Installing Rooftop Solar Can Be a Breeze. Just Look at Australia. (nytimes.com) 418
Dr. Saul Griffith, the author of "Electrify" and the founder and chief scientist of Rewiring America, Rewiring Australia and Otherlab, writes in a column: I recently moved back here to my home country partly because I believe Australians can show the world how much money households can save through simple climate solutions like rooftop solar. How is it that Australia, a country that historically has been a coal-burning climate pariah, is leading the world on solar? The four-bedroom house we recently bought provides a hint: It came with two rooftop solar systems of 11 kilowatts of combined capacity and a battery with 16 kilowatt-hours of storage. This system should produce more than enough to power my family's home, one electric car and both of our electric bikes with some left over to send back to the grid. Solar is now so prevalent in Australia that over a quarter of households here have rooftop panels, compared with roughly 2.5 percent of American households.
Australia pays its solar installers salaries comparable to those in the United States, and it buys most of its solar modules from China at 25 cents per watt, just a little less than what American buyers pay. Our houses are mostly detached single-family, like America, too. But unlike in the United States, it's easy to get permits and install rooftop solar in Australia. Australia's rooftop solar success is a function partly of luck, partly of design. In the early 1990s, regulators considered rooftop solar a hobby, and no one stood in the way of efforts to make the rules favorable to small-scale solar. Looking for a good headline to varnish over Australia's refusal to agree to the same greenhouse emissions reductions as the rest of the world in the 1997 Kyoto climate agreement, the federal government embraced renewable energy policies that set the stage for rooftop solar. Households were given rebates for the upfront costs, and were paid to send excess electricity back to the grid. In 2007, Prime Minister John Howard doubled the rebate, a move that is credited with kick-starting a solar installation boom.
Why has America been significantly slower to adopt this solution to high energy costs? The failures are mostly regulatory: local building codes and zoning laws, state rules that govern the grid connection and liability issues. Permitting can take as little as a day in Australia and is done over the web; in the United States permitting and connecting to the grid can take as long as six months. Many customers just give up. America also generally requires a metal conduit around the wiring; in Australia, the connections can be less expensive soft cables, similar to extension cords. The cost of rooftop solar in the United States depends on many things, including the latitude, tree cover and federal and state incentives. Installation costs can also vary quite a bit, depending on what laborers charge and the local permitting and inspection policies. My friend Andrew Birch, co-founder of the solar and solar software companies OpenSolar in Sydney and Sungevity in the United States, wrote an excellent critique of American rooftop solar and its high price in 2018.
Australia pays its solar installers salaries comparable to those in the United States, and it buys most of its solar modules from China at 25 cents per watt, just a little less than what American buyers pay. Our houses are mostly detached single-family, like America, too. But unlike in the United States, it's easy to get permits and install rooftop solar in Australia. Australia's rooftop solar success is a function partly of luck, partly of design. In the early 1990s, regulators considered rooftop solar a hobby, and no one stood in the way of efforts to make the rules favorable to small-scale solar. Looking for a good headline to varnish over Australia's refusal to agree to the same greenhouse emissions reductions as the rest of the world in the 1997 Kyoto climate agreement, the federal government embraced renewable energy policies that set the stage for rooftop solar. Households were given rebates for the upfront costs, and were paid to send excess electricity back to the grid. In 2007, Prime Minister John Howard doubled the rebate, a move that is credited with kick-starting a solar installation boom.
Why has America been significantly slower to adopt this solution to high energy costs? The failures are mostly regulatory: local building codes and zoning laws, state rules that govern the grid connection and liability issues. Permitting can take as little as a day in Australia and is done over the web; in the United States permitting and connecting to the grid can take as long as six months. Many customers just give up. America also generally requires a metal conduit around the wiring; in Australia, the connections can be less expensive soft cables, similar to extension cords. The cost of rooftop solar in the United States depends on many things, including the latitude, tree cover and federal and state incentives. Installation costs can also vary quite a bit, depending on what laborers charge and the local permitting and inspection policies. My friend Andrew Birch, co-founder of the solar and solar software companies OpenSolar in Sydney and Sungevity in the United States, wrote an excellent critique of American rooftop solar and its high price in 2018.
Don't look at Australia. (Score:5, Insightful)
America: "We've tried doing nothing, and we're all out of ideas!"
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Let me tell you why America is completely unique in the world, and then list a dozen reasons it couldn't possibly work:
* Population density
* Diversity
* 2nd amendment
* Latitude
* Electoral collage
* Gangs
* 1st amendment
* Federalism
* Supreme court
* Immigrants
* Republicans
* Healthcare
Re:Don't look at Australia. (Score:5, Funny)
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I concur with the "Well played!" comment, but in your OP you forgot to mention about blaming the enemy. It's not just "doing nothing" in America, but also about actively working to make sure your political adversaries can't do anything good that they might get credit for.
Re: Don't look at Australia. (Score:2)
Maybe 3 of those are unique to America and some of them are actually just the fault of the others.
Re:Don't look at Australia. (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it strange how the Republicans, the party of free markets and self made men, tries to stop people making their own electricity so that big energy suppliers can make more profit?
Re: Don't look at Australia. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Don't look at Australia. (Score:4, Informative)
Biden launches $6B effort to save distressed nuclear plants [nbcnews.com]
I can agree that this is not enough by any measure but it's not like we have seen the either party move the needle much with nuclear energy in the past 30 years. Trump did start a couple measures and Biden is continuing them but the unfortunate reality is that nuclear is a bit of a hot potato in the US, in my opinion it's because neither party wants to face the reality that it is only viable if done via nationalization, it's not a free market solvable problem.
Netlfix has a docuseries about Three Mile Island [youtube.com] and it really paints a picture of what a boondoggle that whole incident was. It has everything, government incompetence and feet dragging, corporate malfeasance and reckless greediness, and a populace that was primed to be panicked and overreact.
Nuclear is a pretty nuanced issue which means the majority of Americans don't want to understand it.
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Yes, it is.
Self energy production, voters opposition (Score:4, Insightful)
*It's not ok, at 5pm the electricity generated is coal or natural gas peaker plants. 10% of a typical utilities infrastructure is used less than 8 hours a year to supply the worst case peak demand. In a half sane world consumer would pay a price that much more closely resembles the spot price. If consumers paid that, then roof top solar wouldn't make economic sense to most people, our peak demands would be less since people would shift consumption at multiple dollars per kwh, over all your bill would be lower (I worked on a pilot in Oklahoma where the median savings was $50/month), the utilities costs would be less and the environment would benefit. But voters are f#@king stupid in the entire English world and all the public regulators are morons.
Solar at 5pm? (Score:3)
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But yes... Belgium here, we have lot of solar power. Lot of installations go offline at noon due to too much line voltage. Big investments are needed in the grid. Looks like electric car future is starting to move things.
Re: Don't look at Australia. (Score:2)
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Re: Don't look at Australia. (Score:2)
Re:Don't look at Australia. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me tell you why America is completely unique in the world
Nationalism and national exceptionalism are common to many countries, they are not unique to America.
You then go on to make a list which is at least half pure bullshit.
I hope you were trying to write satire. If so, you failed, because it is indistinguishable from actual comments written by actual idiots. But if you were not, you failed even harder.
Re:Don't look at Australia. (Score:5, Insightful)
That was obviously satire, except for the Healthcare bit. America is unique in the world in that they claim to have the best healthcare while simultaneously making people wish they died when presented with the bill.
Re:Don't look at Australia. (Score:5, Funny)
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That is pretty accurate. Well, the US has been left beghind in many things already. A few more and things will not look good.
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Yes, Australia is a literal utopia of a well run state.
https://www.zerohedge.com/ener... [zerohedge.com]
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has suspended the entire national energy market from June 15 at 2:05 p.m. after it was deemed âoeimpossibleâ to continue operating the spot market while ensuring a reliable energy supply.
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The same country that redefined 'mass shootings' as requiring 8 people killed as opposed to 3 people shot but not killed the way its tallied here? Lets change our criteria and see these statistics plummet too. For the record ALL crime is lower in Australia, it had nothing to do with their gun laws. In fact their crime rate really didnt change after their gun buyback because it was already dismally low. Like england, its a country with very controlled access of its borders due to an ocean surrounding it on all sides. But Im not about to get into a discussion with someone who neither understands how constitutional amendments work or what their options actually are. You have two options, pass a new amendment, or move. It really is that simple.
And other complete bollocks about Australia.
The crime rate did go down after 1997... It's just that gun nuts like to cut it off at 1997 because they don't like what happened.
Shootings themselves are rare in Australia, shootings involving more than 1 person are even rarer.
I will admit I'd never heard that myth about Australia changing the number of victims required for a mass shooting... But it's bollocks. A multiple homicide (regardless of method) is still any number larger than 1. Australia is pr
Re: Don't look at Australia. (Score:2)
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For the record ALL crime is lower in Australia, it had nothing to do with their gun laws.
But we're not talking about ALL crime. We're talking about gun crime. Especially gun crime involving multiple people.
Stop with the strawmen.
Re: Don't look at Australia. (Score:4, Interesting)
You point out that "we arent [sic] even in the top 10 countries for violent crime" but here's a list of countries that have a lower crime rate than the United States:
Ukraine
Ghana
Egypt
Lebanon
Myanmar
Moldova
Vietnam
Indonesia
Panama
Palestine*
Tunisia
Zambia
Albania
Let's not act like the US is awesome on crime and safety when undeveloped countries in Africa and basically the entirety of Europe and Asia (with a few war-torn or massively impoverished exceptions such as Afghanistan and Bangladesh) are doing better, yeah?
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Again with your violent fantasies.
https://www.worldatlas.com/art... [worldatlas.com]
Homicides per 100,000
Australia 0.8
Canada 1.8
USA 5.3
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The law requires gun licenses, with a yearly registration fee of JM$12,000.00 (US$ 90.01). There were about 65,000 licensed firearms in Jamaica in 2002, and approximately seven hundred licenses approved per year. All crimes involving firearms are tried by a spe
Re:Don't look at Australia. (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a solar setup on my roof in New England, it powers my house year round very effectively and it cost about 20K to install before tax incentives. Factoring those in my 12 year loan monthly cost was just about equal to my non summer, non AC running electric bill. We get a ton of snow, we get way less sun in the winter and yet it still works out nicely.
Solar is viable in these areas despite folks like you continually taking about how its impossible.
Re:Don't look at Australia. (Score:5, Interesting)
You know I am not even crazy about gun control but it's the refusal by certain sects of the populace and government to do absolutely anything else around the issue that makes me puzzled and feel like they are all a bunch of dishonest crooks.
Want to keep gun laws as loose as possible? fine;
Can we have an improved healthcare system like every other developed nation with robust mental health options? NO!
Can we have a more dedicated social safety net to help protect vulnerable populations? NO!
Can we have better housing policy to keep people off the streets? NO!
Can we have better anti-poverty programs since there is a striking correlation between crime and poverty? NO!
Can we take some measures to reduce wealth inequality which also has big correlations to crime rates? NO!
The answer of "no gun control" but also "no to anything else that would help" is extremely frustrating to say the least. I am absolutely willing to trade giving up on gun control for a universal healthcare system. Not even asking for Single Payer, just public option would make a world of difference.
Re:Don't look at Australia. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know I am not even crazy about gun control but it's the refusal by certain sects of the populace and government to do absolutely anything else around the issue that makes me puzzled and feel like they are all a bunch of dishonest crooks.
The most frustrating are the ones that pretend that they want this.
- "Hey maybe we should do something to limit access to guns a bit"
- "No! 2nd amendment! Why don't you address the root cause? Mental health, poverty, blah blah"
- "Literally 0 of your politicians support this"
- "Well why don't you pass it then. Until then we'll just have to accept dozens of children being gunned down in schools. Shall not be infringed etc etc."
And of course how suddenly they care about minorities and poor people. Motherfucker you don't give a shit about minorities or poor people in any other context. Not that it makes any sense, because poor people and minorities are the biggest victims of gun crime. Stop bringing up Black Panthers already.
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Exactly, I would just prefer and respect if people were just honest and said "I really don't care if people continue getting shot and killed with guns, it's just the cost of living my vision of America". I mean I don't agree but at least it's an honest position but nobody wants to morally defend that position because it rightfully makes you seem a bit callous to say the least. Gotta bite that bullet sometimes though.
Stop bringing up Black Panthers already.
Also let's not forget the well known fact that gun control got passed in a real fucking h [wikipedia.org]
Re:Don't look at Australia. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, lets enter the semantics dome. My point was more on the gradual decline of the Republican party refusal to have plans anymore
Sure, I am happy to provide specifics, especially on healthcare as that is overall my #1 most important issue.
I will set the premise; Every developed nation in the US has sorted out that healthcare is an inelastic market not subject to the market forces that tend to lower prices and improve service in other areas of the economy. Therefore they have adopted one of the major methods of prividing healthcare:
Nationalization, ie the NHS. Government hires doctors, government owns hospitals (not a good fit for the US)
Single payer - Private doctors, workers and centers. Government provides all insurance (Canada is a good example)
Multipayer - Private insurance competes on an open market with heavy regulation. Government can also step in as an insurer or it can be fully private. Examples are the Dutch and Swiss model which have all private insurance and the German model with a government insurer as an option.
Fully private system: Has not been done for awhile and is pretty much agreed that it does not work.
You can slice these up even further but that's the basic overview
It should be noted all these countries, Canada, France, UK, all the Nordics etc all get similar or better outcomes at a lower cost per capita per GDP. We have this frankenstein system of the worst parts of all of them and end up paying more for no real improvement in outcomes.
The mltipayer model is probably the best one for America. Private insurance companies can compete, the government is both an insurer of last resort and acts as a price stabilizer on the rest of the market. Ideally for me this should be combined with a restriction or elimination of the coupling of employment to insurance but with the choice of going on the government plan for every worker that may sort itself out. Now lots of other changes need to happen as well such as forcing the AMA to stop restricting the amount of doctors that can graduate, allowing nurses and NP's to provide more care, heavily encouraging people to get yearly physicals and other tests so we can catch problems up front. Basic point is the current system we have in the US is indefensible by almost every metric.
The problem with the Republican side is they no longer can hold that position, when they revolted against the ACA they abandoned the plan they should be pushing for whereas the more liberal option would be a Single Payer system ad the compromise should be a multipayer system with public option. Now that they've backed into a corner they refuse to move anywhere because they have nowhere to move.
Housing policy is tricky because it's more local but single family zoning needs to go the way of the dinosaurs. Multi-use zoning creates better neighborhoods. Properly designated vacancy taxes also help (careful with those though). Public housing with no restrictions i also love, IE its not just for the poor but anyone can live there with an income adjusted rent to promote income mixing in neighborhoods. Dream scenario is moving to a Land Value Tax as opposed to property taxes. I am open to anything that ends up with more homes built, small ones, big ones, fancy ones, just build more.
Poverty: Dream sceario is negative income tax but changing healthcare and housing will de-facto help that. If people have healthcare and a place to live even during hard times those who can will tend to work themselves out of it and those who cant we can keep off the streets and healthy.
The problem I have with all those from "the other side" is they pretty much rely on changing the culture (culture hardcore ratchets, it doesnt move backwards) or they all work against the current reality of our economy. For them to achieve those goals they still need some sort of policy and they either don't have it or refuse to state it.
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Well if they are tired of the back and forth and just want to preserve their corner get out of national politics and run for your city council because the corner is the entire country and there is a lot of things that simply do not work well in the US.
And yes, i meant every other developed nation has figured out that you can't just leave healthcare to the markets. The supply demand curve goes upside down with healthcare, especially critical care, there is nowhere close to "perfect knowledge", customers oft
Re:Don't look at Australia. (Score:4, Insightful)
Your argument has a fatal flaw: making bathtub gin or growing weed is far more discreet than a firearms factory. If certain firearms are prohibited from purchase, the manufacturers of those firearms will stop manufacturing products for a non-existent market. Sure, you'll have some tinkerers that still make their own, or source random parts scavenged to put something together, and yes there will probably be some illegal importation; but you won't have 18 year olds regularly putting a stack of cash on the counter and walking away with an AR-15 that is only good for two things: putting lots of holes in paper targets in a short amount of time, and putting lots of holes in people in a short amount of time.
Don't even start with the "hunting" bullshit because we all know that there are better rifles for any kind of hunting than an AR-15, unless you are hunting humans.
Prohibition of alcohol was just plain stupid - everyone knew it was just a political pandering - which is why it was repealed. Gun control won't work immediately because guns are durable goods and there's so fucking many of them out there, but it will work eventually as nothing lasts forever - parts wear out or break, and if you can't repair them, then the gun goes out of service. And you know why we know that gun control works? When's the last time you heard of a mass shooting where the weapon used was a fully automatic submachine gun? Basically never - they've been tightly controlled since passage of the National Firearms Act of 1945, but still technically obtainable with the proper paperwork and bureaucratic stamina but basically out of reach of the vast majority of people. Thus, not used in mass shootings even though they're a better tool for it.
Restricting access to guns isn't an immediate solution for gun crime, Rather it's a long play that we already know works. The only obstacle is a large population of irrational useful idiots marshalled by morally-corrupt NRA-bought politicians with the institutional ability to obstruct enacting a solution.
Build stronger power lines as well! (Score:2)
Here (Netherlands) the switching gear that passes the power onto the net turns off when the net power becomes to die,
which happens regularly on sunny days.
In vast parts of the country it is no longer allowed to set up large solar plants (larger than a single house's roof full) because the net cannot handle it.
However, our government was stupid enough to privatize the electricity network, so it is not going to be improved anytime soon.
Re:Build stronger power lines as well! (Score:5, Informative)
You can get inverters that allow powering your home from solar or a battery when the grid is down. The cheap ones don't, it's a feature you have to pay extra for. Most of Europe has very stable electricity supply, so it's not worth it. I can't remember the last time we had a black-out, more than a decade ago certainly.
If you are suffering from the grid going down then it might be worth paying a bit extra for a suitable inverter and battery. Whole house UPS. As an alternative to a battery, you could buy an electric car that supports vehicle to gird (it doesn't have to go to the grid with the right inverter).
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You can get inverters that allow powering your home from solar or a battery when the grid is down.
You technically can, but at least in the Netherlands that is illegal. The fire brigade wants all power in a building to be off if the grid is off or disconnected.
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Huh, that's interesting. I can understand why they want it, but it seems like a bad solution. If it's a house without solar or battery and they want to be sure the power is off then they will have to go to the consumer unit. Sometimes that is located on the outside of the house for easy access by emergency services, or at least the main breaker is.
Unless they plan on turning off the electricity for a whole block of houses at the substation...
Seems like just mandating an external off switch/main breaker woul
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You technically can, but at least in the Netherlands that is illegal. The fire brigade wants all power in a building to be off if the grid is off or disconnected.
Congratulations, you have even worse protectionist laws around power generation than they have in Texas.
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Congratulations, you have even worse protectionist laws around power generation than they have in Texas.
No they really don't. Despite you blowing one detail way out of proportion not being able to run a house off the grid in a major city doesn't mean they are Texas. For one if you want solar panels on your roof you will have them within a few weeks, completely with a subsidy.
There's a reason why the country leads Europe in rooftop solar installations. https://secretamsterdam.com/so... [secretamsterdam.com]
And the real embarrassing point to your criticism is that rooftop solar generation in the NL per capita is only marginally behi
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But TFA is talking about single-house rooftop solar with enough storage to never need to import from the grid... Which makes your comment irrelevant.
Actually the issue is that Australia happens to have fantastic solar resource and a demand profile that almost exactly matches solar output profile - big peaks during long, sunny summer days due to high air conditioning load. This doesn't work at higher latitudes because the solar output peak remains the same while the demand peak is on cold, short, winter da
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It depends a bit on your definition of "doesn't work". Residential rooftop solar may not be able to supply 100% of electric demand during winter months in the northern United States (especially with heat pumps). But if it were only, say, 50%, that would still be worth pursuing, no? As an incremental step, I'd be satisfied with running fossil
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We're at 52 degrees, roughly (Bristol). We don't have air conditioning at all. We have heating throughout the house. That's pretty typical for the whole country.
Yes, offsetting some of your usage is worth doing. But the UK is already at the point where solar output is destabilising the market because at the solar peak, solar output is about 50% of consumption (in summer) but the peak demand doesn't correspond to the solar peak; the peak demand happens in the morning and evening. So you've got a lot of
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You don't necessarily need fat interconnects for the grid when you move power generation closer to where it is consumed.
System cost?? (Score:4, Informative)
Welcome to America
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That can't be right. That's 3-4x component cost?
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>That can't be right. That's 3-4x component cost?
Oh it can be. "Solutions" cost a lot more than components. Design, ordering, licensing, shipping, installation, testing, inspections, permits, support, etc. I priced a much smaller system and it was something like $35K, the ROI here would have been 20+years, with lots of optimistic assumptions.
And in the USA, sun angle, prevalence, etc varies WILDLY.
A natural gas generator with transfer- the "installed" cost was 3.5 times the wholesale price of the equi
Re:System cost?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like someone has deliberately screwed up the regulations to protect their profits.
Such a system in the UK would be around $25k tops, installed.
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Sources for your figures?
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Re: System cost?? (Score:2)
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In most places, utilities don't work like that. Most deregulated utility markets work by having separate producers and retailers. The producers feed into the grid, the retailers buy power from them and sell it on to consumers. In this model, it absolutely makes sense for retailers to pay you for rooftop solar output, at something approaching the wholesale cost of electricity.
One of the issues of the solar market is that governments have typically subsidised rooftop solar to a massive extent. At one poin
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An 11kW system with 16kWh battery is around $75000 in the US. So, if you are talking about a 10 year ROI, then your electricity bills need to be over $600 a month for this to make sense.
You fucking what? That is less than $20k installed in Australia, and that's Australian dollars so closer to $14k USD. ROI for my dad's solar installation was less than 2 years, though electricity in Australia costs significantly more than most US states.
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Re: System cost?? (Score:4, Informative)
I live in an expensive state in the US (Massachusetts) and the typical cost of a 12 kW system is ~$30k. I have done extensive research on this as I'm about to get such a system installed. A neighbor of mine with a 10 kW system achieved ROI in https://homeguide.com/costs/so...
I can't speak to the cost of battery storage systems.
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+1
Mine's 2.8 kW and covers 80-90% of the electric bill in a 4br house. But we have natural gas and we almost never use the A/C.
Re:System cost?? (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't mention anything about the system cost and ROI time.
That's because that stuff costs more in Australia, which has stricter import regulations than we do, and yet Solar is still more successful there, proving that these considerations are not what are holding back solar installations. QED, you are flapping your mouth and wasting time in a way that does the energy companies' work for them.
They use to profit from everything, but when it was discovered that they were taking massive advantage of their customers laws were put in place to really make only building new generation capacity profitable. This makes rooftop solar a threat to shareholder profits, and since shareholders of utilities are amoral or immoral they are happy for the power companies to lobby to protect their profits.
A fair market would decouple the transmission infrastructure costs from the generation costs, and never let the same company own both transmission and generation. In fact the transmission should be handled by actually public utilities, like the bulk of roads. Generation can be a mix of public and private sources.
Bullshit (Score:2)
https://www.thisoldhouse.com/s... [thisoldhouse.com]
Let's say $15k for a 6kw system.
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I call bullshit on your numbers, unless you can provide some references for that pulled-from-your-ass estimate.
Here is one reference [energysage.com], and here's another [marketwatch.com], that indicate solar installation costs at under $3/W. The larger the system, the lower the per-watt cost. That's not just for the panels - that's total system cost. The point of the opinion piece is that, were regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles reduced, the cost could be even lower (so
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They don't mention anything about the system cost and ROI time. An 11kW system with 16kWh battery is around $75000 in the US. So, if you are talking about a 10 year ROI, then your electricity bills need to be over $600 a month for this to make sense. I'm guessing this simple math has more to do with the uptake than any other factor. No utility is actually going to give you money for excess production (they may give you a credit for it), since solar ultimately costs them money. The feds and states seem to be over the idea of rebates, since it doesn't funnel more bribes into their pockets like dependence on coal and gas does.
Welcome to America
$75,000? How did you manage that? Also you only really need around 4KW to power a house.
In the UK, a 4KW solar system is about £6,000 installed. That's probably $7,500.
Australia is not really a good example to follow because the situation changed. Up until quite recently the government were giving rebates for every solar system installed and there were quite generous feed-in tariffs. This lead to people getting the systems on finance based on a non-guaranteed future income that has disappeared
Australian dude says America behind (Score:5, Informative)
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I am putting in another 2.2kW of solar myself and the total cost shouldn't exceed 1800 euros for me. But I am not paying some company to do it for me so I'm not being fleeced. 450W panels are costing me €210 each and ABB inverter from ebay cost €420, other th
Re: Australian dude says America behind (Score:3)
Re:Australian dude says America behind (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Australian dude says America behind (Score:2)
Those costs aren't right in my experience. Generally 10 kW systems (no battery backup) are $30k here. That assuming you get typical solar installations, not something like solar city roof panels, which are quite expensive. And assuming you don't need roof reinforcement, which is sometimes necessary.
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Re: Australian dude says America behind (Score:2)
https://homeguide.com/costs/so... [homeguide.com]
^Reasonably accurate costing of systems in the US. I can't speak to Australia but a lot of that US price is rather expensive labor.
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Still I find it hard to believe the US has $20k-50k of red tape costs on top of a system install.
That's only because you're not familiar with the US, where it costs more in permits and mandatory connection fees to build a single bedroom home than it does to buy the materials.
In the USA, corporate investment in political races is considered protected speech, since Citizens United [wikipedia.org]. Things were bad before, but they're worse now.
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That can't be right on those costs.
It's pretty accurate. I got several quotes on installing 8KW on my roof, which averaged about $55K USD. Solar in the U.S. is horrendously expensive. If I could get 8KW of solar installed on my roof for $5,000 USD, I would to it today. Hell, I would have done it years ago. If I could get 16KW of solar on my roof for $15,000, I would still do it today. But 16KW would likely cost me $90,000.
Not without problems (Score:3)
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In Australia the payback period for batteries (late 2021) was roughly the warranty period of the battery (5 to 7 years). Therefore a break even proposition. The historical advice was install more solar panels rather than invest in batteries even though the power exported to the grid was a fraction of the power import price.
With increased power prices power storage batteries are potentially a net benefit however previous energy crisis have only lasted 2-3 years as opposed to the current payback periods of po
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There is now so much solar in Australia that in some places the max grid voltage is often exceeded and inverters cut out.
The inverters don't cut out, they just keep humming along at voltage because unlike a non-inverter generator, they are voltage-controlled devices. Solar power systems don't have any trouble with overproduction, it's the legacy equipment that does. The speed of the generators is controlled by load. Take load off the network and they overspeed. But that's only because they are so primitive, and frankly, the lack of more speed control on those systems is responsible for many of the failings of the entrenched g
High solar radiation (Score:3)
I don't get it (Score:2)
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FWIW, we took the grandkids to Legoland Florida a couple months back (between Orlando & Tampa), and the on-site hotel had shaded parking areas covered with solar panels. Someone apparently has a clue. https://www.tampaelectric.com/... [tampaelectric.com]
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In my central Florida area I have actually seen a number of houses get solar installed, not a majority by any stretch but a decent amount.
It does not help that Florida is also rife with solar scam companies [google.com] now that try and sell overpriced systems with sometimes shoddy workmanship and awful contract terms. [youtube.com] I have been solicitied at my home at least a dozen times now and all them have a fairy tell to sell and it makes people leery of the legit companies and the concept in general. Scamming is an American t
Smug or What? (Score:2)
I recently moved back here to my home country partly because I believe Australians can show the world how much money households can save through simple climate solutions
That's the smuggest statement I've heard so far this year. He moved his home between two nations for that? His rant is on-line anyway - doesn't Australia have the internet?
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Yeah, his smugness can go get fucked. Australia ranks amongst the worst in the world in emissions per capita for many of the same reasons the USA does too. Abundance of coal, fetish for huge gas guzzlers, governments that didn't give a shit year on year (which is why both major parties got annihilated in the past election and why for the first time ever the greens have more than 1 seat in the house).
I only recently saw an article which compared Australian houses based on Europe's energy star ratings. Nearly
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His rant is on-line anyway - doesn't Australia have the internet?
This was probably a tongue-n-cheek comment, but no, we have the "national broadband network" and it's a fucking joke. It was supposed to be a nationwide fibre-to-the-premises fibre rollout, but halfway through this rollout, the government changed and the new guys completely gutted the original plan, and paid Telstra billions of taxpayers' dollars to rehash their woeful copper network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
why not? (Score:2)
"Why has America been significantly slower to adopt this solution ?"
Probably because Australia is an arid, dry place 15-30 degrees of the equator.
The U.S. is mostly a temperate forest/grassland, 30-45 degrees off the equator with substantially more rain and clouds, meaning the marginal return is far less.
But why apply logic, when anecdotes and smarmy virtue signaling is so much more fulfilling?
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The author's point wasn't "Why can't the US be as geographically blessed as Australia?" That'd be stupid - the US can't control its geography. Rather, the author was urging the US to tackle the bureaucratic hurdles and "soft costs" in the US - permitting, system design,
No thanks (Score:4, Interesting)
Australia could learn something from the rest of the world when it comes to saving money: insulate your frigging house. All the solar in the world doesn't do squat if you waste it all on running the AC full blast into your leaky living room.
Australia lags behind much of the world when it comes to green credentials. Building codes many years behind other western nations, wasteful energy practices such as a preference for huge cars, lack of decent public transport in many major cities, coal coal and more coal providing baseload, all combined make Australia among the highest per capita emitters in the world along with the USA, Canada, and oil rich nations in the middle east.
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Australia could learn something from the rest of the world when it comes to saving money: insulate your frigging house. All the solar in the world doesn't do squat if you waste it all on running the AC full blast into your leaky living room.
Australia lags behind much of the world when it comes to green credentials. Building codes many years behind other western nations, wasteful energy practices such as a preference for huge cars, lack of decent public transport in many major cities, coal coal and more coal providing baseload, all combined make Australia among the highest per capita emitters in the world along with the USA, Canada, and oil rich nations in the middle east.
Yeah, wonder why https://www.theguardian.com/au... [theguardian.com]
How? (Score:2)
" How is it that Australia, a country that historically has been a coal-burning climate pariah, is leading the world on solar? "
They finally ditched their 'big banana' PM.
Rooftop is a thing in the US (Score:5, Informative)
Wherever there is a lot of sun, like the California desert and insanely high energy prices at 25c/kWh, like the California desert and insanely high state and federal kickbacks, like the California desert then we definitely see solar rooftops just like the Australian desert. At least people can and are leaving the California desert.
Iâ(TM)m looking for solar options, once it starts competing with my 4c/kWh pro-nuclear and pro-hydro coop Iâ(TM)ll start installing.
Economics Don't Work (Score:4, Interesting)
I looked into rooftop solar when I lived in Texas. The economics just don't quite work, even with the huge tax credit (30%!). To a certain extent, it should be obvious that installing solar panels on my roof doesn't make as much sense as installing them at utility scale outside of town. There are three big problems with solar roof for homeowners:
1.) Rate of return - It wasn't the case then (and probably isn't now) that the money you spend upfront is appropriately paid back. If you spend $20,000 to install a system and then save $1000/yr, it seems like a great deal until you realize that even savings bonds have a better return than that. Salesmen will lie to folks and tell them that they're making a smart financial decision, when they're essentially getting zero return, and taking on a lot of risk...
2.) Risk - There's three big risks with solar. The first is that the equipment will break. It's often warrantied and labor might be warrantied as well, but neither of those warranties will last as long as the economic calculation the salesman shows you to justify the system and furthermore, parts of the system will degrade over time, lowering the energy output. The second is that you might move, since a new buyer won't pay as much for your system as you think it's worth. If you know any realtors, ask them to tell you the story of their client with a rooftop solar installation. The third risk deserves its own section...
3.) Net-Metering - The economics of solar are based on something called net-metering, i.e. you can sell your extra electricity back to the utility. There's no guarantee that net-metering will remain in its present form in your jurisdiction. This means that you might install your system only to have your utility cancel the net-metering arrangement the next year or make it much more expensive.
All of this put together is why policy should be directed around utility scale solar instead of solar rooves. It's just a silly idea that is sold to people by the same salesmen who were selling siding and windows a few months ago. "It's an investment! Think of all the money you'll save!" All of the federal money that goes to solar rooves should be going to utility scale solar, which has lower operating costs and greater efficiency, instead of propping up an industry that is taking advantage of gullible homeowners.
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1.) Rate of return is only low if you assume that energy rates (and inflation) are flat, which is historically inaccurate. If you consider a $20k system that generates $1000/yr in electricity, you should assume about a 5% annual increase in the value of the electricity produced... that means you're generating $2500 in electricity at the end of 20 years, with $35k total ROI for $15k profit. And, in this case, the higher inflation goes, and the higher energy prices go, the better your ROI is. Your payoff is y
Actual economics of solar (Score:4, Interesting)
There's been a lot of discussion on the economics of installing rooftop solar. I thought I would give my perspective because we installed solar on our house about a year ago. Our system cost $30,500. It was financed for 1.5% APY for twenty years with zero down. The monthly payment is about $150. We received a tax refund of $8322, which we did not apply to the principal, since the interest rate is so low. You should know that if you redo your roof at the same time, you can claim the part of the roof that is underneath the panels. That's why our credit is a little higher than 26% of the system cost. Our cost was higher, because we do not have a south-facing roof. Our panels face to the west. We live in Wisconsin, which is not the best environment for solar power either.
So, in terms of economic impact to us, we started with a "balance" of 8322. Our electric bill has been reduced in two ways. One, power we generate and consume is subtracted from our bill at the rate the utility charges. Two, power we generate and sell back is subtracted from our bill at 1/3 of the wholesale rate (that varies from state to state). When you take these amounts for the last year, and subtract our loan payments, the net expense is about $1100 per year. I have spreadsheets tracking this because I am curious about the economics also; we did it more for environmental concerns.
This means it will be about 7.5 years before we actually "pay" anything for our solar installation (before we wipe out the $8322 in cash we were handed for installing the system). After that 7.5 year grace period, we spend $1100 per year helping the environment. Assuming we stay in our house for the full length of the loan, we would then be saving money from that point onward.
There are some other economic factors which probably reduce that cost. First of all, the $8322 is being invested in a conservative portfolio which typically earns a return around 6%. Second, we think (we're not sure) that our house is cooler in the summer since we installed the panels; it definitely is not making the house hotter. Third, the forecasting is conservative because it assumes the cost of electricity does not increase (unlikely). Fourth, while I have a hybrid vehicle now, if we get an electric vehicle, we will save more money, because we'll be using more of the electricity we generate instead of selling it back.
Finally, we give a considerable amount of money to charity, and we view this expense as a component of our charitable contributions. That's probably the most important point I would make here. The other point is that installing this system does not make sense if you anticipate relocating to another area. If we did move, we'd probably realize some savings also from the increased value of the house, but it's hard to say.
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europe is actually in better state than most australia
Wind production is very high in many countries and solar is increasing fast, with countries like Germany and Spain have huge amount of solar power
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We have real winters, they mostly don't.
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Australia has 1 in 5 houses already with solar increasing by the day.
Gee, I wonder how they've beaten rainy Europe on that...
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Dunno about the rest of Europe, but in the UK the 'feed in tariff' (the rate you get paid for returning energy to the grid) used to be quite good - so good that companies sprang up putting solar panels on your house (for "free") so they could get paid the tariff and then pass a bit of it onto you. Then the government reduced it, so now you pretty much just get paid the wholesale rate - which is a lot less than the retail rate you actually have to pay the electric company. Now getting solar is down to just y
Re: it buys most of its solar modules from China a (Score:2)
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Yeah time to get our shit together and join the rest of the developed world. Nobody else has a score of people dying in single shooting event every other week. It's so bad that toddlers are shooting someone an average of every two weeks. https://www.npr.org/2021/08/31... [npr.org]
It's a mental health problem!
Great, guess who voted against expanding healthcare coverage for people...
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