3.4M Solar Panels
tech.marksblogg.com
tech.marksblogg.com
I know in florida you have janky laws stopping you, but below 10kw it's still relatively easy.
I have a friend who installed <10kw of solar panels and they're now 97% off-grid in hot, wet florida weather with an old low-seer AC, single-pane windows and poor roof insulation which is roughly 60% of the energy usage.
The reason they got it is actually not to save money or anything, but to have power when grid goes down after hurricanes.
> Alabama Power, with approval from the Alabama PSC, charges residential solar customers a monthly fee of $5.41 per kilowatt based on the size of their solar system
> Alabama Power's residential electricity rates generally range from approximately 11 to 13 cents per kWh, plus a $14.50 monthly base charge
https://www.selc.org/press-release/court-allows-alabama-powe...
For a place that was two miles from a power line, I would think anyone would approve of off-grid.
At that point, off grid is a no-brainer for everyone except industrial users (and those lots aren’t useful for them anyway).
A landowner wanted to run power to their land, they got quoted 100k and possibly 250k to run less than 2 miles of powerlines.
The land owner fired back with the question of installing solar panels instead as it would be cheaper and free.
The representitive replied with: "Look around you, there's no solar panels because they don't work."
Less than 100k later, the landowner had full off-grid power via solar and a backup generator.
I guess at the end of the day they saw all the sunshine around them and said: "You're right, all that sun is mine and mine alone."
Sounds about right. I’m guessing the land was far from the right of way. And a little bit off road.
It would also likely have some expensive maintenance at times.
I think it would if it was indeed “essentially free”. Rooftop solar is unfortunately a racket though, and companies price-gouge like crazy and also collude to keep prices inflated.
See also: War profiteering.
I am working on replacing it with a real deck/carport combo and will probably put 600w solar over it, should be room for 4-6 of them.
That will be a 2-3kw solar install, not enough to replace my entire draw by a long shot, but enough to carve a pretty big dent out of it.
I'm already going to be spending $10k-$15k on the deck/carport install plus the french doors to replace the window looking over the fake balcony, so what's another $3k-$5k for a modest solar install?
It's also such radically better priced equipment when it's consumer focused. My little Bluetti Elite 100 v2 was $400. It's a 1kWh battery. But as much as anything I bought it because it takes 800W of solar input! On this tiny cheap thing! That's better solar input density than most of these stations, but also, the other guys don't really have an excuse: if you are making a power station like this, it's such a minimal extra cost to integrate a decent solar buck MPPT controller controller on too. 60v 20a capable mosfets transistors have become unfathomably high performance & affordable.
There's all sorts of really amazing units being built. Zendure SolarFlow 2400 Pro doesn't come with batteries but is ~ 1500$ for a 3000w input unit. Not quite as good a proposition (2W:$1 again, but no battery) but is more home sized, to put down another data point. Lots of players & competition, vs the "buy Victron" age! (Still, that Victron reliability.) https://www.notebookcheck.net/Zendure-SolarFlow-2400-Pro-rev...
When there's so many contractors involved, it's like, yeah, give me the good expensive electronics; the marginal cost is whatever. I like how balcony solar is so disruptive from below though, how it breeds a cost conscious
But the very idea of not being dependent on the grid or fossil fuels, if one can afford it and costs are comparable, should sell itself.
But my dad watches Fox News so he brings up lies like how bad wind turbines are for the environment (coal anyone?) or how we shouldn't make ourselves dependent on China for solar (as if we aren't dependent on a lot of bad hombres for our current energy mix or as if receiving solar makes us dependent at all).
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Edit: HN's conversation throttler childishly patronized me for "posting too fast". At least do me the honor of telling me you don't like what I'm saying, instead of telling me I'm posting too quickly when I'm making 1 message/hour.
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In response to dataflow below:
It still reveals an ignorant cult-like derision for renewables that isn't explained by reality. The people who gleefully mock the issues with renewables do it because they have been trained to want renewables to fail, and to see active support for renewables as a signal for softness and liberalism.
Your counterargument is even worse than theirs. The predictability, frequency, severity, mitigability, etc. of these are extremely different.
I'm giving this one to renewables.
> frequency
I guess technically the weather is probably bad for solar or wind more often than geopolitical disturbances to the oil market but, if we go by when its bad for solar _AND_ wind, I feel like I'd need to see the data.
> severity
Tied, maybe? Depends if we're including like, the 70s and if we're looking at just from a US standpoint or if we're including Europe.
> mitigability
I feel lot more confident in my ability to add more panels than to negotiate reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
Also oil and gas tankers move at about the same speed of someone riding a bike, across the ocean, taking nearly 2 months to cross. Its insane the amount of time and resources wasted like that.
I just paid ~$35k (pre-now-expired-tax-break) to install a grid-tied 25kw ground mount system. I DIY'd everything except the connection between the array and the grid, which I paid an electrician to do, and the trenching which I paid my buddy with a mini-excavator to do.
It was a bit of a PITA, but mostly because I didn't finally make up my mind to do it until October and had to have it constructed by Dec 31st to take advantage of the expiring tax credit. If I'd given myself 6 months, it would have still been a big project, but way less stressful.
My neighbor's paid the same price to a contractor for a 11kw system.
Even at 46°N, and with relatively cheap electricity, my system should pay for itself in 6-8 years.
What would have been the cost if it was not DIY'd? Is this doable only in a rural/semi-urban settings?
I'm in the bay area, did a roof mount system. ~9.5kW with Enphase microinverters.
I think it cost be ~15k all in. The usual installer price is normally around $2.5-$3/w (so about $25k - $30k).
I got someone to do the plans (because I was under the gun to get on NEM2), but that was $300 well spent.
Did it all myself -- mounting, running conduit / wiring etc. Wasn't too bad. Probably about 3-4 Saturdays of work.
Here's my install log: https://www.reddit.com/r/diySolar/comments/1c6jfjv/finally_d...
Payback time is 2-4 years.
It reminds of healthcare and infrastructure in the US. When you really dig into why both are so expensive, it's literally every step. Every link in the chain between supplier and consumer is some kind of inefficient market, or burdened by regulations, etc.
Americans are just so rich they don't care enough to see these huge margins and undercut the competition, which is what happens here and keeps markets much more efficient.
Mini-split systems should be the cheapest to install but things like brick walls can make an aesthetic installation more difficult.
Something like a minisplit though can literally be DIYed in under a day. With experience, a DIYer can do it in a couple hours. They're literally designed to be easily installed as a complete system. Even in Japan you can get one installed for under a grand (including the unit). In China it's obviously even cheaper.
Obviously HVAC companies don't want it to be easier to get a license, they make boatloads on entire home systems and maintenace. Being able to just replace a broken unit for $600 would kill their entire business model.
Electrical is a similar scam, though for some reason if you get enough quotes you can usually find one that isn't charging the equivalent of $1k/hr in labor like getting a mini-split from an HVAC company tends to be.
I would too. Alas mom lives in a northerly area, and we really would prefer something high efficiency. There's some rebadged 37mpra units about that are 35+ SEER2, which if the number means anything is a colossal leap. The good stuff though doesn't seem to be directly purchaseable. I'd be happy to lay the concrete bed, set it up, drill walls, mount the ductless... Getting help actually vacuuming would be good but I could do it.
But I can't go purchase the system.
It's all deeply infuriating. This is just such a rude awful thing that American society keeps having to put up with such deeply captured deeply absurd base costs everywhere. These tradespeople deserve to make a living, I don't bergrudge them that, but this feels like there has to be so so much more going wrong for these prices to escalate like this.
Now is the time to get handy if not already. Robotics /physical automation will lag info by a good stretch.
One of the reasons for this is that in many parts of the US, solar has sadly been market segmented as a luxury product, just like other high efficiency products like heat pumps or EVs.
This is enabled by both the prevailing cultural attitudes about efficiency and renewables as indulgences for the better off, and industries that are happy to keep captive high margin markets of those customers, i.e. the continued lack of a US produced low-cost EV.
The American cult of individualism is also at play, wherein collective solutions are shunned vs private ones, which is why renewables and storage are so popular among off grid libertarian types.
We hit our first MW/h of power today. In England. In April. Total electricity bill for the last 6 weeks is about £30, and that includes our driving (previously £150 to £200 p/m) and most of our hot water. If you have the property for it and available investment, the ongoing savings are instant and obvious! My instant regret was not having done it sooner. Driving around on your own sunshine does feel magical as well!
My 4 adult household has two EVs and the house is centrally air-conditioned. Average daily usage in January-March: 100kWh per day. Average feed in price when the sun is shining: about $0/kWh (but negative if it's a bright cool day.) Average electricity bill: a small credit. Cost of electricity where I live USD$0.23/kWh. Pay back time: 4 years.
Country with the most rooftop solar installations per capita: Australia.
Country with the most household kWh of batteries installed per capita: Australia.
Profit.
Just hard to get the stuff it seems, mostly because the market has a fetish for early-gen retrofit/independent solar panels, as far as mounting goes.
AZ just has some of the dumbest rules in the US WRT to solar. It's a state where every home should have solar panels.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1419901/us-residential-g...
I would expect Texans to independently go for solar, given the... complications of their power market.
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Coincidentally this video emerged within a day of my conversation with the three of them. I shared it; they probably didn't watch it but it sure was pertinent.
I was already pro renewables for a myriad of reasons. But that put the scale into a much better perspective.
Timestamp of where he says that: https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM?t=2198
The people excited about it turned it into a other-shaming morality issue. That kind of behavior creates opposition. It got obviously associated by the Democratic party and thus a target for opposition for Republicans. The attention economy feeds on making people upset at each other so the fire was stoked so we have a nonsensical moral battle over renewable energy.
If you want to ruin something and turn it into a needless battle, treat it like a moral imperative and start shaming people for not agreeing with you. No better way to harm a cause you care about.
Abortion/environmentalism/crime/drugs/whatever are the selected political issues because it's what successfully gets people emotional to watch tv and vote. Sure there are people with agendas pushing these things but the real reason they're the issues is evolutionary -- the ideas at the center are there because they upset people not because they are the subject of dark motives of people pulling strings. They throw everything they think of at the wall and whatever sticks becomes the agenda.
However, my general area is somewhat upscale, so that might account for it.
There is a limit to the size of the instantaneous increases and decreases in generation that the other generators on the grid can compensate for
My solar system uses a Tesla powerwall. I'd expect its real world performance over time to be about the same as what you see in batteries for Tesla vehicles.
solar systems don’t require that much ongoing maintenance. There just aren’t many consumable components. (And battery recycling is getting better by the year)
Edit : it is! It’s 3rd https://seia.org/solar-state-by-state/
It's wild that Southern US which gets most of the sun - has relatively little solar compared to the North - which gets less sun days - but has more solar.
the damage politics has done to the US is crazy n sad.
But yeah, you'd expect some bigger utility-scale installations.
They tend to be where high voltage distribution lines leave high demand urban areas, and the land gets cheap enough.
A lot of other places just need some high tension power lines, and it will happen. Permitting for those is a nightmare.
https://www.chooseenergy.com/solar-energy/solar-energy-produ...
1 - California
2 - Texas
3 - Florida
4 - Arizona
5 - North Carolina
6 - Nevada
7 - New York
And here's a different source for residential PV:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1419901/us-residential-g...
1 - California
2 - Arizona
3 - Texas
4 - Florida
5 - New York
Instead they import bunker fuel. The tankers dock at the power station, which then burns it, to power the island.
The industries with more capital (mostly tourism) don’t usually have a lot of land, or would prefer to use it for tourism activities. They also tend to be seasonal, which messes up the math.
But yes, it is silly.
The dataset used in this blog is for ground-mounted solar. Rooftop solar would be excluded.
The issue was with the insurance companies. We had an 11.6Kw array, and it was getting difficult to find insurers that would allow more than 6Kw of rooftop solar.
It excludes rooftop mounted solar. It doesn’t indicate total solar deployment.
Florida has a lot of solar panels on roof tops, but not as many ground-mounted solar farms.
I set it all up myself, and while it is not trivial, it's not difficult either.
Learning to put connectors on properly, size cables and put lugs on properly, learn about earthing and breakers...just one bit at a time.
I'm about to set up another system on the roof of an outbuilding to supply power for a water pump and irrigation where we grow food. This will be much easier and simpler since it will have only one 48V lithium battery, but I'll still use Victron stuff and connect it to a Cerbo so it can be monitored.
If I sold this place and bought somewhere on the grid, the first thing I'd do is cut the cord and set up my own system again.
The most challenging part was getting and victon stuff talking to the fogstar batteries, which was hampered by not reading the manuals and trusting chatgpt, but in the end it was trivial.
I have an el cheapo 120 VAC 3600W import inverter with just two 100AH AGM batteries in series as it's a 24 VDC unit. Right now its all temporary and more experiment than practical.
Inverter mounted to a portable frame I built from bolted slotted angle with two battery shelves for a total of 4 batteries (only 2 now.) The batteries have a 200A terminal fuse and run through a 200A disconnect to the inverter using #2 AWG cable. The inverter, AC input, AC output are all grounded to a single ground bar that is bonded to the metal frame. AC Input is fed from a 12 AWG cord with 15A plug. AC output runs two 15A MCCB's, each terminated to a single socket hanging off a short whip cord. A cheap two wire digital DC volt meter is wired in series with a push button so I can see the battery voltage at a glance when I have the inverter powered down.
I temporarily setup the panels in my yard as an experiment but since I am in the city, I don't get good sun in my yard with all the obstructions. Honestly I ran it for two days, took the panels down before it rained, and didn't get a chance to measure anything. The panels really need to go on the roof and I have no intention of doing that any time soon.
The system did come in handy as a backup for my boiler when a wind storm knocked the power out for an hour and a half this past winter. I have thought about setting it up as a UPS for my little IT setup at home but 3600W is super overkill.
All of my system, aside from batteries, is Victron and installed in a small lean-to. Batteries are 8 x Fogstar 48V 100AH, in an outdoor rack, since I have no dry space indoors for batteries.
If you get far enough out it ceases to matter.
The (unpermitted, about 25-year-old) shacks I live in never had power and getting an easement was prohibitively expensive. It doesn't impact anyone but me (and potentially my son, who will inherit this mess when I die in 30 or so years).
There are codes here, and codes enforcement. But it's largely complaint driven and I suspect that all my neighbors are in a similar situation.
If I were in town and could get utilities I'd prefer that, but the county won't even pick up the last 1/2 mile of roads to where I am living... maybe if they'd do that I'd consider only building things that are permitted.
I was watching a Finnish guy over the weekend on Youtube (handle True North) that recently took his self built solar powered boat from Helsinki to the Mediterranean, via about 3000km of water ways through Germany, Switzerland, France, etc. In the winter! He just got there a few weeks ago. This stuff is easy if you are a bit handy. He used cheap ply wood and epoxy to glue the thing together. I think he has maybe 4KW worth of panels on the roof, a 6KW motor, and about 16kwh of battery if I remember correctly. Mostly he runs the boat at ~3.5KW because the boat's shape actually limits the speed. More power doesn't make it go much faster. The impressive thing here is that this boat is super simple and it works. He charges using solar panels. On a sunny day he arrives with a full battery. On a cloudy dark winter day, he can still do tens of nautical miles. And he only needs a few hours of daylight to charge up his batteries.
Good for you, but this is neither a concept for large cities nor for the industry.
Why?
Very cool!
I think we’re actually going to use lead-acid marine batteries? But very similar plan. We’re going to need a LOT more solar though than you I think. The winter here in South Central Alaska is pretty bleak in terms of available power. Still, very cool to see someone else living the dream!
Got any reason why I should go for the lithium over lead acid other than the size?
Thanks!
With lithium, you hvae a deeper depth of discharge than lead acid, but you're better off reading about the pros and cons and making your own decision.
My system started with 3 x 12v100ah lithium batteries in my van, with panels on the roof, and a dc-dc charger for backup, which worked amazingly well, but for faster charging with larger panel arrays, 48v is the way.
With my 12v I could charge 1.2kw per hour maximum, but 48v means I can charge 4.8kw per hour, which means in winter, with at most 4 hours of good sun on my panels (due to trees), I can put in more than I consumed.
I really have to wonder if people truly know how powerful any modern computer is. Like I just assume any modern PC with sufficient storage can handle a database with a billion rows of data. I think my phone probably could.
Now if you were, say, analyzing commercial satellite imagery of the entire US and trying to find rooftop solar, matching it against the database and finding data that wasn't in the dataset, that's something where your computer power would be way more relevant.
Come to think of it, you could probably use such imagery to construct a power generation network from power plants to transmission lines to utility poles. Of course some places have underground cables but there are other datasets for that.
Another interesting project is mapping the growth of solar. This would require access to commercial satellite imagery over time. I'm sure some government agency already does it. Or used to at least. Snapshots years or even months apart are less interesting.
Anyway, I guess the point is the author's computer is capable of way more than I suspect they think it is.
Because he wants to tell you about his computer it means he doesn’t know how capable it is?
Though I can totally understand, geeky people love details. I have a habit of getting way too detailed in my writings here. So I then spend most of the time editing it down to be as clear and brief as possible. I refuse to use an LLM for my own thoughts.
Most people drive cars worth less than this.
You still need a few terabytes to enter the real cars territory.
Some related stats [1, 2] from which one can infer that the above number is roughly correct.
[1] https://www.motorbiscuit.com/number-car-owners-world-less-th...
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/registered-vehicles-per-1...
I looked at using an AIO for my PC build but ultimately went with an air cooler the size of a damned rubix cube and a high airflow case.
My room gets toasty with raytracing titles, lol
I'd say I was surprised by the amount of heat a gaming pc can generate these days but when you have a gpu that can consume ~ 400W and a cpu at ~ 100W, only so much my 'space heater that draws pretty triangles' can do, lol.
I might look into undervolting this summer.
Probably a better choice as an appendix, move the good stuff up to the top. But overall its NBD.
source: my 9950X, happily running air cooled.
(Embarrassingly, I have an M4 Max that can almost match it in the CPU-bound workload I care about while sipping some 45W. The rest of the industry really needs to catch up with Apple on power efficiency.)
Energy heavy use cases with little to no energy costs will lap western industries.
In order to keep growing, the US power grid is going to need big, coordinated projects. Solar, wind, transmission lines, and batteries.
I think with political interest from Dems who like renewables, and big business who need energy, there's will in the US to do it, but of course it's the US, so we'll do the right thing after every possible alternative has been exhausted.
I agree that eventually there's going to be no choice but to start investing in renewables. That's going to be the only way to meet the demand, and renewables are already becoming cheaper than fossil fuels. But it is going to take time. Building stuff in the physical world takes years, and that requires sustained commitment at the political level.
In many ways this mirrors the way America walked into the housing crisis with its eyes closed.
> That same Bloomberg analysis found that areas with high concentrations of data centers saw electricity prices jump 267 percent over the past five years.
> director of Harvard Law School’s Electricity Law Initiative and co-author of a March 2025 paper exploring how the public is funding Big Tech’s power-intensive facilities. “Utilities are building infrastructure, and then we all pay for it because that’s how the utility business model has always worked,” he says.
> Residential electricity costs are also rising because the rush of new hyperscale data centers wanting to draw power from the grid is spiking demand. That drives up prices for everyone, Peskoe says
This Dept. of Energy analysis, which was recently updated, makes a lot more sense. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104061902...
> In some cases, spikes in load growth can result in significant, near-term retail price increases. Results from recent capacity auctions in the mid-Atlantic region prove this point, with sizable impacts on retail pricing beginning in 2025 (e.g., Howland, 2025). The duration of such impacts remains unclear, however, and will depend on the ability to build new cost-effective infrastructure to serve new loads. In other cases, utilities have argued that load growth will reduce average retail prices, consistent with our analysis of recent impacts (e.g., PG&E, 2025). Overall, our results cast doubt on the simple view that load growth will necessarily increase prices over the medium- to longer-term. Emerging evidence from 2025 suggests near-term impacts that can be either positive or negative; medium- to longer-term effects are uncertain.
Basically says “Maybe it makes retail more expensive, maybe it doesn’t”
And quite frankly I no longer fully trust the DoE. Politically captured by the trump administration, and directed to lie about renewables. Probably the folk writing this study are still trustworthy, but sadly I have a seed of doubt now.
Still, an order of magnitude less new capacity than China - but not two orders.
It’s OK to celebrate small wins. The US doesn’t have to be #1 in everything. We also seem to have a curious diseconomy of scale on mega infrastructure projects for complex reasons, so maybe slow growth is the right approach.
In my native Netherlands I'd guess to see that peaking at ~south at say 15-30 degrees, with some lower peaks at east/west combos.
Curious to see what it would be in this dataset.
For panels with east/west azimuth, the tilt should correlate with where the sun is at 7-8AM and 17-18PM, at least in my area.
((I think you have your concept of azimuth and tilt mixed up; I know I have when I was originally typing a different parent comment)
Seems to match my experience as well, I got a set of 12 south facing panels and a set of 12 split over east and west on my flat roof. The E/W start and end a bit before/after the south facing set.
Folks are doing some interesting exploration of the pros and cons of different alignments, e.g.:
> When roof area is limited, the question becomes: What layout lets you install the most space-efficient solar capacity within budget on the available area? In those scenarios, an east–west (E–W) layout can outperform a south-facing layout. The South layout may be “better positioned”, but the E-W allows the installation of more panels in the same area.
* https://ases.org/east-west-vs-south-facing-solar-when-more-p...
Basically examining 'quality versus quantity', depending on what your location and roof allows.
I installed a east/west facing set myself on our flat roof. Looking at dynamic power prices of the preceding year, multiplied by expected power output. Even wrote a simple space optimizer for this one time. But messed up some measurements so had to change on the fly anyways. The old adagium still holds: measure once and curse twice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility
Solar thermal can't really compete economically with photovoltaics.
PV is cheap up front and maintains cost advantage in the time scale of a few decades, and obviously scale down much better than solar towers. PV also wins by being viable in more places, and not requiring local specialized labor. Once you extend the timescale to a hundred years or so, solar towers end up quite a bit cheaper (where they're actually viable).
Batteries, inverters, and the propensity for solar fields to completely rebuild themselves long before the panels die really compounds running-costs. This isn't apparent until you expand the time scales, and only once we're looking at solar fields with parity to a solar tower (60+MW). We're talking hundreds of acres of panels, and a massive battery farm. Even though solar towers require more motors, more regular cleaning, and complex refurbishment, they also produce a very large amount of power relative to their size.
Rebuilding a PV field costs a lot more than refurbishing a solar tower obviously. If solar plants ever get over rebuilding themselves from scratch every 20 years, or if battery tech ever gets better longevity, this might no longer hold.
It would be cool to modify them to be per-capita, although I imagine adjusting arbitrary hexes for population density would be a real challenge.
Once you get outside of the larger cities panels, on houses in particular have nothing to do with costs, but instead a more deeply ingrained bias against them because the population is heavily propagandized to.
I have friends that have things like solar deer feeders and cameras and all kinds of other stand alone solar devices that won't put solar on their house "because panels are too polluting"
To imagine that there are not regions that are comparatively intellectually impoverished is a comforting illusion, but unfortunately it is not reflective of the statistical reality nor the subjective experience of living in one of those places. Culture is very much regional, and cultural (social) factors (along with their physiological consequences) are by far the strongest factor in intellectual development.
My next house will be my forever home, a little farther south than where I am now in the PNW, and on a big enough piece of land to use ground mount instead of roof mount. But right now, I cannot make the numbers work. I'd love having solar but I am not spending five digits of extra money just for the fun of it.
That that industry doesn't exist is pretty much proof that the numbers aren't what they think they are.
For some reason people treat roofs like black magic, and in some ways I can see that from a contractor perspective.
Since I’m looking at this from a different perspective (in house labor, we also do our own construction) for us it’s an absolute no-brainier. A 660watt panel which cost us $125 produces $200 of electricity in its first year of operation at local rates.after installation and support infrastructure our installed per panel cost is around $400, so on the third year we are cash positive.
I acknowledge that it’s not the same for many people, but this seems like it is in the same category as the fact that I can get an MRI from the exact same machine here for $150 (in an unsubsidised, for profit commercial imaging center) while the (imaging only) cost is $2700 in the USA for the same study. It seems like somebody is getting screwed.
My highest energy months are the ones with the least amount of sunlight, and my highest energy hours are during long nights, because my primary energy expenditure is my heat pump. This use case is common for people that live in colder climates, which is a large number of people. This causes me to require a much larger base kwh solar install and battery capacity than other homes in other environments.
If we assume a potential 8% ROI in the market, you would need to offset more than $100/mo in electricity usage for every $15,000 you spend in solar install before solar becomes a better investment. The numbers just don't crunch well for many of us.
For that matter, I'd be interested in details of how "a team of researchers including alumni from NOAA, NASA and the USGS" (from the previous article) actually collected the data.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05862-4
In the abstract: “We use these newly compiled and delineated solar arrays and panel-rows to harmonize and independently estimate value-added attributes to existing datasets including installation year, azimuth, mount technology, panel-row area and dimensions, inter-row spacing, ground cover ratio, tilt, and installed capacity.“
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809986804138.html
I'm old enough to remember Carter putting them on WhiteHouse roof and they were thousands of dollars then (and less efficient)
I bought 30 375w Canadian Solar panels 2 years ago and paid $0.41/watt (~$4536 for the whole package)
My mounting equipment actually cost more than the panels (~$4600). And the permitting process cost nearly as much as the panels (permit cost + architectural drawing + structural engineer stamp + electrician stamp).
It's crazy how cheap solar panels themselves are getting. They're going to win on the energy front - period. Especially now that battery tech actually seems to be moving again. I vividly remember one of my robotics professors in undergrad ranting about how frustrated he was with battery tech in ~2007, but LFP and sodium batteries are both pretty huge steps forward.
It has become ridiculously cheap indeed.
The roof being at a steep angle also means snow doesn't tend to accumulate much.
Power is 13c kWh, guranteed to go up min of 5% a year.
So now instead of paying $1000 a year in power, I put that on the loan which will be gone in 7 years. The 20 years of $1000 a year free money.
I’ve had the system almost two years, they’re noticeably cheaper now. System makes 7.2Mwh per calendar year in a tight valley where it snows a ton.
So during the summer we rack up credits and have a negative bill (power company owes us money) then use it all up and a little more during winter.
In Germany for a long time the law was three to one for green energy you generated and gave to the grid. Ie you put in 1kwh they credit you 3.
Even today basically every location can grid tie and get a feed in tariff, the ratio just depends on how many people in your area got residential solar before you.
It covers 95+% of the my usage, and I use a fair chunk of power. My payback period will be almost exactly 120 months (10 years) if my power costs remained the same as they did at estimation time.
But they won't. We're already seeing relatively large rate increases (GA power has "locked" rates but conveniently has a floating "fuel charge" which is currently more than the base rate per watt...).
I expect it to take 6 to 8 years to entirely recoup costs. It helps that I did the install myself, so I avoided contractor markup. Quotes from contractors for a similar install were running ~60k+ which felt (and was) insane, although STILL profitable over the lifespan of the install.
Panels should then last another 20+ years after repayment with only minor maintenance.
It's shocking how easily they pay for themselves right now, assuming you get decent sun on your property.
I'm in New York state, power here is still relatively cheap, $0.2/kwh delivered, low solar insolation angle and snow cover during highest demand months should strongly disincentize solar here. Some homeowners took the plunge when rebates and incentives were at their peak but those are starting to phase out.
We're still seeing a high rate of industrial solar being placed in ag zones. New York has some of the most fertile soil in the country, and supplies significant ag resources to the northeast. cSi cells are liable to leach lead into ag soil and watersheds, and solid waste disposal are looming problems without regulatory structure in New York. I'm afraid that in my home state we're going to see a net negative impact from solar.
The state is now pushing local municipalities to site grid scale BESS systems. This works because storage doesn't need to be close to demand, so they're being pushed into poor rural communities. The problem is local fire departments are undertrained and under equipped to deal with emergencies at BESS sites. It's inevitable we'll see an uncontained fire in upstate New York and the consequences will be difficult to manage.
This all may sound like gripe. But I'm genuinely curious about the economics of solar because at the end of the day it's the determining factor in the cost benefit analysis.
Modern production no longer includes lead (lead free solder).
For comparison... a single tank of leaded gasoline could hold more lead (1.1g/gallon) than a solar panel and unlike solar panels where the lead is insoluble and stable... burning the gasoline aerosolized the lead. So does burning coal (another significant source of lead contamination...).
Basically - I'd worry a hell of a lot more about lead pipes, lead paint, lead coal ash, and lead av gas before I worried about lead in panels. Lead solder is used in a wide variety of products still, but it's usually not considered a contamination risk.
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Look - all forms of power generation have risks and downsides. Solar does outstandingly well compared to basically everything else we've got. It also happens to be cheaper to deploy, and it's still getting cheaper.
If I were rural and had to pick between an ESS system with LFP batteries and a coal plant... I'd pick the batteries EVERY DAMN TIME. Hell - I'd probably pick an LFP ESS system over a new golf course in terms of my own safety...
I spoke to a colleague today who works closely with rural communities on emerging issues like industrial solar. He says he is recommending his clients to require baseline soil testing and annual soil testing to confirm hazardous materials are not being released to the environment. He said his clients have not seen elevated lead levels, but the concern is warranted. He also recommends 30 year decommissioning bonds be established prior to construction and $50,000 highway bonds for damage to road surface. Bottom line, serious people are requiring serious commitments from solar developers.
I disagree strongly with you when you start making claims like
> cSi cells are liable to leach lead into ag soil and watersheds, and solid waste disposal are looming problems without regulatory structure in New York. I'm afraid that in my home state we're going to see a net negative impact from solar.
I think you're no longer making a real argument based on facts and data at this point, you're making an emotional appeal that supports your existing bias. You're taking any negative, exhaustively focusing on it with exclusion of facts about alternative power generation means, and then declaring solar bad.
But I think the blunt reality is that basically every other form of power generation we have has negatives that outweigh those of solar (often by fairly incredible margins when we look at generation costs alongside those negative externalities).
So if you really think that moving batteries once for installation is more harmful to road surfaces than a never ending stream of fuel tankers that weigh up near 100k lbs... or that solar is worse than fracking for natural gas, or pollution from coal, or the environmental destruction and waterway damage from hydro... Well, then we don't agree. Period.
And sadly for you... solar has the benefit of being much cheaper to install and maintain. So the economics mean it's coming.
The EROI on solar is abysmal. That's physics - not politics.
You might also eat food.
If so, you should consider what policies protect your food from contamination.
Funny that we've managed that over the last ~10 years... it's almost like some other power sources are magically replacing the harm that they'd do?
because there were plenty of them ~2010, I'm aware of at least 8, I'll list them
- Samuel A. Carlson Electric Generating Station (still uses coal as alternate fuel today)
- Fort Drum (converted from coal in 2013)
- Kodak Park (converted from coal in 2018)
- Westover 8 (coal, retired in 2011)
- Hickling Power Station (coal, retired in 2000, so I didn't count this as one of the 8)
- Cayuga 1, 2, IC1, and IC2 (coal, retired in 2019)
- Dunkirk Generating Station (coal, retired 2016)
- Huntley Generating Station (coal, retired 2016)
- Somerset (coal, retired 2020)
Almost like... installing alternative power means we can remove really, really nasty sources? And hey, NY isn't as strong a contender for solar as it is wind. But the economics of wind are a lot harder in more places, and solar is still gaining ground (47% decrease in installation costs measured in NY over the last decade).
And I'm aware a lot of this is a shift to natural gas, it's cheap and flexible, so we're bridging old plants to ng as we ramp up alternatives.
Maybe you should consider what it is you're looking for in policies instead?
>And I'm aware a lot of this is a shift to natural gas
Woops, there it is
>Maybe you should consider what it is you're looking for in policies instead?
I'm looking for truth in advertising. Solar has been adopted largely for political reasons, without duly recognizing the full cost.
Batteries are being pushed into NY now to shift solar power from day to night, and from sunny days to cloudy days, a cost not accounted in the original sales pitch. Liquid phase batteries containing toxic chemicals and track record of fires - being pushed into poor communities than can't afford to properly deal with the issues.
But even batteries won't fix the real problem - solar is seasonal, and it produces power during the summer, and in New York the summers are warm and pleasant. But in the winter, when it's cold and dark, solar power drops out, and there's nothing you can do to fix that.
Now the goal post is shifting again, and the search is on for a site to build a nuke plant along the shore of Lake Ontario - far from the strong NIMBY environmental groups of NYC
I'd want solar panels for like $5/sq ft installed, expecting 10 years of life.
It's going to cost $1000 minimum to install, so the panels need to cost $2/sq ft x 300 sq ft to make this worth it. $1000 to install 300 sq ft + inverter and electrical panel upgrades seems light but might be reasonable we'll go with it.
Larger than a balcony, but maybe in the realm of possibility for a roof.
Right now solar panels cost what? $10 per square foot? Have they reached the physical limit of economic production/storage/transportation at $10 per sq ft or can it go lower?
(Let's not get into battery micro-storage economics).
Your money, your choices, but I know which one I'm doing when I get a single family home.
Cost is not the highest deciding factor for me. The resiliency renewables grant you would be worth it even at a premium
Also the panels Carter installed were solar water heaters - in 1979 solar photovoltaics were just starting to expand beyond satellites and cost like $40/watt.
and if you buy 2 at a time there are multiple 10% codes available
so it's $67 USD for 200watts
100watt 18volt 5amp panels that can be put in series or parallel
for $33 each, it's crazy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/22/jiimmy-ca...
>It was pretty symbolic back in 1979, too. The symbolism depended on what you thought of Carter and his policies. For some, the panels were a much-needed acknowledgment that America had to wean itself from fossil fuel, explore alternative energy sources and help save the planet. For others, they were in the same category as Carter’s virtue-signaling cardigan. Of course, critics moaned, Carter would put solar panels on the White House.
>The panels came down in 1986 when the White House roof was undergoing repairs. Ronald Reagan did not have them replaced. Of course, Reagan wouldn’t put solar panels on the White House.
What is the story behind Reagan taking down the solar panels installed by Carter? Was it symbolic of a new, less enthusiastic approach to clean energy?
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/g4w4ww/what_...
Solar power at the White House
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_at_the_White_House
>On June 20, 1979, 32 solar water heating panels were placed on the roof of the West Wing. The panels were made by InterTechnology/Solar Corp. from Warrenton, Virginia and installed by Hector Guevara of Alternate Energy Industries Corp.[2] At the dedication ceremony for the panels, President Carter said, "In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy... A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people".[1]
The whole installation cost $35,000 in 1979 (about $160,000 now).
https://books.google.nl/books?id=e9dlzwL4Ck4C&dq=solar+white...
Prices fell dramatically in the last few years, if I understood things correctly the high prices in the US are mostly due to tariffs.
George W. Bush actually installed solar water heating once again, but on the roof of a maintenance facility, which I didn't know about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_at_the_White_House
The CSS styles seem to dynamically unload and reload while I’m reading it causing the margins to jump and the fonts change, I’ve never seen anything like this before. FWIW I’m on iOS using brave.