works. The inspector is guided by the code but 'because I want you to' is a valid reason for them to specify rework. There are all kinds of vagueness in the NEC, for example, that allow latitude over whether work well-crafted or not.
If an inspector is just plain wrong about a particular detail you can certainly appeal to the state authority but it's almost never done because it's more expense and delay than just making the install a little better.
3mo later the “quality and sturdy” deck collapsed 5-10min after my infant daughter and her grandmother (my MIL) were playing outside under it. The units were dangling from the side of our house.
I looked at the collapsed deck: only nails. Let me repeat that, it was only secured with nails. Just dozens of them all over the place.
Never underestimate who will cut corners and how they’ll do it. I’ll never understand how he allowed this to happen. It was utterly baffling.
There are other structural connections though, and depending on how they are built nails can be perfectly acceptable, bolts may be the right choice, or screws may be. This depends on a lot of factors.
The fact that it barely lasted three months should tell you how unsuitable the build was, frankly I don’t think you need more detail than that. Not sure why you’re skeptical of my story. The fact that it fell so fast means it was clearly not appropriately secured.
Joist hanger nails (lots of them, typically 10 required per 2x6 hanger) are the correct way to attach a porch to a house. There is usually a ledger board that is lag screwed or bolted to the house frame, and then joists (nailed in hangers) are extended out to a beam supported by posts.
A collapsed porch is a big deal, clearly. I don't think there's any skepticism of your story, just the ordinary "OK, but" that we often do because it wasn't clear whether you had correctly identified the construction error that caused the failure. Not your job of course -- hopefully the contractor has remedied their bad work.
Also glad everyone is OK!
I didn't let him anywhere near my house agin. I hired a carpenter, an HVAC company, and an electrician, and sent him the bills. Basically played general contractor then had him write me a small check in case a unit fails (both are currently running. We'll see haha).
The intent of my comment was to make sure people didn't come away from your comment thinking "nails = bad" and freak out about their own decks/structures.
Hopefully you got your situation sorted out properly!!
The issues with inspections in the US are more around timing and difficulty. Utilities are not required to respond in a timely manner, so solar companies spend inordinate amounts of time managing the inspection process.
I think our installer is likely to be in business in 10 years, but we have friends whose installers will certainly be out of business by then. (Guess whose installation appears to be riddled with substandard parts.)
You can see the cost differences here: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
Rooftops are unused space, but the land use is generally a small part of the cost. Utility scale solar will always have economies of scale compared to one-off small installations on someone's roof. A dollar spent on roof-top solar would be MUCH better spent on solar panels installed on the ground by the utility.
I am really not sure what to make of anyone who supports the huge subsidies to make rooftop solar viable and then talks about the low cost of solar.
Utility solar just means the utility company can soak up more profits. Every single person with whom I've discussed rooftop solar has not regretted getting it, and complete ROI is measured in years, not decades.
Rooftop solar = energy independence. That means a lot to me.
Utilities are generally considered natural monopolies and their rates are regulated. If there are higher costs because they have to literally buy power at the retail rate from a consumer with rooftop solar, they will have to raise the rates for those who can't afford to put in solar.
>...Every single person with whom I've discussed rooftop solar has not regretted getting it, and complete ROI is measured in years, not decades.
Yes, they haven't regretted it because the costs are being subsidized by tax payers and the less well off rate payers. It isn't very surprising that those who receive money are happy to receive it. In CA, the PUC was going to lower the credit paid to solar owners for sending electricity to the grid to 5 cents a KW and the uproar from wealthy people was large enough that the plan was put on hold. The 5 cents is still more than the 3 cents it costs PG&E for nuclear power, but if the change was implemented, "...The manufacturers of solar systems predicted the death of solar in California,". While I can understand that those who benefit from these huge subsidies would prefer they remain, this is not good public policy.
https://www.ocregister.com/2022/04/29/ghosted-by-the-puc-fol...
PUC rates going down for solar buyback will do nothing for the non-solar users. The fact that (some states') utility companies are regulated doesn't mean the regulation is protected from regulatory capture.
The utilities are not non-profits, they don't behave like them and have their plants on PUC boards everywhere.
Consumer rooftop solar is the most expensive way ever thought of to provide electrical power. Money is fungible. A dollar tied up in building a one-off consumer solar is exactly a dollar unavailable for building out utility grade solar which can be done at a fraction of the cost.
>States (and the USG) subsidize fossil fuels to the tune of 10x what they subsidize solar. All energy sources require subsidies, but the solar subsidy is one of the lowest.
There is no need to change the subject. We are talking about utility grade solar and consumer rooftop solar.
>…PUC rates going down for solar buyback will do nothing for the non-solar users. The fact that (some states') utility companies are regulated doesn't mean the regulation is protected from regulatory capture.
All states have a public utility commission. The fact that states heavily subsidize power generation by consumers means that those without solar have to have increased rates. As an example, at the current time, non-solar households in CA pay an estimated extra $115 to $245 per year to cover the subsidies given to their wealthier neighbors. It is estimated that as the number of consumer solar installation increase, that increased cost will grow to between $385 and $550 per year by 2030 for less wealthy households to cover the costs of wealthier households. I can understand why those getting the subsidy like it, but that doesn't make it good public policy.
That "energy independence" that you say means a great deal to you is totally dependent on the grid to provide electricity to you at night or when the sun doesn't happen to be shining. In many places the costs to maintain that grid are comparable to the costs of providing the actual electricity.
Why is it fair for consumer solar households to use the grid but not pay their fair share of the costs? Why should the utility have to electricity from them at up to 10 times the price paid to commercial providers of electricity?
It's still not true though. For starters "expensive" rooftop solar costs roughly the same as nuclear, which means it's part of the solution, not the problem.
Distributed solar (and batteries) are useful to the grid. It simply makes economic sense to share some of the economic benefits with the people doing the work. The homeowner pays the installer, and then gets payed back over time as they deliver energy to the grid for use by their local area.
The key savings for the grid are around lowering the peak demands on the grid transmission lines.
There's plenty of documentation on this. People have calculated exactly how much benefit was provided by the rooftop solar and it's regularly shown to have had positive externalities beyond what the homeowner got paid.
Though, most of that is for times in the past, when federal incentives may have been overriding local utility attempts to protect their profit margins and most solar was retrofits. And solar generally was in it's infancy and needed subsidized because we didn't have a carbon tax.
Today, the key thing is to be buliding net-zero housing, which generally involves adding solar PV (and insulation) at the design and construction phase. Which basically removes all the costs and is saving money from the start. We can also not hook up gas at all, for a massive saving on new construction, plus health and climate benefits.
https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-ene...
> All new residential construction will be zero net energy (ZNE) by 2020. > All new commercial construction will be ZNE by 2030 > 50% of commercial buildings will be retrofit to ZNE by 2030 > 50% of new major renovations of state buildings will be ZNE by 2025.
Meanwhile, rooftop solar on commercial buildings, was always cheaper than residential (so cheaper than nuclear for example) due to scale and still makes sense for the same reasons, large commercial bulidings use energy, and using it locally is cheaper than transmitting it.
So rooftop solar is good. Subsidies to make markets work better are good. (I'd prefer that the subsidies given to the fossil fuel industries were removed, but if that's not politically viable, I'm happy with counterbalancing subsidies).
I see this logical fallacy made more and more where people start out by begging the question. No need to prove anything when everyone should just assume you are 100% right on everything!
>...For starters "expensive" rooftop solar costs roughly the same as nuclear, which means it's part of the solution, not the problem.
Tell that to Germany! (or a fair number of the people on this site).
>...Distributed solar (and batteries) are useful to the grid. It simply makes economic sense to share some of the economic benefits with the people doing the work. The homeowner pays the installer, and then gets payed back over time as they deliver energy to the grid for use by their local area.
In places like CA, a consumer installs solar cells, gets the federal tax credit and can then sell their power back to the utility for the retail rate (around 30 cents per KWH). A commercial entity that installs solar cells can maybe sell their power back at 1/10 that rate. In order to subsidize the wealthy home owner, rates for the less wealthy households had to increase. As an example, at the current time, non-solar households in CA pay an estimated extra $115 to $245 per year to cover the subsidies given to their wealthier neighbors. It is estimated that as the number of consumer solar installation increase, that increased cost will grow to between $385 and $550 per year by 2030 for less wealthy households to cover the costs of wealthier households. I can understand why those getting the subsidy like it, but that doesn't make it good public policy.
>So rooftop solar is good.
It is a bit silly to just say something is 'good'. We need to compare it with its alternatives. The direct alternative is ground based solar. Consumer rooftop solar is much more hazardous to the installers and much more expensive - I don't think either of those two statements is in doubt. In order to hide the cost of consumer rooftop solar, there are tax credits and often those who can't afford solar are forced to subsidize the costs for their wealthier neighbors.
>Subsidies to make markets work better are good.
Subsidies to take money from the poor to give to the wealthy are not good public policy. In CA, the PUC proposed lowering the credit paid to solar owners for sending electricity to the grid to 5 cents a KW and the uproar from wealthy people was large enough that the plan was put on hold. The 5 cents is still more than the 3 cents it costs PG&E for nuclear power, but if the change was implemented, "...The manufacturers of solar systems predicted the death of solar in California,". While I can understand that those who benefit from these huge subsidies would prefer they remain, this is not good public policy.
Cheap/free fuel is an existential threat to their business model. The fact that fossil fuel is a major contributor to climate change is glossed over as long as the $$ roll in.
Their end game is to make it impossible for us to transition to another energy source until they have wrung every possible last cent from this one.
Thus, tariffs on solar, attacks on EV adoption, and demonization of nuclear are clearly things that have worked wonders for their bottom line.
Am I way out of line here, or are the labor prices reasonable?
IIUC, the actual laborers aren't making anywhere near ~$20k per day (even for 5 people).
Overhead on labor should not be 2000%+.
If laborers were capturing all of the "labor" cost - they'd be making $1M per year working 5 days per week. Obviously, they wouldn't be 100% booked.
But they're probably not even averaging $100k - since electricians make less than that in most parts of the country, and most of the workers are making a lot less than the electrician.
The actual "labor" cost here - even counting for vacation and other benefits - is probably less than $5k. What's the other $15k?
It's certainly NOT profit. These companies don't have high margins.
It's also not materials - that's broken out into the materials costs which includes the more expensive regulated grid-tie inverters and whatnot.
Whatever it is - it appears to be unique to the US.
When I shopped around for components, the prices did range from ~20-30EUR per panel to ~100EUR/panel.
Installing a (small) system to start with in the Netherlands costs down to an OOM less.
Plus a lot of it is marketing and quoting expense. Advertising and paying for referrals eats up a big chunk of the bill. You (or someone) has to spend time generating quotes that turn into projects less than half the time.
I’d much rather just pay an engineer $1,000 to whip up some plans, and then hire people to follow those plans, rather than pay indirectly for a bunch of failed sales calls. Which is what I’m ending up doing.
It pushes up the cost of labor across the board.
They offered a 25 year loan term, 0% interest, including the cost of a new roof.
But... The installed cost of a 7kW system with no batteries was over $5.68/Watt NOT INCLUDING THE ROOF!
So... financially the deal was actually objectively better than doing nothing because it increased monthly cash flow and required no money down. But, the solar company would be getting most of the savings from the system and would pass on about $50-80/month of those savings to me, but we'd be paying $200/month forever.
But yes, I know not all plumbing issues are waste related.
And on top of it, I gain experience and get to know my house inside out... But on the other hand, I haven't had a spare weekend for 6 months.
So how do you value that on a per hour basis?
Some things seem within the scope of somebody like myself (who doesn't do this as a day job). For instance, I'm comfortable with removing and replacing toilets, I can do basic drywall work, I can texture and paint and do backsplash. But I don't think I could redo hardwood and tile flooring myself, install an exterior sliding door, nor make cabinet faces that I'd be happy with. For that, I'd pay whatever a contractor calls Market Rate^tm.
I expect to not have any free weekends for at least the rest of the year. What would I pay for that? Maybe... $25-$30k?
Tile I didn't find so bad, with the exception that in the kitchen I did 8x48" tiles which I thought would make the job go faster, but they were a nightmare to set. The large format was just hard. The backsplash subway tile went super easy.
It wouldn't have mattered in the seller's market of the past few years, but it will absolutely be a dealbreaker now that we're entering into a buyer's market.
Permitted and inspected work is fine.
I've never done electrical work myself but I've hired electricians and as far as I can tell there is no licensing requirement in my local jurisdiction nor any sort of local license to be an electrician.
Im more worried about being hit by a meteor.
It makes sense really, it's better to work with DIYers to "backstop" their work by having an inspector look at their work and not be an A-hole about it, than to have them do the work anyway and cross their fingers. I love having the building inspectors check my work, worth the couple hundred bucks I pay for a permit.
Which is the bigger joke?
There are a lot of idiots, apparently. Many of them working at Fortune 500s.
Biglaw bills 2k an hour for a junior associate (basically checking if all the commas on your contract are in place)
Of course, that's in a different world than 90% of lawyers where they'll start at the $200–$300/hr range: https://old.reddit.com/r/LawFirm/comments/m710ce/junior_asso...
(Of course, associates aren't seeing 90% of the money they bill.)
Like sometimes I pay somebody to clean and fold all of my laundry or to deep clean parts of my home because getting those things out of the way and freeing up a chunk of my time without that overhead is quite helpful when I've got too much going on. Similarly sometimes I pay to get the oil changed in my car. Not buying the service really, but buying the time that it saves me.
No one is stopping someone from doing the plumbing work themself, there are lots of people selling plumbing labor, and the barrier to entry to becoming a plumber is not super high. So whatever the going price simply reflects the supply of people willing to do plumbing work.
I think it is fantastic that plumbers are getting $160/hour to do backbreaking and hazardous work that most people would rather not do.
That's a very good point. Some trades tend to be riskier than others but they all induce wear and tear on the body over time.
Corollary would be, if you earn income, how are you justifying your price(s)?
Mechanics tend to have a book that tell them what rate to charge and how long it should take. Then when you add in being in the Seattle area, that their taxes and property costs are off the hook because of all the computer programmers that happen to live in Seattle, earn well into the 6 figures, and post on HN, that their prices are not bad for people that don't want to turn a wrench.
So I called the big plumbing/heating place in town. They came in with a $750 quote to replace it, but they said: "It's not currently failing, but when we're in there it's usually a good idea to replace the contactors." I asked how much that would be. He looks up in a table "$375". "For a relay?!?" I later looked up the contactor price and it was less than $20, and it'd take me less than an hour to replace it, maybe 5 minutes "while I was in there".
Are there more than a handful of independent sellers to choose from? If there are, and you are not willing to do the work yourself, then I would say the prices are reasonable.
I understand that how I initially phrased it sounded like maybe I was bundling that into labor.
I'm not sure how Australia does rapid shutdown (if they do), but Enphase and the requirement for per-panel shutdown devices on arrays in the US is responsible for a decent chunk of cost - somewhere on the order of $0.30/kWh. If you have lots of shading, microinverters are fine, but by NEC 2017, they're basically required (or you have to have per-panel optimizers and shutdown boxes, which add about the same cost as just going to microinverters). I don't know the exact details of it, but everyone I've talked to in the solar industry seems to feel Enphase "lobbied hard" for this particular shutdown requirement, because it's very much to their market advantage, even if it has no meaningful safety benefits in actual array failure conditions.
I hate to say "Because installers think they can get people to pay," but I've also seen a lot of "around the edges" evidence that the sales commissions for solar are fairly obscene (couple grand, if not more), just "tacked on" to the price. Hey, they're interested in solar, dial the commission up, and make it look like they'll save money! Even if the assumptions embedded are simply wrong.
And then, of course, there's the "solar loan" price inflation, in which your "0.99% APR" loan has a couple grand in fees up front, tacked onto the price. You can often save quite a bit by asking for the "cash price," but nobody does that out of the gate, because of course you want an expensive up front and low interest loan, right? Who wouldn't? Oh, and those loan origination fees count as install cost for the purposes of the tax credit... ;)
There are a lot of things that go into it, but from my point of view, it really feels like it's a lot of "Because we can, and because we convince people to pay it" going on with the installed costs. When I can get, as a random low volume homeowner, the equipment to do solar for $1-$1.25/W, I have to wonder about the prices installers charge.
That is similar to what you'd have to pay in Germany, up to the beginning of this year. My landlord installed 30 kW of panels and a 10 kWh battery storage for around 40 k€ including all fasteners, cables etc.
Installation can be done by yourself, although I think you'll have to use certified fasteners etc. for the insurance company. Connecting to the grid and checking everything once has to be done by a certified professional (electrician) once, which differs in price. Some only check systems they have installed (and therefore made money with) themselves, but that differs.
Prices have obviously gone up like nothing after Russia decided to fuck everything up.
I think this happens a lot with anything that’s relatively expensive. I mean let’s say you could get your 21kW system down to $8K installed. A lot of people just don’t have that kind of money laying around. But they’d be more than happy to finance $12K (so 50% markup) if the monthly payment comes out OK. So basically, anything expensive has a lot of room for “value add” in the form of making it “affordable.” Solar I think is never going to be so cheap that people will generally pay for it outright, so you’re going to see a lot of this.
Probably because they approach finances in terms of the "monthly payment, I can afford it!" solution that's so profitable to lenders. Paying 50% more for the system "so I can get monthly payments" is not a way to having any actual savings, long term.
And when salestypes are playing games with the "dial-a-power-inflation-rate" knob to make your savings look amazing, it suckers some people in. Even as the power company is moving to change net metering requirements, very few salespeople seem to ever bother mentioning that you're unlikely to actually see 25 years of kWh for kWh net metering on a new install.
I don't run in particularly high income circles, but I do run in quite frugal circles, and the people I've been helping out with solar installs are, in fact, just buying things cash (after scrounging around for the best deals). I've been able to help this process some by facilitating some bulk purchases (the last order was 100x 72 cell panels, we ordered enough to be under $0.50/W on them), and I've traded some panels and other equipment for labor on various things as well ("I'll pay for the materials, pay you in inverters or something for the labor"), but... loans just aren't how any of the people I know out here (rural mountain west farm country) work.
Of course at the same time, you're assuming power prices go down, or even remain stable at their current price over time, which may or may not happen. In Texas our bills have jumped after the great freeze debacle.
I'm not a licensed electrician, nor do I have the slightest desire to be one. But I do like helping people, who are capable of generally doing their own work, install dirt cheap grid tie solar ($1/W being the current target price). And I've got the cashflow to trade solar parts for other things without worrying too much about it (my deck railing is likely to be paid for with cash for materials, solar inverters for the labor).
So I'm trying to help optimize the design phase, and "Here's what it should look like, electrically." And, of course, nobody has said I can't help build the actual ground mount supports, or pull wire, or... generally help out.
Installation cost for HVAC systems in US/Canada is also silly. In Asia, you walk into a department store and pick a system, and then pay 10~15% of the equipment price for installation. In the US, the cost of hardware is only 30% of the total quoted price and you will not get a price breakdown like you do at auto repair shops.
On the other hand, how much of the purchase experience is driven by the consumer rather than the producer? HVAC is high capital and labor, low distribution volume. Why would a department store (if people still go to such things) devote space to it? Unlike various appliances (see discussion yesterday about decreases in quality driving increased purchase volume [0]), an HVAC is like roofing. Except for the thermostat and port covers everything is hidden and not part of a consumer aesthetic/emotional experience.
Mini-splits are very common in Asia and is in fact easier to install (e.g. no ducting). However in the US, mini-splits being new have sort of taken on the legacy HVAC installation pricing plus some premium. You're correct that labour cost is higher in the US but it doesn't explain the 10x cost in installation - I've seen too many people overpay by $10~20k for a system they don't need.
In terms of distribution, HVAC has similar volume to other major home appliances so it's not necessarily low I think. For customer experience... yeah, it's something that most people don't think about until it breaks I suppose.
Also in the US, how many laborers can they get to install these things. We've been running at 3-4% unemployment for some time now. When people can go get a job in an office they tend to do that long before doing physical labor these days, so a lot of premium is going towards that labor cost.
Mini splits are super simple to install so it would make since it's cheaper.
Australia has no such requirement, and so they can use the cheapest inverters from China/Amazon.
I bought a dozen flexible panels at around $1 / watt. These are very lightweight and I was able to install them on top of the awning without going on to the roof.
Not a high powered system, nor particularly efficient in terms of space. But low material cost and self-installed.
At present, solar panels users expect to be able to generate all the electricity they want on sunny days, sell the excess back to the utility for bill credits (at retail prices), and then spend the bill credits on cloudy days, or days with high energy demand.
Well this doesn't make sense for the utility. They have to maintain the grid and the more people that put up solar panels, the fewer people that are left paying for upkeep on hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure.
You can argue that it should be $37 instead of $57, but clearly it needs to be >$0
It's also not $57 a month. That's the "average" tax, whatever that means. With the size of my installation, it would be over $110 a month. And my installation is not out of the ordinary.
And it's not a "free battery". That's the opposite of what is happening. The utilities pay less than half of what they charge for the excess electricity that you produce.
It's an attempt to destroy residential solar. No less.
I'd actually not care about their extortion if they allowed us to disconnect from the grid and run without them, but that is illegal, at least in Los Angeles.
> SETO’s soft costs portfolio addresses a wide array of costs and barriers to solar energy deployment. Projects are working to improve market transparency of solar system costs, prices, and adoption trends; enable equitable access to solar through innovative financing and community solar; reduce costs for permitting, inspection, and interconnection; improve bulk power system and distribution system planning for larger amounts of grid-connected solar; reduce land use competition for siting solar projects; enable solar installations in new construction and with roof replacements; and improve planning for the retirement of solar panels.
> Additionally, projects develop training materials and programs to help supply a skilled workforce to meet the solar industry’s growing human resource needs, prepare those in the utility industry to manage a modern grid, and help relevant professions keep up with these rapidly emerging and advancing technologies.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/soft-costs
So, just lots of little things really.
$2,268.00 4.8kw Panels $1,577.00 6kw Inverter $4000 (22khw batteries)
Roughly paying $2 per watt but that includes 22kwh of freaking batteries otherwise it's less than a dollar per watt y'all. Right now this system is freezing my ass, distilling water and running my fridge (I'm in an rv building my property).
I'm a huge fan of string all-in-one inverters because they do much more for the price than stupid panel inverters that cost too much. That and I'm off grid so it makes much more sense because why pay PG&E at these prices.
You can't wait forever, but it is hard to time when to bite the bullet when you want to install solar. Personally, I am waiting until I can install a system that will produce an average of 1000kWh per month (about $100 worth of power in my state) but only costs $6000 installed (5 year payback time). Any guesses when that will be possible?
> Salesmen are over-paid, and the more they inflate the price the more they are paid.
> The companies that over-charge the most have the most ability to grow and advertise.
> Google Search will put whoever pays the most for the ad (which will probably be who is over-charging the most) at the top of the search results.
> Approximately no homeowners understand the cost structure of solar, once again making it easier to over-charge.
Energy is cheap because we tend to have a massive amount of that also, specifically coal and hydro resources.
And this is ignoring that from a certain point the electricity grid will only be necessary in cities and for large amounts of power. Either governments let city electricity go up in price by A LOT or they start doing things like mandating a connection to the grid (even when you don't need or want it)
Also: what is "BEV travel" ?
I have a off-grid lot with a ~1.5kw of solar, which cost me around 2k USD (with ~5kw battery), self-installed. I'm planning to install something similar on my home. The electrical permitting should be easy as I won't be hooking up to grid (I plan on running my mini split/heat pump off of it).
When I last looked in 2020, you could buy a pallet of new solar for ~ $0.37/watt.
Looks like prices now are around $0.50-$0.65 /watt
Regardless, I'm glad I did it then. When I talked to my rep this March, she said they were months behind on even getting components now.
Solar installations, even when done badly, have an excellent safety record post-install.
And safety issues that they do have are typically related not to the installation but to the manufacturing of the equipment, which is something an inspector can't check anyway.
I wonder what their concerns are specifically, besides making sure the end result looks good. Do they also have an approved list of installers? That's a red flag for corruption. I once lived in a condo where you had to install a certain replacement window type (fine, sure, it should match) but you had to get it from one of 3 approved installers. My neighbors and I realized that 2 of them would give the same quote, and the 3rd would give a slightly lower quote. The installer that would give the lower quote would be round-robined, and it was always exactly the same "discount".
All external work (not just solar) requires licensed & insured from my HoA. Well, technically in the bylaws it requires the board to vote to approve the modification, but for the board to decide to vote yes requires licensed & insured. As I understand the only thing I am "allowed" to do myself is basic landscaping... as long as I provide a written plan to the HoA for them to vote on of course.
My next house won't be in an HoA-neighborhood, definitely sucks the joy out of being a first-time home buyer.
For instance, thanks to court rulings that allow the FCC or overrule HOAs, you could put a giant hot pink DIY installed satellite dish on your roof.
Give them an olive branch, so they can pretend they won. For instance, make it clear you will exceed installation guidelines for the mounts, get the work inspected, and that your homeowners insurance covers the install.
I've been thinking about a "death by documentation" approach, where I give them a very intricate and detailed plan of action that includes things such as getting inspections done.
I am trying to steer away from anything aggressive like the hot pink satellite dish as I don't want them breathing down my neck for the next 5 or so years, but might need to resort to guerrilla tactics to get it done.
For BOM, price the system, and send them the quote. Include screws, flashing and caulk if you're feeling motivated.
As for pictures, there are free landscape design (and other) tools that will Photoshop in panels from a street view picture or 3d box diagram of your house. This shouldn't take more than an hour or two.
Plan of action:
- obtain permits
- install mounts, then panels, then wiring (per above code)
- inspection
- energize system
You should be more subtle than the satellite dish. For instance, do the bylaws say anything about front lawn mounted solar panels, or freestanding solar carports?
Maybe you've decided to go forward with a completely misguided repainting of the front of the house in homage to Mondrian (subject to HOA color palletes, of course), or to put in some "classical" (tasteful nudity) stained glass front entrance windows you made yourself.
Are these ideas malicious or stupid? Who's to say? Make it clear your budget is limited. :-)
Checking the articles sources, apparently lots of installed panels in Australia stop working after ~5 years and the remaining functional panels decline in performance 12%.
This is an interesting trade off. Would I prefer a solar system that is 1/3 the cost but 1/4 the life in the US? I don't know. I think the average time spend in one home is around 7 years (don't quote me, I could be very wrong here), so it seems like each homeowner could install their own system and be fine. Cheaper systems also mean that more people could install them.
Not a policy expert, don't trust my thoughts.
Hmmm.
If we assume that solar panels are rapidly advancing, then probably?
The reason 'move fast and break things' works for computers, is that computers are gonna be upgraded in 2 years anyway and we are going to rewrite everything in 5 to 10 years with whatever new programming language becomes popular then.
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If solar panels are going such a revolution, then yeah, shorter lifespan and short term decisions dominate.
(There's also the actual wasted panels, and raw materials, but let's face it, that's rounding error vs five years of household waste. Also, the replacement will probably be better on those fronts.)
If it's not grid-tie, I say have at it. Require by law that the property specify that the work was not done by a professional if it's ever sold and the only people exposed to that risk are mostly the people who made the bad decisions.
If it's grid-tied (or accidentally grid-tied) not having a properly installed and configured transfer switch could quite literally mean (and has meant, plenty of times) killing a maintenance worker.
If that's even a possibility it's not responsible to allow DIY work in this area.
Making truely idiot-proof high voltage wiring is difficult. However, that's what inspectors are for (in theory).
Also, solar panels are heavy and pointy and often stored on roofs where the wind can grab them. Again, inspectors should check this.
At least in the US, in most states, you're entirely allowed to do your own electrical work on your primary residence, and it has to meet the same standards, same inspections, same permits, etc, as any other install.
As far as grid tie and rapid shutdown, the only thing that really matters there is the inverter. If they're a UL listed inverter, they'll shut down properly when the grid drops, at least on the backfeed ports (some have automatic transfer switches and such built in to continue powering the house grid down).
Also, can you cite evidence of a DIY install actually killing ("plenty of times") a lineworker? The techniques I've seen for line work involve "dead shorting the phases and neutral all together before doing anything," which makes the grid segment quite impossible to energize for invasive work, even if someone somewhere else screws up. And I've seen some reports of generator based backfeeding injuring or killing lineworkers (who generally were half a dozen safety protocol violations in at the time), but I've not seen any related to solar - because grid tie inverters simply don't work that way for any I've found.
Clearly this could happen with a dumb diy solar install, but also the case text shows that the company knew this was a possibility and enumerates several ways this accident could have been avoided.
But I've yet to see "plenty" of deaths attributed to DIY solar. A downed grid segment looks like a dead short to an inverter, and anything even faintly UL listed (even with a "UL Listed" sharpie marking on the box) shouldn't be feeding into a totally dead grid segment at all. Most of the grid tie inverters lack the ability to create a waveform in the first place - they can only feed into an existing waveform.
Given a 7 year life, you are effectively creating 4x the waste as a quality system. Multiply that by millions of homes and I don’t see how the trade off is worth it.
Do you have concrete data for this or are you going off manufacturer claims? To the best of my knowledge - and i work in the industry - the vast majority of rooftop or domestic PV installations are under ten years old. Some of the oldest ones that were mass-installed are in Germany.
I highly doubt PV panels will last 20+ years under most environmental conditions.
Also, before you compare PV lifetimes between the USA and australia, bear in mind that the great majority of Australian installations are very close to salt water. That plays havoc with anything installed outdoors, particularly metals and glass.
These articles tend to be generous with interpretations of their poorly cited sources. Still, without knowing where the early PV systems are in the US, it's a difficult claim to back up. There is also survivorship bias and the fact that quality control on small batches of any product is usually better than on mass market stuff.
After the section you referred to, the article goes on to claim that poor regulatory oversight is responsible for the short lifespan of Australian PV systems... again, a questionable claim.
Any competent, reputable company providing 30 year warranties in marine environments is going to stick test panels in a temperature-cycling salt mist chamber for an appropriate amount of time.
From first hand experience, the warranties on PV panels aren't all they are made out to be. For one, manufacturing runs of many panel models last months. after, while the warranty will be honoured, you won't be receiving identical panels either electrically or cosmetically. Worse still is when the equivalent offered has different dimensions.
The warranty itself is good but doesn't account for practical considerations especially when you are working with a component that's part of a larger whole.
Some simple research of the options ahead of agreeing to anything can lead to much better results.
Financing providers, sales commissions, and profit + operating margins of the typical end-to-end residential solar sales and installation company make up a large portion of the price. What you're really paying for is convenience and expertise to understand the equipment, hire/train personnel, and jump through local - often arcane municipal requirements.
However if you measure your roof and can can find a freelance designer to draft up some CAD drawings that can get approved through your local municipality, buy the equipment yourself, and hire a crew + electrician to install it direct - you'll save quite a bit - at least 5-20k depending system size. Its more leg work, but you save enough its probably worth it. The install crew, electrician and CAD designer are the only real experts you might want to hire in for. The rest is paperwork, sales, and financing.
A pretty common $/watt is about $3.5-5/watt. Expect < $2.5/watt if you're cutting out sales and financing - doing more of the process yourself.
The other metric to look at is your estimated and actual production/panel ratio. You have flat costs on equipment but depending on where that panel is on your roof (based on shading, exposure, azimuth, etc) you might get less or more for your buck. The math is costs/month based on your financing taking into account expected production (plug numbers into a tool like https://pvwatts.nrel.gov/). A good production/panel ratio can significantly affect your ability to collect savings.
I emphasize production/panel because most of these Solar Sales companies pay their sales guy on a per/watt rate where bigger is better, not necessarily efficiency and financial benefit for the customer. This can incentivize them to push for panels in places on your roof where they'll hardly produce - adding to the overall cost of the system something that is good for them and not necessarily for you.
If you have the documents and can put good numbers together you can likely get financing through your local bank directly - or imo just pay cash if you can. Avoid PPAs, stick to loans with good rates or cash.
A really common bottleneck at these solar installation companies is either 1. permitting, or later on: inspections and interconnection approval (City/Municipality + Power Co.). The shadier solar companies can technically get paid by the financing provider prior to a customer's system being fully inspected and interconnected with the grid. This doesn't always give them in incentive to bring the project to a closure as they've already gotten paid and any additional work is a truck roll, technician hours, and troubleshooting - even if it leaves the customer without a producing system and monthly payments.
It just doesn't make sense to me to mess with it now. As others have mentioned, pushing for grid solar/nuclear/other clean energy is really the only way to do this efficiently. Then I won't have a mass of ugly panels stuck on my roof.
Electricity prices are expected to keep going up too. But there is also uncertainty in how utilities will renegotiate (or else grandfather in) existing solar ratepayers. California's solar pricing schemes have changed a lot just in the last decade as they went from minimal solar to solar oversaturation (the grid couldn't keep pace with the # of installs).
At the end of the day, for some homeowners, solar is a no-brainer. For others, it doesn't make sense. It totally depends... it isn't an automatic win, but also not something that should be categorically written off. It's worth investigating, especially for new constructions that are heavily electrified (i.e. use electricity for heating/cooling/cooking instead of gas or other fuels).
But agreed that grid-scale makes more sense, combined with other power technologies.
One minor nitpick: It's unlikely the PV modules (solar panels) themselves will fail in 20 years; you'll more likely have to replace your inverter before the cells themselves break. Sometimes those inverters are string inverters in your house (no roof work needed), other times they are microinverters/power optimizers attached to the modules themselves, which would make it more complicated to replace.
For many people though (older / less efficient homes, larger families, more expensive electricity) it makes a lot of sense. I did a 10kw system on my last home and the break even point was 6 years. The couple with no kids that bought the house from us likely won’t have an electric bill above $0 for years…