Why doesn't every house have solar installed?

[Redwoodz]

Why? We don't have enough raw materials to start. Even if every government mandated every house it would still take years and years to achieve.

 

[AusWolf]

It's clear to me that you don't understand how money works in the 21st century.

Without solar, your utility bill is $150/month.
With solar, your utility bill is $50/month and the monthly payments on your solar install are $100.

This is an example, but it's how many countries (including the US) already operate, if you pull your head out of the sand and take a proper look at the market. Sure, you'll pay more overall on a finance deal - perhaps $40K in total for a $25K installation over 20 years - but like a mortgage on your house, that's what you do if you can't afford the total cost up front.

Taking out a loan on literally everything may be the modern way of dealing with things, but I can't say I agree with it. Repayments on your house, repayments on your car, repayments on your solar panels, bills, personal loans, credit cards, etc. You won't even notice until all your salary is gone on repayments and you're too dependant on banks, the economy, and your work conditions not to change. One single misstep, and you're screwed. The things you own end up owning you. I'm not saying that loans and credit cards are wrong, but you should only take out what you absolutely need, especially in this quickly changing economy. A safety net, if you will.

Edit: Not to mention, your example of paying 40k on a 25k installation is an absolutely horrible deal that no sane person should agree to.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

Don't be rude.


With that attitude no education would ever occur as everyone would walk around with a self-righteous anger all the time, which explains the decay to hearing opposing ideas and having discussions these days. I feel sad that you have this attitude, we all need to step back from the "gotcha" and anger and instead have discussions and if we aren't able to take the time to reply with factual points just go touch some grass, or smoke it...

If you selectively quote me out of context it could well look like I said something I didn't.

Let me start this simply. I stated that power storage was a requirement, because energy generation would not be even. The retort was that energy balancing was a thing. The response was that dynamically shifting the grid to make-up for power generation was silly (a MW facility going out of its way to balance a couple thousand watts from a home array), to which the response was they already do the dynamic balancing with batteries. Note the statement that batteries aren't needed, then that they already exist. Maybe before you assume I'm out to be unfair you should really look at the conversation...because all of this came from a simple retort that was incapable of being read. Namely, the response to why every house doesn't have solar panels was that it would be stupid...to which an entire line of selective reality was then returned back to me even after providing both the simple retort of "it would be stupid" and a listing of why it would be stupid. Praise be...it's almost like reading a response might let you respond better.


Regarding the rest of your...response. It's a meandering nothing burger. My anger comes in the fact that most people wanting stuff like this are...well, not part of reality.
Let me explain this simply. If you buy a house it's the better part of half a million dollars for ground level everything. Why is it so expensive? Let's just look at your bathroom. Let's only give you a shower stall and a tub-shower. You'll pay about $2k for each. That's $1k each for the plumbers...because they basically do labor = materials. That means each unit is about $1k. But...most base showers and tub-showers use fiberglass...how the heck is it so expensive? Well, that's $1k that the contractor pays, $500 in profit for the distributor, and a raw sales price of $500. Now let me absolutely frog your mind. How much of that shower is dirt?
Let me be clear, dirt. In some cases dirt from the ground, and in other cases gypsum...the stuff drywall is made out of. How much of the resin that binds that tub is dirt? Something you get for less than $0.05 a pound. .... .... .... 63% or more. No, not hyperbole. Not a joke. depending upon the raw mass of the unit, and what reinforcements are present, 30-40% of the total mass of that tub is dirt (reinforcements are wood). Of course, since everyone wets their beak and since there aren't many suppliers to code, that means if you buy a house you've paid several dollars a pound and multiple 100% mark-ups to buy dirt. Now imagine that with solar...because you aren't required to buy solar power today...but if tomorrow you had to it'd be the same inbuilt mark-up. Likewise, you'd basically have to rewrite all home owners covenants, because some basically make it illegal to install panels, oh and never mind the silly levels of mark-up for the huge energy storage capacity that "the grid" would have to pay for...so look forward to that $0.18 per kWh of power to suddenly double or triple...making solar "make sense" by gouging everyone else into participating...the heart of the stupid argument that you...maybe...were responding to.


Also do take note of the forum guidelines...because suggesting someone partake in illegal activities is verboten. I know that moderation will never come down on that as hard as they seem to do on opinions...but it is enshrined as such. Me...I'll enjoy a nice adult beverage and watch as this spirals farther out of control as green guilt overcomes people who cannot understand stupidity in context (because it is stupid to require, or to contradict ones self from one post to the next, yet the topic of solar is not so unreasonable as to be inherently stupid....per what I and a bunch of people have already highlighted amongst a sea of people who believe we're evil because forcing people to buy solar panels is causing a problem more than solving one).

Because once upon a time someone with much money and power has decided that we should have centralised electricity supply systems - you name it - nuclear power plants, hydro electric power plants, etc.

Why don't you ask why we don't use the Nikola Tesla's inventions - high towers which transfer wireless electricity freely ?

Wardenclyffe Tower - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

As for roof-top solar panels - maybe as more and more people get enlightened, we will get there some day... maybe not... who knows...
The government influence on the peoples is too strong, and they can't think.

I appreciate the sarcasm...I think. I'm going to roll as if it were.

Let me answer with no sarcasm. Wardenclyffe technology is still in use today. Today they call it wireless charging, where you sit your iPhone on a mat and without physically plugging it in the device can charge up. This is accomplished by generating a large electromagnetic field, and having a passive coil receiver convert the energy from electromagnetic potential to electrical potential energy. The reason that it did not work was that Tesla was assuming that his charge medium didn't decay exponentially with distance.

For those who want a simple answer, let me ask you which is the better pizza deal. A 10" diameter pizza for $10, or a 20" diameter pizza for $20? One dimension doubles, but so does the price. This must mean that they are equal deals...right? Well, no. When linear dimensions double the surface are is increased by 2^2 or 4. That means the 20" pizza could feed 4x as many as the 10" with only a 2x increase in price. Unfortunately this is linear and surface area...once we get to a sphere it's 2^3 = 8. As flux is energy, and that energy is functionally radiating outward in a sphere, the flux generated only a small distance from the tower was small enough that for the immense input of energy required to make it you'd basically be so inefficient that you could charge millions of dollars to power things of any real distance from the tower and not break even on power efficiency. Great technology for very small and relatively low power, but not viable for large distances.


Regarding centralized power...I have no clue about your tangent. I have a local co-op that buys power, and generates some of their own. They maintain local infrastructure, but require that Duke Power plants span the gaps when their capacity is exceeded. I skipped out on them because their history of outages over night was substantial...which they always blamed on Duke Power. When I paid for Duke the outages stopped, and it cost me about $30 a year in fees despite a theoretically lower per kWh bill. Each state in the US runs its own...and that's why Texas got absolutely boned in 2022 and 2023 when they froze over...we're far from centralized...more like state dictated silliness.

 

[v12dock]

My latest power bill.

 

[AusWolf]

My latest power bill.
View attachment 351954View attachment 351955

Impressive. But how much did it cost you to install your solar panels?

If you selectively quote me out of context it could well look like I said something I didn't.

Let me start this simply. I stated that power storage was a requirement, because energy generation would not be even. The retort was that energy balancing was a thing. The response was that dynamically shifting the grid to make-up for power generation was silly (a MW facility going out of its way to balance a couple thousand watts from a home array), to which the response was they already do the dynamic balancing with batteries. Note the statement that batteries aren't needed, then that they already exist. Maybe before you assume I'm out to be unfair you should really look at the conversation...because all of this came from a simple retort that was incapable of being read. Namely, the response to why every house doesn't have solar panels was that it would be stupid...to which an entire line of selective reality was then returned back to me even after providing both the simple retort of "it would be stupid" and a listing of why it would be stupid. Praise be...it's almost like reading a response might let you respond better.


Regarding the rest of your...response. It's a meandering nothing burger. My anger comes in the fact that most people wanting stuff like this are...well, not part of reality.
Let me explain this simply. If you buy a house it's the better part of half a million dollars for ground level everything. Why is it so expensive? Let's just look at your bathroom. Let's only give you a shower stall and a tub-shower. You'll pay about $2k for each. That's $1k each for the plumbers...because they basically do labor = materials. That means each unit is about $1k. But...most base showers and tub-showers use fiberglass...how the heck is it so expensive? Well, that's $1k that the contractor pays, $500 in profit for the distributor, and a raw sales price of $500. Now let me absolutely frog your mind. How much of that shower is dirt?
Let me be clear, dirt. In some cases dirt from the ground, and in other cases gypsum...the stuff drywall is made out of. How much of the resin that binds that tub is dirt? Something you get for less than $0.05 a pound. .... .... .... 63% or more. No, not hyperbole. Not a joke. depending upon the raw mass of the unit, and what reinforcements are present, 30-40% of the total mass of that tub is dirt (reinforcements are wood). Of course, since everyone wets their beak and since there aren't many suppliers to code, that means if you buy a house you've paid several dollars a pound and multiple 100% mark-ups to buy dirt. Now imagine that with solar...because you aren't required to buy solar power today...but if tomorrow you had to it'd be the same inbuilt mark-up. Likewise, you'd basically have to rewrite all home owners covenants, because some basically make it illegal to install panels, oh and never mind the silly levels of mark-up for the huge energy storage capacity that "the grid" would have to pay for...so look forward to that $0.18 per kWh of power to suddenly double or triple...making solar "make sense" by gouging everyone else into participating...the heart of the stupid argument that you...maybe...were responding to.


Also do take note of the forum guidelines...because suggesting someone partake in illegal activities is verboten. I know that moderation will never come down on that as hard as they seem to do on opinions...but it is enshrined as such. Me...I'll enjoy a nice adult beverage and watch as this spirals farther out of control as green guilt overcomes people who cannot understand stupidity in context (because it is stupid to require, or to contradict ones self from one post to the next, yet the topic of solar is not so unreasonable as to be inherently stupid....per what I and a bunch of people have already highlighted amongst a sea of people who believe we're evil because forcing people to buy solar panels is causing a problem more than solving one).



I appreciate the sarcasm...I think. I'm going to roll as if it were.

Let me answer with no sarcasm. Wardenclyffe technology is still in use today. Today they call it wireless charging, where you sit your iPhone on a mat and without physically plugging it in the device can charge up. This is accomplished by generating a large electromagnetic field, and having a passive coil receiver convert the energy from electromagnetic potential to electrical potential energy. The reason that it did not work was that Tesla was assuming that his charge medium didn't decay exponentially with distance.

For those who want a simple answer, let me ask you which is the better pizza deal. A 10" diameter pizza for $10, or a 20" diameter pizza for $20? One dimension doubles, but so does the price. This must mean that they are equal deals...right? Well, no. When linear dimensions double the surface are is increased by 2^2 or 4. That means the 20" pizza could feed 4x as many as the 10" with only a 2x increase in price. Unfortunately this is linear and surface area...once we get to a sphere it's 2^3 = 8. As flux is energy, and that energy is functionally radiating outward in a sphere, the flux generated only a small distance from the tower was small enough that for the immense input of energy required to make it you'd basically be so inefficient that you could charge millions of dollars to power things of any real distance from the tower and not break even on power efficiency. Great technology for very small and relatively low power, but not viable for large distances.


Regarding centralized power...I have no clue about your tangent. I have a local co-op that buys power, and generates some of their own. They maintain local infrastructure, but require that Duke Power plants span the gaps when their capacity is exceeded. I skipped out on them because their history of outages over night was substantial...which they always blamed on Duke Power. When I paid for Duke the outages stopped, and it cost me about $30 a year in fees despite a theoretically lower per kWh bill. Each state in the US runs its own...and that's why Texas got absolutely boned in 2022 and 2023 when they froze over...we're far from centralized...more like state dictated silliness.

Talking about real estate prices gave me a thought...

Let's say you can buy a run-down old house in the UK Midlands for £100k - which is already an extortionate price in my books, especially for some ruins in an area that has nothing special to say about itself, but it's our sad reality, so let's roll with it. Then, you spend £50k on renovating it. Boom! Your house is worth £200k. Now even this is something I could never afford on a mortgage, and I don't even have kids. Then you add solar panels which makes the house semi-independent from the grid. How much is the house worth now? £300k? That's the entirety of a working-class salary for 15 years without any tax deductions. How much more should real estate be out of the affordability range of common people, seriously? Then you have to lease a £50k electric car because saving the environment (and making bankers and Mr Musk even richer) is way more important than buying food, obviously. Has society completely lost its mind?

 

[R-T-B]

Each state in the US runs its own...

No thats really just Texas and Alaska. There are only a few total grids in the US/NA and one is Texas's nearly completely isolated thing.

Texas Interconnection - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Kodehawa]

Our municipality installed solar water heating on my house. It's pretty nice and pretty much free heating, as I just paid $100 for the whole thing.

 

[Shihab]

Edit: I watched a video a while ago that said that the entire Earth's energy needs could be served by covering the Sahara desert with solar panels - but all that black surface would lower the Earth's albedo, and raise the temperature considerably, leading to basically everyone living in a desert in the near future. Therefore, solar panels alone are not a feasible alternative to the grid, just like EVs aren't to IC.

While I agree with the last part (I do hate those green/enviro maximalist idiots!), the former seems to miss a critical point: the energy not reflected in the PV-cover case isn't just converted to heat, it's also converted to electricity.

I came by this proposal once. And I have to say that whoever came with it has absolutely no clue what a desert climate looks like (much less what projects of this scale would entail). God knows how many times I had to climb our roof to clean our panels after some sandstorm, and we live(d) at the edge of the sahara where water is somewhat available and storm particulates are relatively finer. Now imagine trying to do this at scale in one of the most water-stressed regions in the world, which happens to be the largest source of sandstorms (closer you are to the source, the coarser you'll find your particles).

Hydro is amazing. Hydro is basically built in batteries, because at any point in time you're allowed to just "not let the water fall down". So you pick-and-choose when to generate energy.

Hydro can be even more of a pain in the arse to market than nuclear. And god help you if your basin is trans-boundary!

Hydro is a battery alright, a very leaky (pun not intended) one. While you can shut your sluices and penstock intakes, there is nothing stopping the water from changing phase and going up and away. Evaporation takes a considerable chunk of the reservoir's capacity. Less than your typical li-ion (and definitely much less than lead acid), but unlike actual batteries, lost water can't be (feasibly) artificially replenished, and its value and uses far exceed that of energy/storage.
And let's not even go into potential, downstream demands.

Other, less talked-about caveats of hydro is that it requires regulating things far outside the area a typical dam/reservoir occupies (which is huge to begin with). We're talking about basin-wide management to manage sediment yields and regulation/protections downstream to account for increased scour potential and accompanying changes in the stream's characteristics.

Hydro is good, but a diverse grid is even better.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

I would love solar and my state is friendly enough towards doing it but going with an on the ground setup with heatpump and battery backup will set you back about $50-60,000. It would likely save me $5000-7000 per year at current billing levels. But its such a high cost. When consider my home itself new + 2.2 acres of land septic + ground work + well etc etc came to $160k. Nearly 1/3 the price of my house would be needed to make it worth while.

 

[AusWolf]

While I agree with the last part (I do hate those green/enviro maximalist idiots!), the former seems to miss a critical point: the energy not reflected in the PV-cover case isn't just converted to heat, it's also converted to electricity.

Sure it is, but at a very low efficiency, which means that most of it is reflected back as heat. How big of a problem that is, I'll leave for the experts to decide.

 

[remixedcat]

way too pricey and I'd rather invest in getting central air at this point it's too hot.

 

[Bagerklestyne]

My bills were about 2500-3000 a year for electricity alone (and I have access to some of the cheapest power in the country.)
Our bills are now down around 500 a year (shorter months of the year costing more naturally)

Supply fee is about 80c a day
We pay 22c a kw
We get about 12c a kw for exporting to the grid.

My fortnightly electricity bill went down a few dollars more than my solar payments are (so marginally net positive) what we do have here is a government backed interest free loan for the spread out over up to 10 years.

For perspective my parents about 4 hours drive north of me pay more than double the price per kw of power supplied but they have a battery in their solar setup and I think dad said he's spending less than $100 a year on electricity.

Our system was about 11 grand (19 panels, optimisers, smart inverter - usual stats and info, and no battery, still waiting for sodium ion to make the dent in the battery market before I buy in) and we'll pay it off in about 8 1/2 years without paying more than we were.

I think the biggest issue at the moment is the grid coping with the load and viable storage options for it all during the day for usage at night.

Sure batteries are great but serious amounts of storage are needed to allow the grid to stockpile during the day.

Even with a 2:1 export/import for several months of the year we're exporting 30-50kw a day, multiply that by 40,000 houses in just my part of town (100,000 people) and that's a gigawatt + or 10's of thousands of Telsa powerwallls (not cost effective commercial I know) which is 100's of millions of dollars.

 

[Vayra86]

I just don't understand the obsession to put solar panel's on a private person's property.

This whole business of roof angles, wall angles and whatnot is an arbitrary mistake. Land is extremely cheap in the USA. Build a solar farm and point the panels in the optimal direction without having to worry about the humans "inside". Bonus points: we have cheap power-lines that can transmit energy from these solar farms all across the city (or state, or whatever municipality you're in).

Through the magic of modern corporations, you can buy shares in these collections of solar panels, and use net-metering credits to tie them into your house over the already-existing power grid. Do you really care if your 30kW of panels is on your roof or if its 3 miles away where land is cheaper and you benefit from the efficiencies of scale and consolidation?

Ex: Maybe 30kW is too few panels for you especially in the winter. So you buy more shares 2 or 3 months from now to increase your solar panel ownership to 45kW (which might only be 28kW in the winter). Done. The company behind the community solar can hold onto spare shares thanks to a bit of overbuilding of capacity (or serve as a market for people who move into or out of a region), so people can sell their shares back or something if they have to move. Etc. etc. etc.

All this talk about doom and gloom of solar... lol.

I live in a 1976 built home with an old roof on it and there's 12 panels on it. No issues whatsoever for years on end, despite heavy rain, snow, storms... We did have storm damage in the garden several times. Roof's fine. Solar is dirt cheap too because China keeps pooping out panels. Return on investment over here was 6-7 years, the panels last for 25+, the inverters for 15. I mean... it'd be crazy NOT to get solar in my situation. Its even better if you lease your car, like I do. I've got a driveway with charge point that connects to MY meter, but I get to charge Shell for the used Kwh;s from electric car charging at home. So I practically get the full incl. tax kwh price for my solar generation if I charge my car with it. Its ridiculous; the net expense of my monthly energy is often under 100 EUR, while using just over 4000 kwh/year and 1500m3 of gas. And that includes 15k KM/year driving electric, mind

So its all a matter of perspective. All these solutions are readily available, all you need is political will to get it done.

Even if land is cheap, why would you not use it for something else if your roof can support solar panels. Its easy to figure out whether it can, takes all of 15 minutes.

I do believe solar + home battery can get us a long way. If you connect that to a dynamic pricing contract and load the battery on 'duck hours'... we can take a lot of peak load off the grid. Its quite similar to the earlier solution about AC's you showed except now it applies to the entirety of your home consumption.

nice bit of reasoning There lad 10/10 well thought out statement
/s
most people have OTHER things that take priority that require finacing
such as that car and house you mentioned

you don't need solar panels on your roof to feed your family or get you to where you are going

if they want everybody to give up there ice cars and switch to renewable energy then it needs to be cheaper and more available then the other provided options

because frankly untill we all drown or choke to death nobody is going to give a crap.

for me to consider solar panels the upfront cost would need to be 0 and the payments would need to be no more then half of my current power bill

math just doesn't work out like that

and psa: I have a 12v solar system that runs lights and limited inverter power

Check out my post above about expenses and investment. The ROI of solar is almost always a net positive. The panels also tend to last far longer than they're estimated to. And if you 'transition' more fully in your personal situation, (provided you have the possibility) you're making a profit from doing so. The basic idea should be to get as much of your personal usage from a closed loop, or a loop where you feed from and back into the grid at optimal times.

I would love solar and my state is friendly enough towards doing it but going with an on the ground setup with heatpump and battery backup will set you back about $50-60,000. It would likely save me $5000-7000 per year at current billing levels. But its such a high cost. When consider my home itself new + 2.2 acres of land septic + ground work + well etc etc came to $160k. Nearly 1/3 the price of my house would be needed to make it worth while.

Yeah as much as I am convinced about solar, I'm NOT convinced about heat pumps and going all-electric. Diversification is KING, our economy will remain turbulent I'm quite sure. Also the initial expense of a heat pump central heating system, even hybrid, is retarded, the ROI is almost the life expectancy and you're supposed to get the money out of 'not using gas'. Even with heavy subsidies (you get 2-3k EUR return on it here) I still don't see the financial picture as positive. But: 'they say it is'... this could very well also be a matter of perspective, colored by my pessimism about EU stability.

You also have to do maintenance too and that's NOT part of the cost layed out and that can become a necessity for several reasons.
Be it from damage by storms, things like limbs from a nearby tree falling off and hitting them.... Or birds pooping all over them making you have to go up and clean them so they work like they should (Highlight of your day... Right?)
It's also known fact these panels over time will degrade and won't make the same power output after a few years vs when new.

Complete and utter non issues. Bird poop and dirt? I'll see if I can take a picture of my 5 year old panels to show how they look. As new. We have this beautiful thing called rain and weather conditions that clean the gunk right off. Solar panels aren't windows you need to look through

And limbs from trees? I don't think you've got an optimal location then, you don't place solar under trees.

Output? Panels that have been on roofs for +25 years are now still producing around 80% of their rated wattage. Its of little relevance. By then you've by FAR earned back the investment and you can replace them to repeat the trick for another 25 years. Or: you don't and its still free money from production.

Impressive. But how much did it cost you to install your solar panels?


Talking about real estate prices gave me a thought...

Let's say you can buy a run-down old house in the UK Midlands for £100k - which is already an extortionate price in my books, especially for some ruins in an area that has nothing special to say about itself, but it's our sad reality, so let's roll with it. Then, you spend £50k on renovating it. Boom! Your house is worth £200k. Now even this is something I could never afford on a mortgage, and I don't even have kids. Then you add solar panels which makes the house semi-independent from the grid. How much is the house worth now? £300k? That's the entirety of a working-class salary for 15 years without any tax deductions. How much more should real estate be out of the affordability range of common people, seriously? Then you have to lease a £50k electric car because saving the environment (and making bankers and Mr Musk even richer) is way more important than buying food, obviously. Has society completely lost its mind?

So yeah. What I'm reading here is this: 'You will own nothing and you will love it'. Remember cloud gaming subscriptions? You're here now saying the subscription service is better than owning things. Cheaper, too. Its not, obviously. Its a known fact that house rent is a money sink and house ownership practically an investment that stays with you.

It is true there is an issue for startups on the housing market, it is live and in effect here in the Netherlands too. But its also true government needs to step in to fix that because otherwise you're just throwing away money on rent and overpriced energy. Good policies enable even the lower income groups to get some benefit from an energy transition. It needs to work out financially, I agree, but I feel that society NOT enabling people to a low cost of living is society losing its mind. For a long time, we've subsidized energy production out of fossil/coal. Now we need to subsidize it to transition to electric / renewables.

There is nothing new here. Like I try to explain above as well: its all a matter of perspective and political will. Not actual cost.

 

[remixedcat]

Ummm starter solar here is 12k and that's way too much and financing those would be a huge ripoff.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Even if land is cheap, why would you not use it for something else if your roof can support solar panels. Its easy to figure out whether it can, takes all of 15 minutes.

Solar is great. But... Rooftop solar compromises your roof design by making the material cost of your roof far higher.

A ton of land here in the USA is sitting unused. Just put solar panels over there and run a power line over.

Anything that can be done on your roof can be done cheaper elsewhere. I promise that it's even cheaper and easier to run solar panels on empty land than any roof.

---------

Let's say your roof develops a leak, and you have solar panels on your roof. What is your plan?

Because we all know what needs to happen. You need to uninstall the panels, then reroof the house and then finally pay for reinstallation of those panels. You are now spending a ton of labor and maintenance for a relatively common situation.

 

[redeye]

because not much good in the winter, and at night. (waterloo, on ) and hail, and snow, and rain… but great hobby…

 

[Shihab]

Sure it is, but at a very low efficiency, which means that most of it is reflected back as heat. How big of a problem that is, I'll leave for the experts to decide.

It's true PV panels have lower conversion efficiency, but the reflectance of bare sand isn't perfect either. We're talking about 30 to 40% across the visible light and infrared spectrum, and much less if you only consider the blue-green part, reason why deserts are usually yellow-ish to brown-ish red. Rocks can do - admittedly, much - better, for the light-coloured ones. Darker ones, obviously, fare worse.

I found this study attempting to differentiate PV farms from bare soils using its spectral signature. The relevant bit is this graph in the middle:

(for context: the labels "B2, B3, B4" refer to the blue, green and red visible light bands, B5 through 12 are infrared). Y-axis is reflectence as percentages (if I remember how sentinel 2 data works correctly).

Note how the difference in means is generally <= 10%. This is less than the typical conversion efficiency of your run-of-the-mill PV panel (10~20%?)

Also note that these values are for zenith/near-zenith lightening (i.e. around noon). My wager is still on PVs being much better reflectors the greater the angle of incidence. Water has a reflectence of nearly zero, but tilt your view/lightening enough, and you've got yourself a mirror.

 

[InVasMani]

All this talk about doom and gloom of solar... lol.

I live in a 1976 built home with an old roof on it and there's 12 panels on it. No issues whatsoever for years on end, despite heavy rain, snow, storms... We did have storm damage in the garden several times. Roof's fine. Solar is dirt cheap too because China keeps pooping out panels. Return on investment over here was 6-7 years, the panels last for 25+, the inverters for 15. I mean... it'd be crazy NOT to get solar in my situation. Its even better if you lease your car, like I do. I've got a driveway with charge point that connects to MY meter, but I get to charge Shell for the used Kwh;s from electric car charging at home. So I practically get the full incl. tax kwh price for my solar generation if I charge my car with it. Its ridiculous; the net expense of my monthly energy is often under 100 EUR, while using just over 4000 kwh/year and 1500m3 of gas. And that includes 15k KM/year driving electric, mind

So its all a matter of perspective. All these solutions are readily available, all you need is political will to get it done.

Even if land is cheap, why would you not use it for something else if your roof can support solar panels. Its easy to figure out whether it can, takes all of 15 minutes.

I do believe solar + home battery can get us a long way. If you connect that to a dynamic pricing contract and load the battery on 'duck hours'... we can take a lot of peak load off the grid. Its quite similar to the earlier solution about AC's you showed except now it applies to the entirety of your home consumption.


Check out my post above about expenses and investment. The ROI of solar is almost always a net positive. The panels also tend to last far longer than they're estimated to. And if you 'transition' more fully in your personal situation, (provided you have the possibility) you're making a profit from doing so. The basic idea should be to get as much of your personal usage from a closed loop, or a loop where you feed from and back into the grid at optimal times.


Yeah as much as I am convinced about solar, I'm NOT convinced about heat pumps and going all-electric. Diversification is KING, our economy will remain turbulent I'm quite sure. Also the initial expense of a heat pump central heating system, even hybrid, is retarded, the ROI is almost the life expectancy and you're supposed to get the money out of 'not using gas'. Even with heavy subsidies (you get 2-3k EUR return on it here) I still don't see the financial picture as positive. But: 'they say it is'... this could very well also be a matter of perspective, colored by my pessimism about EU stability.


Complete and utter non issues. Bird poop and dirt? I'll see if I can take a picture of my 5 year old panels to show how they look. As new. We have this beautiful thing called rain and weather conditions that clean the gunk right off. Solar panels aren't windows you need to look through

And limbs from trees? I don't think you've got an optimal location then, you don't place solar under trees.

Output? Panels that have been on roofs for +25 years are now still producing around 80% of their rated wattage. Its of little relevance. By then you've by FAR earned back the investment and you can replace them to repeat the trick for another 25 years. Or: you don't and its still free money from production.
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So yeah. What I'm reading here is this: 'You will own nothing and you will love it'. Remember cloud gaming subscriptions? You're here now saying the subscription service is better than owning things. Cheaper, too. Its not, obviously. Its a known fact that house rent is a money sink and house ownership practically an investment that stays with you.

It is true there is an issue for startups on the housing market, it is live and in effect here in the Netherlands too. But its also true government needs to step in to fix that because otherwise you're just throwing away money on rent and overpriced energy. Good policies enable even the lower income groups to get some benefit from an energy transition. It needs to work out financially, I agree, but I feel that society NOT enabling people to a low cost of living is society losing its mind. For a long time, we've subsidized energy production out of fossil/coal. Now we need to subsidize it to transition to electric / renewables.

There is nothing new here. Like I try to explain above as well: its all a matter of perspective and political will. Not actual cost.

It's better than hard drive degradation that's for sure.

 

[Shihab]

Output? Panels that have been on roofs for +25 years are now still producing around 80% of their rated wattage. Its of little relevance. By then you've by FAR earned back the investment and you can replace them to repeat the trick for another 25 years. Or: you don't and its still free money from production.

Have fun trying to get your average consoomer to keep a TV, phone or laptop in operation for more than 3 years.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Have fun trying to get your average consoomer to keep a TV, phone or laptop in operation for more than 3 years.

My roof started leaking after 17 years after the house was made.

It turns out the roofers who built this house sucked. The new roofers pointed out issues with the original construction and fixed it up for me. But... if I were unlucky with hail, wind or other storm damage, my roof would have lasted less time (as is common in US's Southern states).

IIRC, the Southern states don't even use high-quality roofs anymore, because the winds/hail/storms are so strong that even the strongest Architectural Shingles with "50 years" don't really last much more than 10 years best case, maybe 5 years (or really, whenever you want to play dice with the next major hailstorm).

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This idea of 25+ year solar panels is fine... if the solar panels were alone. But if they're on your roof, then its the min(lifespan_of_roof, lifespan_of_solar). 25+ years is grossly optimistic, most roofs in USA are 20 year roofs.

 

[Why_Me]

Solar industry facing bankruptcies, leaving many with roof panels that don't work

In Compton, Angela Dorsey's 83-year-old mother had panels installed on her home's roof, but they aren't producing any power and payment is due.

www.cbsnews.com

 

[Bones]

Solar is great. But... Rooftop solar compromises your roof design by making the material cost of your roof far higher.

A ton of land here in the USA is sitting unused. Just put solar panels over there and run a power line over.

Anything that can be done on your roof can be done cheaper elsewhere. I promise that it's even cheaper and easier to run solar panels on empty land than any roof.

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Let's say your roof develops a leak, and you have solar panels on your roof. What is your plan?

Because we all know what needs to happen. You need to uninstall the panels, then reroof the house and then finally pay for reinstallation of those panels. You are now spending a ton of labor and maintenance for a relatively common situation.

Same basic thing with water heaters in the attic.

Trying to solve one problem leads to several others with extra expense involved.
If it leaks there is the possibility the leak will affect what's below it - The ceiling and what's beneath that too and yes, that's water damage you must get fixed.

Replace the water heater and repair all water damage to the home, replace any items that were below where the leak was coming out from too....... It adds up to just a bunch of stupid.

All that could be eliminated if these heaters were at ground level instead.
Yeah - You will have a water heater go bad sooner or later and probrably have a bit of the house to get flooded/wet but all the rest (Home damage) is completely unneccesary expense.
Mine is at ground level and that's where it will be period.

If I ever buy a home that has it up there, it won't be there for long.

 

[Shihab]

My roof started leaking after 17 years after the house was made.

It turns out the roofers who built this house sucked. The new roofers pointed out issues with the original construction and fixed it up for me. But... if I were unlucky with hail, wind or other storm damage, my roof would have lasted less time (as is common in US's Southern states).

IIRC, the Southern states don't even use high-quality roofs anymore, because the winds/hail/storms are so strong that even the strongest Architectural Shingles with "50 years" don't really last much more than 10 years best case, maybe 5 years (or really, whenever you want to play dice with the next major hailstorm).

--------

This idea of 25+ year solar panels is fine... if the solar panels were alone. But if they're on your roof, then its the min(lifespan_of_roof, lifespan_of_solar). 25+ years is grossly optimistic, most roofs in USA are 20 year roofs.

Covering material, in the case of your wooden shingled roofing, may weather, but the core structural components (load bearing trusses) should last. Otherwise, as is with your case, you have much bigger problem than just a few extra piles of aluminum and glass. You don't fix pv panels to shingles or even corrugated irons roofing sheets.

I believe someone already mentioned that a typical pv panel weight is an insignificant fraction of the dynamic loads your typical structure is designed to withstand. Hell! Even for the architectural elements can outweigh them. I did a quick search out of curiousity; a typical PV panel weighs less than 25kg/m2, many roofing material exceed that value. Some double it.

That said, panels aren't permanent fixtures. In cases of non-core structural repairs (e.g. retiling), one can easily disassemble the panels, do the repairs, and reinstall the panels again.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

Covering material, in the case of your wooden shingled roofing, may weather, but the core structural components (load bearing trusses) should last. Otherwise, as is with your case, you have much bigger problem than just a few extra piles of aluminum and glass. You don't fix pv panels to shingles or even corrugated irons roofing sheets.

I believe someone already mentioned that a typical pv panel weight is an insignificant fraction of the dynamic loads your typical structure is designed to withstand. Hell! Even for the architectural elements can outweigh them. I did a quick search out of curiousity; a typical PV panel weighs less than 25kg/m2, many roofing material exceed that value. Some double it.

That said, panels aren't permanent fixtures. In cases of non-core structural repairs (e.g. retiling), one can easily disassemble the panels, do the repairs, and reinstall the panels again.

How does a roof work, and what does it do? These are some basic questions that people seem to forget to ask...but let's explore them together. A roof generally provides Top to a house, which prevents things from falling inside. It does so by having structural members support large flat sheets of OSB or other boards. These large flat surfaces have a number of joints and abutments, where the roof can potentially leak. To address that potential sheets of material cover the board (tar based usually) and a protective layer of shingles or tiles is built such that their layering mechanically minimizes the ability for water to infiltrate the roof.

What then holds the sheets in-place is a nail primarily composed of steel, with a thick zinc coating, that can largely be covered by the next shingle or tile layer to minimize its exposure to water.

Now...let's install a solar array. I need a big screw to hit the wooden members that will support all of this weight, and depending upon how I install a series of spacers to bring the panels off the surface of my roof. That large screw can't be mostly zinc because of mechanical properties. Likewise, the solar panels introduce a load in two ways. Their first load is the physical force of their weight, and the second force is that they are an extremely rigid body that has a dramatically different thermal expansion coefficient to wood. This means that the act of heating up and cooling down create forces on the screws holding the panels onto your roof...and on the roof itself...making the screws a great opportunity for water to infiltrate over time as they are directly exposed to the weather and provide an excellent oxidation path. As others have stated "licensed contractors" who presumably "know what they are doing" can build a leaky roof over time, but solar is basically puncturing extra holes in your roof to test if they were really good at their job...


My point here is that solar can be good...but it's also a huge gamble when your home was built by the lowest bidder... Not everything can "just be taken down and put back up." Likewise, you wouldn't want to take a solar array off without completely reinstalling the outside layer of your roofing material due to all of the required seal penetrations. I applaud your dedication to working, and not throwing away good things. That said...reinstalling a solar assembly isn't as easy as you make it sound, and taking it off requires any rational person commit to a new roof or rolling a very dangerous set of dice to determine if they believe they aren't going to experience some potentially very expensive damage.

 

[Nordic]

Taking out a loan on literally everything may be the modern way of dealing with things, but I can't say I agree with it. Repayments on your house, repayments on your car, repayments on your solar panels, bills, personal loans, credit cards, etc. You won't even notice until all your salary is gone on repayments and you're too dependant on banks, the economy, and your work conditions not to change. One single misstep, and you're screwed. The things you own end up owning you. I'm not saying that loans and credit cards are wrong, but you should only take out what you absolutely need, especially in this quickly changing economy. A safety net, if you will.

Edit: Not to mention, your example of paying 40k on a 25k installation is an absolutely horrible deal that no sane person should agree to.

Debt is a tool. If you use it well it can get you ahead. If you use it poorly, it can get very painful. One should not take on too much debt. For a loan on solar panels, one needs to look at the rate of interest and compare it to their money in an index fund for a comparable amount of time. One should also factor in the growing cost of power. Solar panels that will last 30 years that pay themselves off in 10 years is a worthwhile investment. If solar panels take 30 years to pay themselves off, it is not worthwhile.

I did purchase solar panels. I expect a 15 year ROI on my investment after the 30% tax credit. My power company has obtained regulatory approval to increase rates by quite a bit the next few years. If they continue to raise rates my ROI will be even faster.