Why doesn't every house have solar installed?

[Divide Overflow]

My neighbor down the road had their new roof mounted solar panels up for about two months before a hailstorm with 1.5" hailstones rendered them useless.

 

[Vayra86]

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.

Well yeah sure but those are the perks of owning a house eh. There's always something and it all begins and ends with how the initial construction was. We're pretty lucky here in NL, the building standards are constantly revised and 1976 wasn't a 'bad year' in that sense, so I just know certain things are of a certain quality. Its definitely a factor to consider, I agree. That also makes the perspective on solar panels and other energy transition related improvements to your personal space so varied. It all depends entirely on what your options are, how accessible they are, etc.

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

Yep the same thing happened over here, the company that put the solar on my roof has gone poof too just a month ago. But; the installation is still covered by a national NGO and I have a certificate for it.

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.

You get a ladder and tools, a buddy, and together you remove the few panels you need to remove to reach the spot you need to fix, you open it up, you fix it, and you put the stuff back where it was and turn your system on again.

Its not rocket science. I can just lift the roof tiles that I need to lift after the panel is off the frame because its fixed under the tiles. When I was 15 I put solar on the roof of our shed with my dad. 4 panels. It was child's play. So maybe now I'll spend a day instead of half a day to fix the low-chance event of a roof leaking. Its a non issue. And that's coming from an IT nerd, not a handyman

 

[dragontamer5788]

You get a ladder and tools, a buddy, and together you remove the few panels you need to remove to reach the spot you need to fix, you open it up, you fix it, and you put the stuff back where it was and turn your system on again.

The difficult part is figuring out which panels to remove and which shingles to replace... that's often a trial-and-error process as you traverse the roof looking for damage (possibly guided by information from the inside attic. But there's no guarantee that the leaks you see in the attic line up to the damaged singles outside). And after 20 years (for a typical American Roof), the lifetime of the roof shingles has been worn out, so its probably a good idea to start replacing the whole roof once issues develop. Since other singles are expected to fail anyway.

In any case, I simply don't expect 25+ years or more of Solar Panels. Roofs are just replaced on a more frequent basis than that around here.

And every time a roof issue pops up, those panels will be in the way, driving up costs and hassle. Sure, if you can magically know exactly which shingles to replace in any of these jobs it'd be fine and easy. But that's just not the reality of roofing projects.

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Its an additional complication. A needless one. Community Solar is cheaper anyway since I pay $0 ahead of time and instead just rent out my share of the solar community farm. And I'm supporting the solar power industry my way anyway since most of my electricity usage comes from the solar farm in my area.

 

[Vayra86]

The difficult part is figuring out which panels to remove and which shingles to replace... that's often a trial-and-error process as you traverse the roof looking for damage (possibly guided by information from the inside attic. But there's no guarantee that the leaks you see in the attic line up to the damaged singles outside). And after 20 years (for a typical American Roof), the lifetime of the roof shingles has been worn out, so its probably a good idea to start replacing the whole roof once issues develop. Since other singles are expected to fail anyway.

In any case, I simply don't expect 25+ years or more of Solar Panels. Roofs are just replaced on a more frequent basis than that around here.

And every time a roof issue pops up, those panels will be in the way, driving up costs and hassle. Sure, if you can magically know exactly which shingles to replace in any of these jobs it'd be fine and easy. But that's just not the reality of roofing projects.

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Its an additional complication. A needless one. Community Solar is cheaper anyway since I pay $0 ahead of time and instead just rent out my share of the solar community farm. And I'm supporting the solar power industry my way anyway since most of my electricity usage comes from the solar farm in my area.

Right well, in my 38 years I've yet to encounter a roof issue

 

[evernessince]

Things like solar, hydro, geothermal, wind etc. are all supplementary/local sources of power, there needs to be large scale baseline generation for the grid, as clean as possible.

Hydro and Geothermal produce power all day, those are straight up baseline. All the remaining are baseline with any battery system or ability to import green energy from distance.

The US can upgrade it's transmission lines to allow mass power generation in green markets that is then sold to markets where green energy is less available. This would reduce the cost of electricity nationwide, incentivize investments into prime spots for green energy production, improve grid resilience, and greatly reduce the need for large battery storage systems as areas could tap into different green energy markets depending on their power generation schedules. This is just something that should be done regardless.

Batteries don't need to be chemical batteries either. They could use a combination of recycled batteries with natural batteries like sand, elevating water, ect. That way you aren't adding to any waste and pollution problems.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Hydro and Geothermal produce power all day, those are straight up baseline. All the remaining are baseline with any battery system or ability to import green energy from distance.

The US can upgrade it's transmission lines to allow mass power generation in green markets that is then sold to markets where green energy is less available. This would reduce the cost of electricity nationwide, incentivize investments into prime spots for green energy production, improve grid resilience, and greatly reduce the need for large battery storage systems as areas could tap into different green energy markets depending on their power generation schedules. This is just something that should be done regardless.

Batteries don't need to be chemical batteries either. They could use a combination of recycled batteries with natural batteries like sand, elevating water, ect. That way you aren't adding to any waste and pollution problems.

If it were so simple to simply "upgrade the transmission lines", then why didnt they do it decades ago with nuclear power? Build a REALLY big nuclear complex in the middle of nowhere, then transmit the power to where people are!

Moving power becomes exponentially more complicated, wasteful, and expensive the longer the range gets. It isnt feasible to power a wal mart in new york from solar panels in arizona.

 

[wNotyarD]

If it were so simple to simply "upgrade the transmission lines", then why didnt they do it decades ago with nuclear power? Build a REALLY big nuclear complex in the middle of nowhere, then transmit the power to where people are!

Moving power becomes exponentially more complicated, wasteful, and expensive the longer the range gets. It isnt feasible to power a wal mart in new york from solar panels in arizona.

If Brazil can build HVDC lines over 2500km from the power stations to where their power is actually needed, so can the USA. That's called planning and investing. Costly for sure, but it pays off FAST.

 

[evernessince]

If it were so simple to simply "upgrade the transmission lines", then why didnt they do it decades ago with nuclear power? Build a REALLY big nuclear complex in the middle of nowhere, then transmit the power to where people are!

Probably because that's a terrible idea, full stop. Nuclear plants rely on highly skilled labor and a rotating cadre of skilled contractors in addition to it's regular staff. You would need to make a whole town to support such a grouping of nuclear plants and at the point you defeat the purpose of the moving it to the middle of nowhere in the first place. It be very expensive to boot, not only are you paying for the nuclear plants but you are paying for housing, entertainment, restaurants, public facilities, ect. In addition you typically need large volumes of water for nuclear and almost always people settle near water. It makes zero sense to move it to the middle of nowhere to begin with so long as the facility is properly designed, the staff competent, and safety protocols followed. For nuclear plants, multiple safeguards have to fail for something bad to happen. Even in the event of a catastrophe like Fukushima for example, the amount of radiation that actually fell was minimal. Kyle Hill did a documentary on it and demonstrated that the Japanese government was likely too zealous in evacuating areas that received no significant amount of radiation.

Moving power becomes exponentially more complicated, wasteful, and expensive the longer the range gets. It isnt feasible to power a wal mart in new york from solar panels in arizona.

Moving power longer distances is a matter of higher voltage and air gapping. It's nothing complicated and multiple plans have been proposed since 2013 to improve long distance trasmission.

You can build higher capacity, higher voltage lines for an additional 20% premium over the cost of replacing cables that are already in need of replacement: https://www.eenews.net/articles/landmark-grid-plans-may-remake-electricity-if-biden-beats-trump/

The cost of the lines themselves isn't high, especially compared to the cost of other infrastructure projects.

The complicated part isn't the transmission lines themselves but getting the various power companies to sign off. A problem the DOE has been addressing the last few years laying the groundwork for improved inter-regional capacity.

 

[Shihab]

Their first load is the physical force of their weight,

Which, as demonstrated, is not much of an issue.
(I'm surprised no one has countered with the negative pressure argument yet, which is a genuine concern. Mitigable, but still a concern)

and the second force is that they are an extremely rigid body that has a dramatically different thermal expansion coefficient to wood.

Thermal expansion/contraction is an issue with long spans/large areas. PV panels are usually limited in that department. They measure much less, I'd wager, than your average metallic roofing sheets.
Even where this could be an issue (mounting rails come to mind), expansion joints are a thing.

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

"Records show 'licensed contractors' who presumably 'know what they are doing' can build single-story houses that fail within a few years, but duplexes are basically stacking two of them over each other to test if they were really good at their job."
If the existence of bad contractor was an argument for anything, we should go back to living in caves.

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.

The "disassemble then reinstall" statement was made in the context of carrying out repairs on the said roof.
Panels and their mounts are two separate things. Removing a panel does not require removing whatever penetrates the outer layers of your roof.

 

[Mister300]

Another reason why solar is problematic. Capitalism and fraud.

Shifting America to Solar Power Is a Grueling, Low-Paid Job

Over the past decade, a low-wage workforce that chases solar installation projects from state to state for meager wages has proliferated around the country.

www.vice.com

 

[WhitetailAni]

our old house doesn't get any sunlight due to thick tree cover, so solar would be useless.

 

[v12dock]

our old house doesn't get any sunlight due to thick tree cover, so solar would be useless.

Let me guess, your location is Chicago? LOL. I'm downstate, and I'm glad I don't have ComEd. Ameren still allows net metering, so I will certainly let them be my "battery." However, trees do render it useless.

 

[Steevo]

If Brazil can build HVDC lines over 2500km from the power stations to where their power is actually needed, so can the USA. That's called planning and investing. Costly for sure, but it pays off FAST.

Brazil uses hydroelectric for obvious reasons that aren't available elsewhere, and their reliance on sugarcane and deforestation to support their sugar market and have these remote biomass burning power plants is worse for the environment than nuclear.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

We get sales people often. They don't offer off grid in my area.

So that means they take some of my energy and supposedly give me a credit. OK, well this doesn't work for me because they are the only ones that can actually monitor it while I don't have access to their "smart meter" software or have a way to track it myself. They might provide this information, but I want my own means of measurement to be sure I'm not getting bamboozled. And what good is a credit if I have solar and would never need the credit.

Nope, off grid or nothing. Electric isn't super expensive (In my area) so it's no bother to pay a bill that's under 100 bucks for a family of 5 and 2 dogs.

 

[kurosagi01]

Probably a "privilege" thing for me to say it but they are ugly, if the world really wants to "save" the environment then they should be tackling other areas before bringing it down to consumer level.
In a lot of cases, solar panel can decrease the value of a property in the UK, so the only people that do install them are people that are not considering selling their property.

 

[Assimilator]

In a lot of cases, solar panel can decrease the value of a property in the UK, so the only people that do install them are people that are not considering selling their property.

What the actual fuck are you smoking? Solar panels are one of the things I looked for when I purchased my first home in the south east, they save me money on my energy bills every month, and the council pays me £500 every year for the excess electricity that I feed back into the grid. Any way you look at it, I win - and so does the environment.

 

[kurosagi01]

What the actual fuck are you smoking? Solar panels are one of the things I looked for when I purchased my first home in the south east, they save me money on my energy bills every month, and the council pays me £500 every year for the excess electricity that I feed back into the grid. Any way you look at it, I win - and so does the environment.

Perhaps time has changed since I last looked at solar panels but I do remember seeing articles when they first introduced solar panel to UK households that it does not add any value to the overall property and homeowners weren't allowed to sell their property either if they did have solar panel installed?
I've not really looked into it properly since when they first introduced solar panels, I was not in the "property" market, but even when I am now I have 0 incentives in wanting solar panels still down to personal preference.
If you are benefiting it then good for you dude.

 

[Waldorf]

funny how many try to make an argument against solar by pointing out location/cost etc, when countries like germany (less sun than washington state),
shows it can be done.
they have gotten emissions to match the 2020 goal by 2013, certainly not by ignoring solar...
and last time i checked, they have storms/hail etc. as well, and its not a problem, ignoring that most 1st world countries wont allow you to build homes that are up to code in the U.s.
to be used as more than a weekend home (not permanent residency), so if 5% of the global population cant build proper homes/roofs, doesnt mean we all need to stay away from solar tech.

@evernessince
except humans have build so many dams and are holding back so much water, that the planet tilted by about 3ft when comparing 1990 to 2010.
not sure if its a good thing we now are wobbling thru space, while not caused by "nature" events..

 

[dgianstefani]

funny how many try to make an argument against solar by pointing out location/cost etc, when countries like germany (less sun than washington state),
shows it can be done.
they have gotten emissions to match the 2020 goal by 2013, certainly not by ignoring solar...
and last time i checked, they have storms/hail etc. as well, and its not a problem, ignoring that most 1st world countries wont allow you to build homes that are up to code in the U.s.
to be used as more than a weekend home (not permanent residency), so if 5% of the global population cant build proper homes/roofs, doesnt mean we all need to stay away from solar tech.

@evernessince
except humans have build so many dams and are holding back so much water, that the planet tilted by about 3ft when comparing 1990 to 2010.
not sure if its a good thing we now are wobbling thru space, while not caused by "nature" events..

By outsourcing manufacturing, mining, farming, and just about everything else to the lowest bidder, who typically have worse environmental "standards".

Solar is good.

It is not the reason why the west can consume at the level they do and still claim "green" political talking points.

That together with selling carbon "credits". E.g. West emits more, pays for a poor country to not use much, or to "offset" these emissions. Poor country takes the money and fakes some documents. Everyone happy.

Countries being able to buy product from other countries and that apparently being generated out of thin air without pollution makes any of these emissions goals laughable.

No. It isn't greener to have China make your thing and ship it halfway around the world. Or to fish something, send it to east Asia for processing, then ship the fillets back because that's cheaper.

So many false economies.

Also, the main manufacturer of solar cells, which have a similar water intensive/rare earth mining process as computer chip manufacturing, is China.

The icing on the cake is idiot emission standards, meaning the Netherlands, which is the most efficient farming nation in the world, producing extremely high quality foods with optimal usage of resources, gets hit hard by per capita emissions targets. Forcing farmers to sell up generational farms, making room for nice new "eco" developments. Never mind they are a massive exporter of food and they feed much of Europe.

Not surprised the farmers there and elsewhere in Europe have been pumping manure onto EU governmental buildings in organised protests for quite some time now.

Germany, for example, has been leveling historic villages, to build open pit mines sourcing brown coal, because they closed all their nuclear plants and the eco generation is not baseline.

(not a joke)

Germany begins dismantling wind farm for coal

German energy giant RWE has begun dismantling a wind farm to make way for a further expansion of an open-pit lignite coal mine in the Western region of North Rhine Westphalia.

euobserver.com

I'm using Germany as an example since you mentioned they are "showing how it can be done".

 

[Waldorf]

@dgianstefani
never said anything regarding where things are made or bought from, and that's ignoring that germany has solar panel plants, so no, not everything comes from dirty old china.
its like everything else: it depends HOW its done, but that has ZERO to do with the basic "solar vs no solar use" discussion..

i hate (most) hybrids, as they almost all cant do better than a golf diesel from the mid 80s or even today (+75 mpg), and definitely not better for the environment over its complete life (parts>use>scrap),
all while hypercars like the 918 Spyder have better emissions, lower fuel consumption than a prius, while having 5 times its output.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

Hydro and Geothermal produce power all day, those are straight up baseline. All the remaining are baseline with any battery system or ability to import green energy from distance.

The US can upgrade it's transmission lines to allow mass power generation in green markets that is then sold to markets where green energy is less available. This would reduce the cost of electricity nationwide, incentivize investments into prime spots for green energy production, improve grid resilience, and greatly reduce the need for large battery storage systems as areas could tap into different green energy markets depending on their power generation schedules. This is just something that should be done regardless.

Batteries don't need to be chemical batteries either. They could use a combination of recycled batteries with natural batteries like sand, elevating water, ect. That way you aren't adding to any waste and pollution problems.

Hydro produces energy assuming that you're willing to dam an area, destroy the local space to store water, and that the area in question is fine with that. Let me suggest two things that matter. You get stuff like the Three Gorges dam...and boy is that a mess. You then get things like China needing to have control over specific areas because if somebody dammed up one of their primary waterways there'd be starving people.

Perhaps that's a little to abstract. Egypt and Ethiopia are, at this moment, dealing with that exact issue. You dam my water to create a reservoir and energy generation...and I die because I've effectively just entered years of artificial drought. It's almost like green is only green once you factor in a lot...and nobody having issues is a surprisingly ignorant conclusion for many green power solutions.



Regarding that last bit...wow. Let me explain some stupid to you. The reason mechanical batteries are stupid is because they require huge investment, have huge losses, and the stupid renders people use to say "it's just like a reverse elevator" fail to really think things through. Imagine if I had a control system as shown....that only used about 15% of the input energy to stack stuff. Now imagine that it only lost about 15% in the hysteresis of going from stack to stack. Now imagine the energy lost in transferring electrical energy to mechanical potential some distance away from generation....and you suddenly know why the presentations always suggest this is possible...assuming 0 losses in the system.

If it were so simple to simply "upgrade the transmission lines", then why didnt they do it decades ago with nuclear power? Build a REALLY big nuclear complex in the middle of nowhere, then transmit the power to where people are!

Moving power becomes exponentially more complicated, wasteful, and expensive the longer the range gets. It isnt feasible to power a wal mart in new york from solar panels in arizona.

HV power lines using AC are good at medium ranges. HV DC is now being explored as a good system to transport energy over large distances. These are macro...because the micro is DC voltages make losses real fast. I'm with you on some of this...but it's also not as easy as saying "everything sucks, so we shouldn't do anything." Solar in Australia is a no brainer. Wind in the Ricky Mountains is reasonable. We just need to find what is reasonable...

If Brazil can build HVDC lines over 2500km from the power stations to where their power is actually needed, so can the USA. That's called planning and investing. Costly for sure, but it pays off FAST.

If Brazil had the population densities the US had it wouldn't work.
USA population density
Slide 10 - Brazil

It's almost like reasonable people don't try to fit everything into the same mold...

Which, as demonstrated, is not much of an issue.
(I'm surprised no one has countered with the negative pressure argument yet, which is a genuine concern. Mitigable, but still a concern)


Thermal expansion/contraction is an issue with long spans/large areas. PV panels are usually limited in that department. They measure much less, I'd wager, than your average metallic roofing sheets.
Even where this could be an issue (mounting rails come to mind), expansion joints are a thing.


"Records show 'licensed contractors' who presumably 'know what they are doing' can build single-story houses that fail within a few years, but duplexes are basically stacking two of them over each other to test if they were really good at their job."
If the existence of bad contractor was an argument for anything, we should go back to living in caves.


The "disassemble then reinstall" statement was made in the context of carrying out repairs on the said roof.
Panels and their mounts are two separate things. Removing a panel does not require removing whatever penetrates the outer layers of your roof.

I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. Let me then take it away by anecdote.

My home is in an area with almost no snowfall. No tornados, no real hail, and no real weather extremes. We're talking 20-30 degrees F on a swing day. When I lived in the Midwest there were all of the dangerous things, and swing days of 50 degrees F. That's right...below freezing in the morning and t-shirt weather in the afternoon. With those kinds of extremes...why do houses where I've lived and where I live both still use tar shingles? That's right, you overlap them and you can have a 10-30 year roof. The problem is that my much easier current house has already sprung a leak from the roof...because a soffit was never sealed properly. Took years to detect...and I don't have a few hundred pounds of silicon and thousands of perforations to deal with.

If by your logic the presence of bad installations is not an excuse to have issues, then the converse must be as true. That would be the presence of really good installations is not an assurance or reason to accept. It's funny...when people make your kind of blanket statements they often forget that their dismissal is as telling as their truth...and from where I sit your truth is you don't want to hear about problems so they don't exist. My point is that instead of taking a roof, slapping solar cells on it, and getting high off the smell of your own flatulence we should maybe weigh costs against rewards.... This threads was always about why it wasn't a good idea for a uniform requirement for solar...not an inherent assassination of solar itself.

 

[Craptacular]

Professional scientist here, solar is not efficient and subject to physical damage. Remember the grid in PR was demolished by a hurricane.
Plus here in Texas a insurance company will deny you coverage since the install damages the roof. (They claim).
Plus the power utilities do not like competition and play games when it comes to reducing your bill. Similar to the fight between legal weed and alcohol industries.

Look at this professional scientist everybody!

Such amazing insights such as "Subject to physical damage. " No!!! You mean to tell me that tangible objects are subject to physical damage? Who would have thought? Perhaps you could tell us something that is intangible that would be able to generate electricity or spin a turbine to generate electricity.

 

[Waldorf]

the thing is, even if i would count the impact of getting the system from a place the least "green" out of all on the planet making same product,
for most places getting as/more sun than ~50 lat or less, it should still be better to use solar.

e.g. with up to 30KW allowed, able to produce more power (during a year) than a whole house with ACs/heated pool/and 2 e-cars needs, you make some money, instead of paying for power,
as well as being a bit of peace of mind that there is some offset to all the power use outside of heat/light/hot water etc, and not have to think about how "bad" for the planet my next gaming session will be.

but yeah, not everything has to work for everyone everywhere...

 

[Shihab]

from where I sit your truth is you don't want to hear about problems so they don't exist.

Then you need to sit closer.

 

[Atomic77]

Solar power is not 100% what if its a dark day and no sun how would you get power then.