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Comment by zdragnar | Hacker News Reader

You're comparing apples to oranges, at least a bit. $60k for a roof plus solar is going to be for a larger US home compared to a UK home- probably in the 3000 sq ft range, unless it's a very steep roof with lots of dormers or corners. Also, the cost savings for the UK home are due to much higher energy prices- the cost savings would be much smaller in the US.

With that said, Tesla's Solar Roof is definitely the gold plated unreasonably out of touch option.

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OTOH solar is a lot less useful in the UK than in the US. The southern tip of the UK is north of all the major Canadian cities, in the depths of winter we get about 6 hours of daylight with the sun barely reaching 20 degrees above the horizon. The winter is also where most electricity usage is too, doubly so when you want to replace gas heating with a heat pump. No AC and summer daylight past 10pm means that residential electricy usage in the summer, when solar does make sense, is very low.

Meh, I've had people come out to give me a quote for rooftop solar and they told me not to bother. Between the latitude (upper Midwest) and tree coverage shading parts of the roof throughout the day, it wouldn't pay off in a reasonable time line.

Mind you, that's with having AC, electric laundry dryer, a private well pump, septic heater and all sorts of other energy hogs trotting about the place throughout the year. I'm not exactly living an ascetic lifestyle myself.

Maybe if I paid the UK's electricity rates it'd be different though.

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