24 ms·

California to become first U.S. state mandating solar on new homes

314 points by baron816 8y ago

baron816 8y ago
I'm certainly a big fan of solar power, but rooftop solar is a little silly. Rooftop solar would make sense if we had some shortage of land and couldn't just fill up empty fields with panels, but that's not the case. It's much cheaper for utility companies to buy up big plots of land than it is to try to figure out how to outfit odd shaped surfaces with panels. California is really missing the forrest for the trees here. There's so much low hanging fruit (things that could kill two birds with one stone) that they're ignoring. If the state would focus on higher density living and public transportation over imposing regulations that will drive more people away and lower the standard of living for those who remain, then we would see a much bigger global impact on reducing climate change. Because of this, more people will decide to live in Texas instead of California, where they'll run their air conditioners 10 months out of the year in their huge, inefficient houses which draw power from coal plants.
- arkades 8y ago
  > There's so much low hanging fruit (things that could kill two birds with one stone Stonefruit, you might say.
- programbreeding 8y ago
  >If the state would focus on higher density living... >...where they'll run their air conditioners 10 months out of the year in their huge, inefficient houses The type of people that live in huge inefficient homes are generally also the same type of people that don't want to live in high density areas. California could turn open fields in to solar farms like you mentioned, but that requires that someone foot the bill and also build the infrastructure for it. "Forcing" people to put solar panels on their own home solves both of those problems. It also makes you more immune to losing power in a natural disaster, of which California has plenty. I'm not saying I'm even for this issue, I don't live in California. But your view is extremely negative and ignores the negatives of your way while also ignoring the positives of the way mentioned in the article.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    > California could turn open fields in to solar farms like you mentioned, but that requires that someone foot the bill and also build the infrastructure for it. "Forcing" people to put solar panels on their own home solves both of those problems. You're missing the obvious alternative, which is that Cali could instead tax new homes the amount required to install the equivalent panels in some field, where they're cheaper and easier to service, where they can be positioned for optimal sunlight, etc.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      > You're missing the obvious alternative, which is that Cali could instead tax new homes the amount required to install the equivalent panels in some field, where they're cheaper and easier to service, where they can be positioned for optimal sunlight, etc. No thanks. Then some other org controls the power I can get from those panels, can corrupt officials to raise my rates unnecessarily, charge me higher rates for generation facilities that may not be needed except to juice shareholder returns (Duke Energy collected over a billion dollars for a nuclear power plant they'll never build in Florida, and they are under no obligation to return those funds to ratepayers). This is not uncommon. NV Energy in Nevada, Duke and FPL in Florida, utility coalitions in Kentucky and Arizona have all fought against distributed generation, the list goes on. Rooftop/distributed solar is a hedge against utility shenanigans, and with how quickly rooftop solar pays itself back (under 10 years in over half the US states while rolling the cost into a long term fixed rate loan product, ie your mortgage), it's insane we don't mandate its installation in more places on new/retrofit construction [1]. Disclosure: I own a 10kw solar install on my roof. I’m biased and opinionated. [1] https://i.imgur.com/ug2R3Jl.jpg https://i.imgur.com/ug2R3Jl.jpg (NREL US Solar Potential Map) [+] https://i.imgur.com/c86gWxh.jpg https://i.imgur.com/c86gWxh.jpg (Rate of return on cash invested by state)
      - bahmboo 8y ago
        Only if you are off grid are you insulated from the power companies. If you are grid tie you are subject to whatever rate they will pay you for your power and charge you for power.
- jseliger 8y ago
  Yeah. This is going to raise the cost of new housing even further; one wishes that it were combined with something like SB 827: https://www.vox.com/cities-and-urbanism/2018/2/23/17011154/sb827-california-housing-crisis https://www.vox.com/cities-and-urbanism/2018/2/23/17011154/s... (which failed in committee).
  - jayd16 8y ago
    An extra $15-20k of added value is not what stands in the way of California home building.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - sbov 8y ago
      $15k here, $20k there, pretty soon you're talking about a lot of money.
      - closeparen 8y ago
        Prices rise by at least that much every few months. It’s a rounding error.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        lajhsdfkl 8y ago
        1.5% of a million dollars is a rounding error. You and many other people in this thread are extremely disconnected from reality.
        closeparen 8y ago
        The median home across all California is up 9% last year to $537k [0]. That's a change on the order of $40k. 1.5% of a million dollars is indeed a lot of money, but in this context, you pay the same penalty for letting 6 months elapse. [0] https://www.zillow.com/ca/home-values/ https://www.zillow.com/ca/home-values/
- jvanderbot 8y ago
  Sure! But trusting the power companies to continue to "do the right thing" and buy up all that cheap land for solar power doesn't seem worthwhile. This certainly could read "New homes must be powered by 20% solar", of which rooftop is a viable option, but I wonder how far that legislation would go. I'll take baby steps.
- maxerickson 8y ago
  to try to figure out how to outfit odd shaped surfaces with panels. That's a pretty silly take. Less expensive houses have large areas of simple roof (in areas with variable climate, about ½ of the areas even face south). The economics are worse than utility solar, but its not a puzzle how to attach them to a rooftop.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Odd shaped surfaces? Roofs tend to be flat rectangles or triangles. Every solar roof installation I’ve seen in the wild is just rectangular panels bolted on top, with no attempt to cover the entire thing. If the panels don’t align neatly with the roof edge, then they just leave a gap. The space is free if you’re already building a house anyway. Installation seems fairly straightforward. Is it really that much cheaper to install separate panels that it offsets the cost of buying dedicated land for it?
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    Eh, some houses have really funky roofs (my house, for example) or roofs with no south facing surface. But the other thing to consider is that, with solar becoming mandatory, roof designs will be changed to better accommodate solar panels.
  - drdeadringer 8y ago
    I agree with you. This seems like low-hanging fruit in ripe need of plucking.
  - paulddraper 8y ago
    > Roofs tend to be flat rectangles or triangles. Flat, but virtually always angled. (Sometimes good, sometimes not.)
    - mikeash 8y ago
      With a typical design, half are angled well, and nothing says you have to put any panels on the other half.
- mtgx 8y ago
  What about decentralization of power sources? Easier to survive a war or natural disasters if everyone has their own way to generate power from the sun. It would be a shame if solar power, which allows for that, wouldn't be used that way, and instead everyone just kept getting their power from a centralized source, just as before.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    You're optimizing for the wrong thing.
  - zeta0134 8y ago
    I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted here, as this is a pretty solid argument. Maybe not so much in California, but just look to the natural disaster in Puerto Rico. Folks who had branched out with solar panels were suddenly the only ones with power at all in their neighborhoods. California may have a better built infrastructure, but it's no stranger to natural disasters. There's certainly efficiency to be gained from pooling our resources into a centralized power grid, but I think redundancy and protection from grid failures are also perfectly valid goals.
- Sean-P 8y ago
  "empty fields" are nexessary ecosystems, however. Why not leave them alone? On the flip side, not everyone wants to live in high-density housing. Why not also require single-family homes to have solar?
- lr4444lr 8y ago
  That electricity still has to be transported, with the attendant power loss. I don't know the economics behind it, but cheap land being so far from the destination of the electricity's major use might be a relevant factor.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  > figure out how to outfit odd shaped surfaces with panels. Well, if it's mandatory, then we may see roofs being developed/built that are more friendly for installing panels on. Most homes with panels had them installed years after the home was built, in many cases before "installing solar panels on your roof" was a thing people could even do on their homes.
- lsc 8y ago
  >Because of this, more people will decide to live in Texas instead of California, where they'll run their air conditioners 10 months out of the year in their huge, inefficient houses which draw power from coal plants. I think the parts of Texas and California with tech jobs are... not substitutable for a large part of the tech workforce on political/social grounds. I do agree that higher density and public transit would help make California better by my standards more than requiring rooftop solar... but at least in the higher density parts of California where I am? I don't think requiring rooftop solar will make much difference. If you have a large multi story complex, adding rooftop solar won't do a lot, but it also isn't going to add significantly to the cost of the building, just 'cause there isn't much roof compared to the rest of the building. In the high density parts of California that I want to live in, single family homes are already the domain of the rich. Personally, that's okay with me; I don't need a single family home, and I think we should be focusing on building more condos in the high density parts of the state, and as I said, requiring the roofs to be covered with solar isn't going to significantly change the cost of building those higher density buildings.
  - komali2 8y ago
    Austin is comically liberal which is great because Ted Cruz has to drive past a bunch of communists from uta legally flashing their freedom boobies at him whenever he visits the capital building. It's also a pretty intense flashpoint though, when those same communists exercise their Texas mandated long gun open carry rights, while wearing hammer and sickle armbands and shit. I dunno man. You won't be hard pressed to find fellow liberals in Austin, but you're still in Texas. Ford f150s will still aggressively run your bicycle off the road, your Bernie stickers will still get you vandalized if there happens to be some sort of Republican event at the capital. It's constant idealogical warfare between the young people and the rest of the state, and not even all the young people because uta is the biggest university so all sorts end up there, including people that probably would have found more like minded colleagues at a&m. It can be exhausting, speaking from experience.
    - lsc 8y ago
      See, that's what I like about Silicon Valley. There are a lot of crazy conservative folk here, a bunch of the people I hung around as a younger person were right-libertarian almost to the point of being anarcho-capitalist, and I still know a fair number of those types, though they aren't as common once you start working for big companies rather than startups... but they got along just fine with the socialists in the same office. And they both were okay with the immigrants who, I imagine, came away with the idea that Americans, while a little nutso if you talk about politics, are generally decent people. But that's the thing, and what made silicon valley so much more attractive than my (rural california) hometown... nobody tries to run anyone off the road. Sure, sure, we disagree and puff and stuff, but people leave their guns at home, and the taboo against vehicular manslaughter is maintained, even if the victim is on a bicycle. We socialize in groups that cross ethnic and political boundaries. But then, I'm one of those people for whom Texas is not a substitutable place for Silicon Valley. (New York might be. Texas is not.) I'm completely aware that there are people who prefer Texas in the same way I prefer Silicon Valley. (I'm also aware that I haven't spent a lot of time in Texas, and I'm mostly comparing rural California to Silicon Valley... but rural California has a lot of the problems Texas is perceived to have, re: big trucks aggressively running bicycles off the road and other acts of everyday terror )
- sjg007 8y ago
  Better to put it on houses where the demand is than to pollute the land with solar panels all over it.
- zdw 8y ago
  Rooftop solar is a double benefit in very hot locations - you get the electricity, and also shade on the conventional roof, which can greatly reduce the amount of electricity used to cool the house. Here in AZ with rooftop solar, the shade difference is quite noticeable.
- kaplun 8y ago
  What about turning, unused fields back into forests? We not only need electricity but also to cut on CO2 and have more oxygen.
- jlarocco 8y ago
  I disagree. Mandatory solar on houses is the low hanging fruit, and it's easier to address than higher density living or public transport. And it makes sense to put the otherwise unused roof space to work. Besides that, big open plots of solar panels are an eye sore, and don't make sense when land is so expensive.
- nhebb 8y ago
  > If the state would focus on higher density living Contrary to popular belief, the Los Angeles metro area has a very high population density. It's 2nd in the US, and the SF Bay Area is 7th. Both are on par with European metros.
  - jdavis703 8y ago
    Your numbers are technically correct, but a measurement along the lines of "perceived density" is probably more accurate. I would define perceived density as the density of people living in urbanized census blocks (i.e. 1000 people per square mile [0]). For example most people in the Bay Area don't live in (or even afford to) Marin County. Yet all those multi-acre properties are counted in our land measurements. The Bay Area is basically a series of valleys where everybody lives and works, mountain ranges that are barely developed, and a large body of water right in the middle. 0: https://www.census.gov/population/censusdata/urdef.txt https://www.census.gov/population/censusdata/urdef.txt
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Land is less in short supply than T&D infrastructure and built environment. Total built area is, very roughly, equivalent to solar PV insolation requirements, and at least a portion of that space (or area) is low-hanging fruit. Undeveloped land has other potential uses, including rec, ag, and ecological ones.
- jonknee 8y ago
  > I'm certainly a big fan of solar power, but rooftop solar is a little silly. Rooftop solar would make sense if we had some shortage of land and couldn't just fill up empty fields with panels, but that's not the case. It's much cheaper for utility companies to buy up big plots of land than it is to try to figure out how to outfit odd shaped surfaces with panels. I think a ton more people generating their own power and being shown the data of how much power they're generating and using in real time is a great thing. People I know with solar panels are excited to try and run net zero and know stuff like their energy peak usage during heat waves. I don't know anyone without solar panels that monitors their energy use like that.
- dmourati 8y ago
  Holy mixed metaphors.
dang 8y ago
Url changed from https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/06/california-to-require-solar-panels-on-most-new-homes/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/06/california-to-require-so..., which points to this. Submitters: since the HN guidelines call for original sources, we'd appreciate it if you'd scan an article for a link to one before posting. It's one step of manual web crawling in exchange for better content on the site—plus it's fairer to give credit to the original instead of a cribbed knockoff. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- crunchlibrarian 8y ago
  I don't understand your complaint, especially since the OC register article you seem to like for whatever reason is not the first to publish and is itself just a cribbed knockoff. Are we expected to research every URL and find the first to report on it no matter what? Even if it's obscure, out of date, or wrong?
  - dang 8y ago
    Scanning an article for a link to a more original source is one manual step. That's not hard, since one presumably reads an article before submitting it and the link to the other source is usually prominent, like it was above. Another recent case is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17007441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17007441. If the earlier article is out of date or wrong, then presumably the new link includes significant new information, in which case it's not a knockoff. The OCR article looked to me like original reporting, but if you know of another piece that it's copying, we can change the URL again. By "cribbed knockoff" I mean the thing that media properties do where they lift material from somewhere, make a fig leaf's worth of modification, and publish it themselves. Some people call this blogspam, but that's a contested word. There are plenty of these sites. If knockoffs are all they do, we ban them, but some also publish original articles, and we don't want to exclude those.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    You do know who dang is, right?
deleted 8y ago
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ardit33 8y ago
It is a great idea, as there are two other benefits: 1. Transportation of over large distances has efficiency loss on electricity and requires more cumbersome infrastructure. 2. Less heat on the neighborhood as some of that energy is absorbed into electricity instead of being bounced off to the surrounding. Having normal tiles that just absorb heat will increase the temperature of both the building and the surrounding environment. (requiring even more energy to cool off). During the summer, NYC, especially manhattan, is famous to have 2F higher temperatures that it normally should have just because of the heat radiation from the building, pavement, and air conditioners. Requiring a rooftop garden on large buildings is another interesting idea.
- weberc2 8y ago
  > Transportation of over large distances has efficiency loss on electricity and requires more cumbersome infrastructure. On a rooftop, you have the more significant inefficiencies of trees and suboptimal angles. In a field, you can optimize for efficient collection, and you can even install pivoting panels (much more cheaply than on a house, anyway) which can optimize collection throughout the day. Even if the transmission loss is larger than the gain from optimal positioning (and I doubt it is), it's all marginal compared to the maintenance difference (having a technician walk out to a panel in a field vs setting up appointments with home residents, driving out to their homes, climbing on their roofs, additional risk of injury for the technician from falls, risk of damaging homes, etc).
  - bob_theslob646 8y ago
    No affiliation with this project, but you do know that it is possible to tilt the panels. (http://www.heliowatcher.com http://www.heliowatcher.com) >We designed and built a system to automatically orient a solar panel for maximum efficiency, record data, and safely charge batteries. Using a GPS module and magnetometer, the HelioWatcher allows the user to place the system anywhere in the world without any calibration. The HelioWatcher then calculates what the sun’s current location is and orients the panel to the appropriate angle
    - 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
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bellt0wn98121 8y ago
Anyone here using solar on their home? What did the initial investment cost?
- rhacker 8y ago
  Non-grid-tie set up here. 4 100 Watt Panels on mine, powers everything except for the propane. Generator for cloudy days. Total Cost: $2000 (wiring, kinda expensive MPPT charge, kinda expensive swing-capable brackets, kinda expensive inverter) already had the propane generator. After learning how to do this on an RV I've decided to never buy a stick home again since most states will require a grid-tie (which is the dumbest thing you can do)... So living in a trailer is the best way to live now.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    No batteries?
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    Curious: what’s wrong with being connected to the grid (assuming that’s what you meant by “grid-tie”)?
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    So no air conditioning?
  - electrofdhj 8y ago
    So you live in an RV now? Is avoiding a grid tie really enough of a reason to never live in a settled home? What's the 'dumb' thing about a grid tie?
- cpach 8y ago
  In Sweden I think it’s around $13000 dollars.
- jdubs 8y ago
  My system cost about $15,000 via solar city for a 6kwh system. Austin utility paid me about 3000 and I got a 4000 tax credit. Last month my bill was -20 dollars. Looking back on solar, probably not the best financial decision but I think it's pretty cool and I will be able to run the AC this summer at 70 for a reasonable bill.
gumby 8y ago
I think this is quite interesting, but despite being a strong fan of solar power, I don't think this is a great idea. There are plenty of homes in areas of low insolation (under trees, facing the wrong way) and this becomes simply a pointless tax for them. A specific solar incentive (payable only on new construction if you'd like) based on yield would make more sense.
YaxelPerez 8y ago
Isn't this going to just exacerbate California's housing crisis by making homes more expensive by default?
- elchief 8y ago
  [deleted]
  - closeparen 8y ago
    Transportation across single-family-home sprawl, which we explicitly cultivate with regulation, is a far greater contributor to climate change than utility power.
  - dogruck 8y ago
    Step 1: Worry about a serious problem. Step 2: Virtual signal with a supposed solution. Step 3: Mock anybody who criticizes that solution (but who also worries about the serious problem).
    - billylindeman 8y ago
      california at its finest
- freeone3000 8y ago
  Look at the price of residential-zoned lots versus the price of a finished home. The cost of a house isn't in the building.
  - Cacti 8y ago
    In the Bay, sure, but this is a statewide regulation. What about a $200,000 home out east that is now 15% more expensive?
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    This will add $20k to $30k. Even in the Bay area, that's substantial. Especially when you are already on the edge of affordability.
spitfire 8y ago
This is a deeply flawed idea. As bad as LEED. Specifying HOW to go about being energy efficient is the entirely wrong approach. Instead specify a minimum energy efficiency per square meter and let home builders sort it out. By specifying minimum efficiencies builders are free to adopt new technologies, new methods as they come along or use alternate means which are more suitable for a specific project. For example I live near a river and intend to use micro-hydro for my electricity. Do I still need to have solar panels? Or will the legislators need to add in a thousand exceptions to the rules?
- jerkstate 8y ago
  I agree, this is ridiculous California virtue-signaling at its finest and will result in a heck of a lot of unintended consequences (just like prop 13 has) - meanwhile many of the houses in my city were built in the 30s and 40s and have plaster walls, no insulation, no heat return, single pane glass etc which results in easily 10x more energy use for heating than modern construction would, but can't be rebuilt with modern materials because of the expense and difficulty of building new homes thanks to wrongheaded legislation like this.
  - pkaye 8y ago
    Not really. You can blow in insulation into walls and attic. Air seal the house. Replace the windows with better ones. These regulations do not drive up the cost to upgrade existing houses.
    - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
      When the regulation requires that modifications bring things up to the new code and you've got decades of regulations like that piled up the most reasonable options are touch nothing or rebuild the entire house
      - pkaye 8y ago
        In most places you are not forced to upgrade everything to code just because you added insulation or new windows.
deleted 8y ago
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f4rker 8y ago
- Cali sets up rules / situation which makes cost of living very high - Cali residents flee state to other more sane states that don't have these rules / situations - Cali residents then vote for the same types of rules / situations in their new home state
BurningFrog 8y ago
So in the middle of an epic housing crisis, California adds "about $25,000 to $30,000 to the construction costs" of a new home. When in a hole, keep digging!
- paulcole 8y ago
  Even more than that once solar panel companies all realize they should increase prices since homeowners are obligated to buy from one of them.
  - alanh 8y ago
    I’m not sure why you are being downvoted. your prediction is hardly guaranteed but not entirely absurd either. it’s nice to have a guaranteed market
    - rmk 8y ago
      See Pharma companies for an example of what happens when you have a guaranteed market that capitalises on research funded by the public. Solar is very similar.
- tormeh 8y ago
  I thought the expensive thing in California was land, not the houses that sit on them?
  - BurningFrog 8y ago
    There is plenty of land. The main bottleneck is regulatory approval. But high construction cost are also a dampening factor.
beagle3 8y ago
Israel mandated roof top solar water heaters for a while (since 1980 according to [0], but essentially every building built since 1960 or so has one). It's relatively cheap, pays for itself in 3-5 years, and is carbon neutral. This stores energy as hot water, not using PV panels (such as those discussed in the article). A relatively small panel per apartment is sufficient. I do not claim that the California directive is sensible, but it is worth comparing to a somewhat similar directive that has been in place for 40 years with great effect - reducing grid energy production by 8%, saving everyone money (if the article is to be trusted), and only being a minor eye sore .... [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS311612153620110318 https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS311612153620110318
- galfarragem 8y ago
  In Portugal solar water heaters are mandatory for new houses also.
- ebikelaw 8y ago
  Residential solar thermal no longer makes any kind of economic sense. These existing mandates only show how government regulations can serve to ossify bad practices and harm innovation.
  - llukas 8y ago
    > Residential solar thermal no longer makes any kind of economic sense. [citation needed]
    - jws 8y ago
      Not a citation, but when I last looked at it for a cabin, the plumbing costs, pumps, and extra stuff required in addition to the normal heater drove the cost so high that it was just cheaper to add more PV panels, which have been coming down because they are made in great volume. Someplace without freezing weather, or someone who might just say “too cloudy too long, no warm shower today” might have a different calculus.
  - 8y ago
anonoholic 8y ago
Tangentially - how about mandatory rainwater storage? A sink for rain to reduce flooding, and a source for grey-water (non-potable water, although residential purification is entirely possible) to alleviate pressure on reserves in times of drought.
- jedberg 8y ago
  Amusingly rain water collection is illegal in most of the state. You’re stealing from farmers apparently.
- jjeaff 8y ago
  It's actually the opposite. In some parts of California, it's illegal to capture rainwater. Because it affects groundwater runoff and the surrounding ecosystem.
  - anonoholic 8y ago
    A typical failure to understand the law of unintended consequences. The total volume of water consumed remains the same, but the water lost to evaporation & distribution leakage (collectively akin to the transmission losses for electricity mentioned elsewhere in this thread) means that not collecting rainwater is less efficient. Then there's the flood damage caused when the increasing expanses of paved ground fail to absorb heavy rain that rainwater collection can help alleviate.
kchoudhu 8y ago
Way to make it even harder to construct new housing in California.
banned1 8y ago
If you are fabulously wealthy that you can [have a latte each morning], let alone [buy it at Starbucks], you can afford [an additional tax on your latte for the peasant that got the coffee beans.]
- closeparen 8y ago
  A house in California costs ~4 orders of magnitude more than a Starbucks coffee every morning. Wildly different values of “fabulously wealthy” here.
  - banned1 8y ago
    A latte is $3.65. If you made your own cup at home, you would spend $0.05. Starbucks is 73x. I believe you need to stop buying lattes from Starbucks and start making your own coffee at home like I do. Stop being such an elitist. Get to work.
    - closeparen 8y ago
      I get good free coffee (and avocado toast!) at work, but thanks for the personal attack.
      - banned1 8y ago
        I'm sorry! Was that an attack? I figured if you are into telling others how they should spend their money or live their lives or be taxed by government in freedom-restricting ways, then that maybe you would be intellectually honest and not be bothered if I TOLD YOU what to do with some element of your life. How is that an ATTACK?
        dang 8y ago
        We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
cs702 8y ago
If this passes, Tesla is going to make a killing on solar roofs: https://www.tesla.com/solarroof https://www.tesla.com/solarroof
- altano 8y ago
  Not really as their roofs are extremely expensive when compared to traditional roofing material and solar panels.
  - guest 8y ago
    ANy actual numbers on that? New terracotta versus terracotta solar panels as one example (measuring in longevity and estimated cost/income on the balancing sheet etc..?
whataretensors 8y ago
Typical politics. Increase the costs of building homes in a housing poor area while claiming to help the environment. The increased new development costs is likely the entire motivation(i.e. market manipulation).
dghughes 8y ago
I wonder if a device could be built to generate power from earthquakes. Apparently southern California has 27 earthquakes every day. If a device could be built to harness that it could be useful. I know they're not all in the same place each day but 27 per day in such a small area may be enough.
- nerfhammer 8y ago
  issue is storage: you would get one stupendous burst of energy and then you would need to store it and trickle it out more slowly.
rdl 8y ago
California is too big to do state-level regulation. For Bay Area homes this is pretty insignificant and possibly positive (sometimes regulation might be more efficient), but adding $20-30k to houses in less-expensive parts of the state is crazy. This should have been done at the local or regional level, if at all. California should remain one state, probably, but add regional regulatory entities between counties and the state.
- jdavis703 8y ago
  > California should remain one state, probably, but add regional regulatory entities between counties and the state. We could accomplish this by giving regional government authorities like the Association of Bay Area Governments more authority. Essentially the metropolitan areas become like city states. The state could set certain goals (reduce carbon by this much, increase housing by that much), but it would be up to regional government to specify implementation details.
  - rdl 8y ago
    The question I'd have would be should there be: 1) direct democratic participation in those authorities (elected by the residents of the area), or 2) should they be selected by the subsidiary jurisdictions (counties/cities), 3) or by the state (legislature or governor). The state government seems dysfunctional in a lot of ways, so while maybe goals could come down from the state, the actual authorities should be 1) or 2). Maybe some combination.
nickik 8y ago
California the liberal pro envoirmentalists. The effects of their policy. High carbon output. High cost of living. High cost of energy. And as little bonus, water shortages. Bad in every possible way for poor people living in California. Its truly sad state, specifically because all of these problems have extremly simple solutions. - Don't only force renewables, but rather allow all forms of new energy that are better then the current (don't close nuclear plants for example). This is also better for prices. - Allow more house building. No brainer. - Make a proper water market with block pricing so poor people have basically free water and water is directed where it is sensable. Farmers SHOULD consider water cost when making a choice of crops. People should pay to have a green garden and/or clean their car every day.
anonuser123456 8y ago
Maybe we should do what 99% of economists suggest and just tax carbon instead?
wdn 8y ago
With the mandate, it will take even longer for the homeowner to breakeven on the solar panel. Another reason why it paid to invest in politicians.
tzs 8y ago
Many people have expressed concern that this will make houses less affordable. That's not clear to me, at least in the case of people who borrow most of the money for their house (which is the vast majority). The solar part of this adds about $15k to the cost of the house. That's about $75/month on a 30 year fixed mortgage at current rates. Much of that, if not all or more, comes back in savings on the electric bill. Doesn't that mean that for most single family home buyers the difference will mostly just be a slightly higher down payment?
- pishpash 8y ago
  You're being optimistic. There is depreciation and maintenance cost. It also assumes a lot about the cost of electricity in the future, given how if this has any real effect it is meant to move exactly that market.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  Yes...$15k on a house is a non-trivial amount.
Karishma1234 8y ago
Just how much more bullshit do we have to take from California's politicians ?
Karishma1234 8y ago
Housing is already very expensive and you are going to make it even more expensive by ridiculous regulations like these ? What if I want a roof that is not ugly ?
- Reedx 8y ago
  Telsa's solar roof looks nice, though it's even more expensive...
acef 8y ago
Doesn’t mean much as long as they don’t build enough new housing. Most important cities in CA are failing to add affordable housing.
jjeaff 8y ago
Only new homes. In other words, NIMBY.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  Which will be the first neighborhood to forbid solar panels, thereby forbidding new home construction completely?
jjeaff 8y ago
This will go down as one of the most successful special interest industry lobbying win of all time. And one of the industry lobby representatives quoted in this article has the gall to say this isn't enough. But just a "compromise".
- cobbzilla 8y ago
  Funny, but it's not gall -- that lobbyist is paid well to be constantly pushing the Overton Window of acceptable policy towards ever more crony capitalism. Why stop now? Why stop ever?
fiatjaf 8y ago
With big governments come big mistakes.
hindsightbias 8y ago
Subsidize corporate profits, socialize losses, deinsentivize distributed local power, destroy the environment. For an alternative view:http://www.mojavedesertblog.com/2009/11/solar-energy-development-in-mojave.html?m=1 http://www.mojavedesertblog.com/2009/11/solar-energy-develop...
- guest 8y ago
  You should look up how it went once the EU project got known to larger hidden players of the world. The only thing missing from that project was HVDC "breakers" (idk the enlgish word), which got engineered in time, though the project fell apart. Solarcells currently are around 20 in efficiency (give or take) there is technology for 40-50% efficiency ready to go and be mass produced (being held back, you can argue oil and aristocracy or that consistant fast technological evolution kills those investing early in it as causes) and the theoretical roof around 70% was broken (99.9 something is possible). Either way the only other way of producing or harnessing energy is torium - due to partial beneficiary effect on halftimes on currently radioactive materials produced. Afaik China is the only ones who have a torium plant up and running (for the western world to survive the energy boom advance solarpower quickly through regulation nationally and make the huge investments on other continents/nations to upkeep status quo).
wollstonecraft 8y ago
Do you want housing shortage? Because that's how you get housing shortage
cpeterso 8y ago
Google has a tool called "Sunroof" that uses Google Maps satellite data to identify the best location to install solar panels on your roof: https://www.google.com/get/sunroof#p=0 https://www.google.com/get/sunroof#p=0
bradlys 8y ago
This is one of those things that sounds nice at first - especially as a soundbite. But, it's clearly a NIMBY move to protect existing home owners financial asset. It's a clever trick to protect existing home owners even more by making new development even more difficult and expensive while making it look like it's an environmental move. Tack on $30k in expense to any new home development and (probably) some lovely legislation about how it has to be installed. On top of this, now they're "encouraging" all-electric homes. What does that mean?! No gas range?! Please, god, no. Why not enforce this legislation on existing home owners, raising the property tax to fund solar farms, enforce better building standards on existing homes, or /something/ that would actually have a substantial effect on the environment? Cause, that ain't helping existing home owners or helping push their home prices even higher. As a renter who wishes to have a home /somewhere/ in the bay area, this is killing me inside. The existing home owner lobby is so ridiculously strong here. California has the Superman of home owner lobbies. Each day, it's nailed into me that Prop 13 will never go away and home prices are just gonna keep climbing so that non-1% income outsiders cannot get them. Meanwhile, estates will be passed down generation by generation tax free and with no reassessment.
- jogjayr 8y ago
  > But, it's clearly a NIMBY move to protect existing home owners financial asset. It doesn't apply to new construction over 3 stories. Especially for the Bay Area, building up seems like the only way out of the current morass, so is it really that clear-cut? Also most of the house price in high-demand areas is the land cost. $30k sounds like a lot but is less than 5% of the median house price. People pay that much over asking quite regularly.
  - pzone 8y ago
    Dismissing large sums of money like that in terms of percentages can really get you into trouble. Sure, it's "only" 5% more for a $1.5M property. Another way to think of it is as a 30 thousand dollar roadblock facing anyone who wants to move to California.
    - 8y ago
jeremyt 8y ago
There’s a genius way to lower housing prices. Why didn’t anyone think of this before?
ryao 8y ago
It would have been better to adopt the passivhaus standard as part of the building code.
xupybd 8y ago
Is roof top solar going to help anything? It's my understanding that roof top solar does little to reduce peak loads when the sun is not out. But decreases demand during the day. Meaning you need coal plants standing at the ready to catch the peak.
- esmi 8y ago
  The article addresses this question. "While net-zero remains an admirable goal, getting there is not yet cost-effective, state officials and experts said. And it fails to address the state’s ultimate goal of curbing global warming. Because electric utilities now rely on renewable energy for much of their power, daytime energy already is quite clean, said McAllister, the lead state commissioner on energy efficiency. At night when there’s no solar power, people come home, turn on the lights, the TV and possibly the air conditioning and start pulling power from the grid, he said. Some gas-powered generating plants then are fired up to help meet that additional load, boosting carbon emissions. “That additional (home-generated) solar kilowatt-hour isn’t worth very much because it’s displacing what is already clean energy,” McAllister said. “That net-zero home is not a net-carbon-zero home.”"
grizzles 8y ago
This is how you build wealth as a society. Californians should be proud. The housing crisis is a separate issue. This policy decreases the TCO (cost) of housing by planting a money tree on the roof. Rooftop solar is great for consumers because it avoids the ~30% efficiency loss to heat that you otherwise pay using transmission lines. Mandating BIPV at the design/build stage improves aesthetics & resale value.
jedberg 8y ago
This is interesting to me, because I've been advocating for a similar law for a while now, with a few crucial differences: I propose we make a law that says any home that sells for greater than the Freddie Mac super conforming loan limit (currently $679,650) must be retrofitted to have a net energy draw of zero or less from the grid (with rules about exceptions for shade and roof angles and whatnot). This would solve a lot of problems with this bill: It would exempt all the folks who are selling cheap homes throughout the state, it would apply to both old and new homes, and it allows for new technologies that don't exist yet or are cost prohibitive, instead of require solar panels. It wouldn't really affect prices much, because there is already a flattening at the Freddie Mac limits, and when you get to the super conforming level, a solar install only represents 5% or less today (but I imagine the prices would fall with economies of scale).
megaman22 8y ago
Dumb. So fucking dumb. My blood is boiling a little bit contemplating how dumb this could be. So glad I don't live in California, the land of regulation.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't do this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Proven 8y ago
Great, that will speed up the ongoing flight of net contributors. Can’t wait for this bastion of green fascism to collapse onto itself.
exabrial 8y ago
Did we examine the full ewaste impact when the cells need to bring disposed of? Are we sure that the net CO2 in the manufacturing process is carbon negative? Does the manufacturing, shipping, installation, and disposal process release heavy metals or organic solvents into the environment? I want clean and efficient energy, but I want it to be good for the environment, not worse, and it appears none of this was studied nor confirmed. And also once again, California is ensuring that low income families cannot afford to buy a home as an investment to exit the poverty cycle. From requiring new homes to have an EV jack in the garage, to solar cells on the roofs, the continually make sure that equality is out of the poor's reach by force of the law.
GhostVII 8y ago
That seems like a pretty significant government overreach. Forcing solar panels on every house just doesn't make sense, and I think people should have the freedom to chose whether or not they want them. Its fine to add incentives, but forcing them seems extremely especially when there are houses in very shady areas that will not benefit much from solar panels.
citrus1330 8y ago
Why does the state with the best weather and scenery have such a retarded government
greatamerican 8y ago
oh good! another way to make housing in California more expensive to build!
ryankupyn 8y ago
I'm really interested in seeing how this will play out if solar continues to get cheaper. I'd imagine that at a certain point, the panels themselves will be cheap(er) compared to the installation cost (so that the cost structure changes to favor the most efficient installation/maintenance regime), and that residential-scale solar will be uneconomical compared to large-scale installations in the desert, where you can get a couple of hundred megawatts all in one place getting the advantages of optimal weather, easily-installable sun-tracking, and more regular maintenance than what you'd get on a 1,500 sqf roof in SF. It's entirely possible that, 10-15 years from now, this ends up being a "tax" paid by all homeowners to the residential-solar-installation industry so that they can put solar panels on roofs that will never earn their money back, just so that the homeowner can displace what might be equally clean energy generated elsewhere.
thetruthseeker1 8y ago
My view is also that it would be better policy if the california government taxed all homes and generated a certain amount of revenue which they could use to generate certain percentage GW of solar power( A goal they should set for themselves). That way it is fair to all, the problem is also solved at scale which is important as opposed to mandating new home owners only which I am not sure is that efficient
rogerlb 8y ago
Wow
aagha 8y ago
What's being missed in this conversation is that California is at "peak solar", meaning that having more solar is NOT good for the state. We can't yet effectively store solar, so in the summer when everyone comes home, they turn on their AC's (in SoCal) and in order to be able to provide enough energy as the sun starts to set, Cal ISO (http://www.caiso.com http://www.caiso.com) needs to tell gas fired plants to turn on (quickly) to have enough capacity in the grid. This causes--you guessed it--pollution. Source: Worked 7 years for an ISO.
resalisbury 8y ago
What's another $30k in home costs. That's less thank 1% of my $3.2 million home in Palo Alto ;) Whatever you do just make sure the neighborhood is zoned single family. Multi family just doesn't have enough roof space.

314 points by baron816 8y ago

I'm certainly a big fan of solar power, but rooftop solar is a little silly. Rooftop solar would make sense if we had some shortage of land and couldn't just fill up empty fields with panels, but that's not the case. It's much cheaper for utility companies to buy up big plots of land than it is to try to figure out how to outfit odd shaped surfaces with panels. California is really missing the forrest for the trees here. There's so much low hanging fruit (things that could kill two birds with one stone) that they're ignoring. If the state would focus on higher density living and public transportation over imposing regulations that will drive more people away and lower the standard of living for those who remain, then we would see a much bigger global impact on reducing climate change. Because of this, more people will decide to live in Texas instead of California, where they'll run their air conditioners 10 months out of the year in their huge, inefficient houses which draw power from coal plants.

arkades 8y ago
> There's so much low hanging fruit (things that could kill two birds with one stone Stonefruit, you might say.
programbreeding 8y ago
>If the state would focus on higher density living... >...where they'll run their air conditioners 10 months out of the year in their huge, inefficient houses The type of people that live in huge inefficient homes are generally also the same type of people that don't want to live in high density areas. California could turn open fields in to solar farms like you mentioned, but that requires that someone foot the bill and also build the infrastructure for it. "Forcing" people to put solar panels on their own home solves both of those problems. It also makes you more immune to losing power in a natural disaster, of which California has plenty. I'm not saying I'm even for this issue, I don't live in California. But your view is extremely negative and ignores the negatives of your way while also ignoring the positives of the way mentioned in the article.
- weberc2 8y ago
  > California could turn open fields in to solar farms like you mentioned, but that requires that someone foot the bill and also build the infrastructure for it. "Forcing" people to put solar panels on their own home solves both of those problems. You're missing the obvious alternative, which is that Cali could instead tax new homes the amount required to install the equivalent panels in some field, where they're cheaper and easier to service, where they can be positioned for optimal sunlight, etc.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    > You're missing the obvious alternative, which is that Cali could instead tax new homes the amount required to install the equivalent panels in some field, where they're cheaper and easier to service, where they can be positioned for optimal sunlight, etc. No thanks. Then some other org controls the power I can get from those panels, can corrupt officials to raise my rates unnecessarily, charge me higher rates for generation facilities that may not be needed except to juice shareholder returns (Duke Energy collected over a billion dollars for a nuclear power plant they'll never build in Florida, and they are under no obligation to return those funds to ratepayers). This is not uncommon. NV Energy in Nevada, Duke and FPL in Florida, utility coalitions in Kentucky and Arizona have all fought against distributed generation, the list goes on. Rooftop/distributed solar is a hedge against utility shenanigans, and with how quickly rooftop solar pays itself back (under 10 years in over half the US states while rolling the cost into a long term fixed rate loan product, ie your mortgage), it's insane we don't mandate its installation in more places on new/retrofit construction [1]. Disclosure: I own a 10kw solar install on my roof. I’m biased and opinionated. [1] https://i.imgur.com/ug2R3Jl.jpg https://i.imgur.com/ug2R3Jl.jpg (NREL US Solar Potential Map) [+] https://i.imgur.com/c86gWxh.jpg https://i.imgur.com/c86gWxh.jpg (Rate of return on cash invested by state)
    - bahmboo 8y ago
      Only if you are off grid are you insulated from the power companies. If you are grid tie you are subject to whatever rate they will pay you for your power and charge you for power.
jseliger 8y ago
Yeah. This is going to raise the cost of new housing even further; one wishes that it were combined with something like SB 827: https://www.vox.com/cities-and-urbanism/2018/2/23/17011154/sb827-california-housing-crisis https://www.vox.com/cities-and-urbanism/2018/2/23/17011154/s... (which failed in committee).
- jayd16 8y ago
  An extra $15-20k of added value is not what stands in the way of California home building.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - sbov 8y ago
    $15k here, $20k there, pretty soon you're talking about a lot of money.
    - closeparen 8y ago
      Prices rise by at least that much every few months. It’s a rounding error.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - lajhsdfkl 8y ago
        1.5% of a million dollars is a rounding error. You and many other people in this thread are extremely disconnected from reality.
        closeparen 8y ago
        The median home across all California is up 9% last year to $537k [0]. That's a change on the order of $40k. 1.5% of a million dollars is indeed a lot of money, but in this context, you pay the same penalty for letting 6 months elapse. [0] https://www.zillow.com/ca/home-values/ https://www.zillow.com/ca/home-values/
jvanderbot 8y ago
Sure! But trusting the power companies to continue to "do the right thing" and buy up all that cheap land for solar power doesn't seem worthwhile. This certainly could read "New homes must be powered by 20% solar", of which rooftop is a viable option, but I wonder how far that legislation would go. I'll take baby steps.
maxerickson 8y ago
to try to figure out how to outfit odd shaped surfaces with panels. That's a pretty silly take. Less expensive houses have large areas of simple roof (in areas with variable climate, about ½ of the areas even face south). The economics are worse than utility solar, but its not a puzzle how to attach them to a rooftop.
mikeash 8y ago
Odd shaped surfaces? Roofs tend to be flat rectangles or triangles. Every solar roof installation I’ve seen in the wild is just rectangular panels bolted on top, with no attempt to cover the entire thing. If the panels don’t align neatly with the roof edge, then they just leave a gap. The space is free if you’re already building a house anyway. Installation seems fairly straightforward. Is it really that much cheaper to install separate panels that it offsets the cost of buying dedicated land for it?
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  Eh, some houses have really funky roofs (my house, for example) or roofs with no south facing surface. But the other thing to consider is that, with solar becoming mandatory, roof designs will be changed to better accommodate solar panels.
- drdeadringer 8y ago
  I agree with you. This seems like low-hanging fruit in ripe need of plucking.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  > Roofs tend to be flat rectangles or triangles. Flat, but virtually always angled. (Sometimes good, sometimes not.)
  - mikeash 8y ago
    With a typical design, half are angled well, and nothing says you have to put any panels on the other half.
mtgx 8y ago
What about decentralization of power sources? Easier to survive a war or natural disasters if everyone has their own way to generate power from the sun. It would be a shame if solar power, which allows for that, wouldn't be used that way, and instead everyone just kept getting their power from a centralized source, just as before.
- weberc2 8y ago
  You're optimizing for the wrong thing.
- zeta0134 8y ago
  I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted here, as this is a pretty solid argument. Maybe not so much in California, but just look to the natural disaster in Puerto Rico. Folks who had branched out with solar panels were suddenly the only ones with power at all in their neighborhoods. California may have a better built infrastructure, but it's no stranger to natural disasters. There's certainly efficiency to be gained from pooling our resources into a centralized power grid, but I think redundancy and protection from grid failures are also perfectly valid goals.
Sean-P 8y ago
"empty fields" are nexessary ecosystems, however. Why not leave them alone? On the flip side, not everyone wants to live in high-density housing. Why not also require single-family homes to have solar?
lr4444lr 8y ago
That electricity still has to be transported, with the attendant power loss. I don't know the economics behind it, but cheap land being so far from the destination of the electricity's major use might be a relevant factor.
craftyguy 8y ago
> figure out how to outfit odd shaped surfaces with panels. Well, if it's mandatory, then we may see roofs being developed/built that are more friendly for installing panels on. Most homes with panels had them installed years after the home was built, in many cases before "installing solar panels on your roof" was a thing people could even do on their homes.
lsc 8y ago
>Because of this, more people will decide to live in Texas instead of California, where they'll run their air conditioners 10 months out of the year in their huge, inefficient houses which draw power from coal plants. I think the parts of Texas and California with tech jobs are... not substitutable for a large part of the tech workforce on political/social grounds. I do agree that higher density and public transit would help make California better by my standards more than requiring rooftop solar... but at least in the higher density parts of California where I am? I don't think requiring rooftop solar will make much difference. If you have a large multi story complex, adding rooftop solar won't do a lot, but it also isn't going to add significantly to the cost of the building, just 'cause there isn't much roof compared to the rest of the building. In the high density parts of California that I want to live in, single family homes are already the domain of the rich. Personally, that's okay with me; I don't need a single family home, and I think we should be focusing on building more condos in the high density parts of the state, and as I said, requiring the roofs to be covered with solar isn't going to significantly change the cost of building those higher density buildings.
- komali2 8y ago
  Austin is comically liberal which is great because Ted Cruz has to drive past a bunch of communists from uta legally flashing their freedom boobies at him whenever he visits the capital building. It's also a pretty intense flashpoint though, when those same communists exercise their Texas mandated long gun open carry rights, while wearing hammer and sickle armbands and shit. I dunno man. You won't be hard pressed to find fellow liberals in Austin, but you're still in Texas. Ford f150s will still aggressively run your bicycle off the road, your Bernie stickers will still get you vandalized if there happens to be some sort of Republican event at the capital. It's constant idealogical warfare between the young people and the rest of the state, and not even all the young people because uta is the biggest university so all sorts end up there, including people that probably would have found more like minded colleagues at a&m. It can be exhausting, speaking from experience.
  - lsc 8y ago
    See, that's what I like about Silicon Valley. There are a lot of crazy conservative folk here, a bunch of the people I hung around as a younger person were right-libertarian almost to the point of being anarcho-capitalist, and I still know a fair number of those types, though they aren't as common once you start working for big companies rather than startups... but they got along just fine with the socialists in the same office. And they both were okay with the immigrants who, I imagine, came away with the idea that Americans, while a little nutso if you talk about politics, are generally decent people. But that's the thing, and what made silicon valley so much more attractive than my (rural california) hometown... nobody tries to run anyone off the road. Sure, sure, we disagree and puff and stuff, but people leave their guns at home, and the taboo against vehicular manslaughter is maintained, even if the victim is on a bicycle. We socialize in groups that cross ethnic and political boundaries. But then, I'm one of those people for whom Texas is not a substitutable place for Silicon Valley. (New York might be. Texas is not.) I'm completely aware that there are people who prefer Texas in the same way I prefer Silicon Valley. (I'm also aware that I haven't spent a lot of time in Texas, and I'm mostly comparing rural California to Silicon Valley... but rural California has a lot of the problems Texas is perceived to have, re: big trucks aggressively running bicycles off the road and other acts of everyday terror )
sjg007 8y ago
Better to put it on houses where the demand is than to pollute the land with solar panels all over it.
zdw 8y ago
Rooftop solar is a double benefit in very hot locations - you get the electricity, and also shade on the conventional roof, which can greatly reduce the amount of electricity used to cool the house. Here in AZ with rooftop solar, the shade difference is quite noticeable.
kaplun 8y ago
What about turning, unused fields back into forests? We not only need electricity but also to cut on CO2 and have more oxygen.
jlarocco 8y ago
I disagree. Mandatory solar on houses is the low hanging fruit, and it's easier to address than higher density living or public transport. And it makes sense to put the otherwise unused roof space to work. Besides that, big open plots of solar panels are an eye sore, and don't make sense when land is so expensive.
nhebb 8y ago
> If the state would focus on higher density living Contrary to popular belief, the Los Angeles metro area has a very high population density. It's 2nd in the US, and the SF Bay Area is 7th. Both are on par with European metros.
- jdavis703 8y ago
  Your numbers are technically correct, but a measurement along the lines of "perceived density" is probably more accurate. I would define perceived density as the density of people living in urbanized census blocks (i.e. 1000 people per square mile [0]). For example most people in the Bay Area don't live in (or even afford to) Marin County. Yet all those multi-acre properties are counted in our land measurements. The Bay Area is basically a series of valleys where everybody lives and works, mountain ranges that are barely developed, and a large body of water right in the middle. 0: https://www.census.gov/population/censusdata/urdef.txt https://www.census.gov/population/censusdata/urdef.txt
dredmorbius 8y ago
Land is less in short supply than T&D infrastructure and built environment. Total built area is, very roughly, equivalent to solar PV insolation requirements, and at least a portion of that space (or area) is low-hanging fruit. Undeveloped land has other potential uses, including rec, ag, and ecological ones.
jonknee 8y ago
> I'm certainly a big fan of solar power, but rooftop solar is a little silly. Rooftop solar would make sense if we had some shortage of land and couldn't just fill up empty fields with panels, but that's not the case. It's much cheaper for utility companies to buy up big plots of land than it is to try to figure out how to outfit odd shaped surfaces with panels. I think a ton more people generating their own power and being shown the data of how much power they're generating and using in real time is a great thing. People I know with solar panels are excited to try and run net zero and know stuff like their energy peak usage during heat waves. I don't know anyone without solar panels that monitors their energy use like that.
dmourati 8y ago
Holy mixed metaphors.

dang 8y ago

Url changed from https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/06/california-to-require-solar-panels-on-most-new-homes/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/06/california-to-require-so..., which points to this. Submitters: since the HN guidelines call for original sources, we'd appreciate it if you'd scan an article for a link to one before posting. It's one step of manual web crawling in exchange for better content on the site—plus it's fairer to give credit to the original instead of a cribbed knockoff. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

crunchlibrarian 8y ago
I don't understand your complaint, especially since the OC register article you seem to like for whatever reason is not the first to publish and is itself just a cribbed knockoff. Are we expected to research every URL and find the first to report on it no matter what? Even if it's obscure, out of date, or wrong?
- dang 8y ago
  Scanning an article for a link to a more original source is one manual step. That's not hard, since one presumably reads an article before submitting it and the link to the other source is usually prominent, like it was above. Another recent case is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17007441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17007441. If the earlier article is out of date or wrong, then presumably the new link includes significant new information, in which case it's not a knockoff. The OCR article looked to me like original reporting, but if you know of another piece that it's copying, we can change the URL again. By "cribbed knockoff" I mean the thing that media properties do where they lift material from somewhere, make a fig leaf's worth of modification, and publish it themselves. Some people call this blogspam, but that's a contested word. There are plenty of these sites. If knockoffs are all they do, we ban them, but some also publish original articles, and we don't want to exclude those.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  You do know who dang is, right?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ardit33 8y ago

It is a great idea, as there are two other benefits: 1. Transportation of over large distances has efficiency loss on electricity and requires more cumbersome infrastructure. 2. Less heat on the neighborhood as some of that energy is absorbed into electricity instead of being bounced off to the surrounding. Having normal tiles that just absorb heat will increase the temperature of both the building and the surrounding environment. (requiring even more energy to cool off). During the summer, NYC, especially manhattan, is famous to have 2F higher temperatures that it normally should have just because of the heat radiation from the building, pavement, and air conditioners. Requiring a rooftop garden on large buildings is another interesting idea.

weberc2 8y ago
> Transportation of over large distances has efficiency loss on electricity and requires more cumbersome infrastructure. On a rooftop, you have the more significant inefficiencies of trees and suboptimal angles. In a field, you can optimize for efficient collection, and you can even install pivoting panels (much more cheaply than on a house, anyway) which can optimize collection throughout the day. Even if the transmission loss is larger than the gain from optimal positioning (and I doubt it is), it's all marginal compared to the maintenance difference (having a technician walk out to a panel in a field vs setting up appointments with home residents, driving out to their homes, climbing on their roofs, additional risk of injury for the technician from falls, risk of damaging homes, etc).
- bob_theslob646 8y ago
  No affiliation with this project, but you do know that it is possible to tilt the panels. (http://www.heliowatcher.com http://www.heliowatcher.com) >We designed and built a system to automatically orient a solar panel for maximum efficiency, record data, and safely charge batteries. Using a GPS module and magnetometer, the HelioWatcher allows the user to place the system anywhere in the world without any calibration. The HelioWatcher then calculates what the sun’s current location is and orients the panel to the appropriate angle
  - 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

bellt0wn98121 8y ago

Anyone here using solar on their home? What did the initial investment cost?

rhacker 8y ago
Non-grid-tie set up here. 4 100 Watt Panels on mine, powers everything except for the propane. Generator for cloudy days. Total Cost: $2000 (wiring, kinda expensive MPPT charge, kinda expensive swing-capable brackets, kinda expensive inverter) already had the propane generator. After learning how to do this on an RV I've decided to never buy a stick home again since most states will require a grid-tie (which is the dumbest thing you can do)... So living in a trailer is the best way to live now.
- icebraining 8y ago
  No batteries?
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  Curious: what’s wrong with being connected to the grid (assuming that’s what you meant by “grid-tie”)?
- jjeaff 8y ago
  So no air conditioning?
- electrofdhj 8y ago
  So you live in an RV now? Is avoiding a grid tie really enough of a reason to never live in a settled home? What's the 'dumb' thing about a grid tie?
cpach 8y ago
In Sweden I think it’s around $13000 dollars.
jdubs 8y ago
My system cost about $15,000 via solar city for a 6kwh system. Austin utility paid me about 3000 and I got a 4000 tax credit. Last month my bill was -20 dollars. Looking back on solar, probably not the best financial decision but I think it's pretty cool and I will be able to run the AC this summer at 70 for a reasonable bill.

gumby 8y ago

I think this is quite interesting, but despite being a strong fan of solar power, I don't think this is a great idea. There are plenty of homes in areas of low insolation (under trees, facing the wrong way) and this becomes simply a pointless tax for them. A specific solar incentive (payable only on new construction if you'd like) based on yield would make more sense.

YaxelPerez 8y ago

Isn't this going to just exacerbate California's housing crisis by making homes more expensive by default?

elchief 8y ago
[deleted]
- closeparen 8y ago
  Transportation across single-family-home sprawl, which we explicitly cultivate with regulation, is a far greater contributor to climate change than utility power.
- dogruck 8y ago
  Step 1: Worry about a serious problem. Step 2: Virtual signal with a supposed solution. Step 3: Mock anybody who criticizes that solution (but who also worries about the serious problem).
  - billylindeman 8y ago
    california at its finest
freeone3000 8y ago
Look at the price of residential-zoned lots versus the price of a finished home. The cost of a house isn't in the building.
- Cacti 8y ago
  In the Bay, sure, but this is a statewide regulation. What about a $200,000 home out east that is now 15% more expensive?
- jjeaff 8y ago
  This will add $20k to $30k. Even in the Bay area, that's substantial. Especially when you are already on the edge of affordability.

spitfire 8y ago

This is a deeply flawed idea. As bad as LEED. Specifying HOW to go about being energy efficient is the entirely wrong approach. Instead specify a minimum energy efficiency per square meter and let home builders sort it out. By specifying minimum efficiencies builders are free to adopt new technologies, new methods as they come along or use alternate means which are more suitable for a specific project. For example I live near a river and intend to use micro-hydro for my electricity. Do I still need to have solar panels? Or will the legislators need to add in a thousand exceptions to the rules?

jerkstate 8y ago
I agree, this is ridiculous California virtue-signaling at its finest and will result in a heck of a lot of unintended consequences (just like prop 13 has) - meanwhile many of the houses in my city were built in the 30s and 40s and have plaster walls, no insulation, no heat return, single pane glass etc which results in easily 10x more energy use for heating than modern construction would, but can't be rebuilt with modern materials because of the expense and difficulty of building new homes thanks to wrongheaded legislation like this.
- pkaye 8y ago
  Not really. You can blow in insulation into walls and attic. Air seal the house. Replace the windows with better ones. These regulations do not drive up the cost to upgrade existing houses.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    When the regulation requires that modifications bring things up to the new code and you've got decades of regulations like that piled up the most reasonable options are touch nothing or rebuild the entire house
    - pkaye 8y ago
      In most places you are not forced to upgrade everything to code just because you added insulation or new windows.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

f4rker 8y ago

- Cali sets up rules / situation which makes cost of living very high - Cali residents flee state to other more sane states that don't have these rules / situations - Cali residents then vote for the same types of rules / situations in their new home state

BurningFrog 8y ago

So in the middle of an epic housing crisis, California adds "about $25,000 to $30,000 to the construction costs" of a new home. When in a hole, keep digging!

paulcole 8y ago
Even more than that once solar panel companies all realize they should increase prices since homeowners are obligated to buy from one of them.
- alanh 8y ago
  I’m not sure why you are being downvoted. your prediction is hardly guaranteed but not entirely absurd either. it’s nice to have a guaranteed market
  - rmk 8y ago
    See Pharma companies for an example of what happens when you have a guaranteed market that capitalises on research funded by the public. Solar is very similar.
tormeh 8y ago
I thought the expensive thing in California was land, not the houses that sit on them?
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  There is plenty of land. The main bottleneck is regulatory approval. But high construction cost are also a dampening factor.

beagle3 8y ago

Israel mandated roof top solar water heaters for a while (since 1980 according to [0], but essentially every building built since 1960 or so has one). It's relatively cheap, pays for itself in 3-5 years, and is carbon neutral. This stores energy as hot water, not using PV panels (such as those discussed in the article). A relatively small panel per apartment is sufficient. I do not claim that the California directive is sensible, but it is worth comparing to a somewhat similar directive that has been in place for 40 years with great effect - reducing grid energy production by 8%, saving everyone money (if the article is to be trusted), and only being a minor eye sore .... [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS311612153620110318 https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS311612153620110318

galfarragem 8y ago
In Portugal solar water heaters are mandatory for new houses also.
ebikelaw 8y ago
Residential solar thermal no longer makes any kind of economic sense. These existing mandates only show how government regulations can serve to ossify bad practices and harm innovation.
- llukas 8y ago
  > Residential solar thermal no longer makes any kind of economic sense. [citation needed]
  - jws 8y ago
    Not a citation, but when I last looked at it for a cabin, the plumbing costs, pumps, and extra stuff required in addition to the normal heater drove the cost so high that it was just cheaper to add more PV panels, which have been coming down because they are made in great volume. Someplace without freezing weather, or someone who might just say “too cloudy too long, no warm shower today” might have a different calculus.
- 8y ago

anonoholic 8y ago

Tangentially - how about mandatory rainwater storage? A sink for rain to reduce flooding, and a source for grey-water (non-potable water, although residential purification is entirely possible) to alleviate pressure on reserves in times of drought.

jedberg 8y ago
Amusingly rain water collection is illegal in most of the state. You’re stealing from farmers apparently.
jjeaff 8y ago
It's actually the opposite. In some parts of California, it's illegal to capture rainwater. Because it affects groundwater runoff and the surrounding ecosystem.
- anonoholic 8y ago
  A typical failure to understand the law of unintended consequences. The total volume of water consumed remains the same, but the water lost to evaporation & distribution leakage (collectively akin to the transmission losses for electricity mentioned elsewhere in this thread) means that not collecting rainwater is less efficient. Then there's the flood damage caused when the increasing expanses of paved ground fail to absorb heavy rain that rainwater collection can help alleviate.

kchoudhu 8y ago

Way to make it even harder to construct new housing in California.

banned1 8y ago

If you are fabulously wealthy that you can [have a latte each morning], let alone [buy it at Starbucks], you can afford [an additional tax on your latte for the peasant that got the coffee beans.]

closeparen 8y ago
A house in California costs ~4 orders of magnitude more than a Starbucks coffee every morning. Wildly different values of “fabulously wealthy” here.
- banned1 8y ago
  A latte is $3.65. If you made your own cup at home, you would spend $0.05. Starbucks is 73x. I believe you need to stop buying lattes from Starbucks and start making your own coffee at home like I do. Stop being such an elitist. Get to work.
  - closeparen 8y ago
    I get good free coffee (and avocado toast!) at work, but thanks for the personal attack.
    - banned1 8y ago
      I'm sorry! Was that an attack? I figured if you are into telling others how they should spend their money or live their lives or be taxed by government in freedom-restricting ways, then that maybe you would be intellectually honest and not be bothered if I TOLD YOU what to do with some element of your life. How is that an ATTACK?
      - dang 8y ago
        We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

cs702 8y ago

If this passes, Tesla is going to make a killing on solar roofs: https://www.tesla.com/solarroof https://www.tesla.com/solarroof

altano 8y ago
Not really as their roofs are extremely expensive when compared to traditional roofing material and solar panels.
- guest 8y ago
  ANy actual numbers on that? New terracotta versus terracotta solar panels as one example (measuring in longevity and estimated cost/income on the balancing sheet etc..?

whataretensors 8y ago

Typical politics. Increase the costs of building homes in a housing poor area while claiming to help the environment. The increased new development costs is likely the entire motivation(i.e. market manipulation).

dghughes 8y ago

I wonder if a device could be built to generate power from earthquakes. Apparently southern California has 27 earthquakes every day. If a device could be built to harness that it could be useful. I know they're not all in the same place each day but 27 per day in such a small area may be enough.

nerfhammer 8y ago
issue is storage: you would get one stupendous burst of energy and then you would need to store it and trickle it out more slowly.

rdl 8y ago

California is too big to do state-level regulation. For Bay Area homes this is pretty insignificant and possibly positive (sometimes regulation might be more efficient), but adding $20-30k to houses in less-expensive parts of the state is crazy. This should have been done at the local or regional level, if at all. California should remain one state, probably, but add regional regulatory entities between counties and the state.

jdavis703 8y ago
> California should remain one state, probably, but add regional regulatory entities between counties and the state. We could accomplish this by giving regional government authorities like the Association of Bay Area Governments more authority. Essentially the metropolitan areas become like city states. The state could set certain goals (reduce carbon by this much, increase housing by that much), but it would be up to regional government to specify implementation details.
- rdl 8y ago
  The question I'd have would be should there be: 1) direct democratic participation in those authorities (elected by the residents of the area), or 2) should they be selected by the subsidiary jurisdictions (counties/cities), 3) or by the state (legislature or governor). The state government seems dysfunctional in a lot of ways, so while maybe goals could come down from the state, the actual authorities should be 1) or 2). Maybe some combination.

nickik 8y ago

California the liberal pro envoirmentalists. The effects of their policy. High carbon output. High cost of living. High cost of energy. And as little bonus, water shortages. Bad in every possible way for poor people living in California. Its truly sad state, specifically because all of these problems have extremly simple solutions. - Don't only force renewables, but rather allow all forms of new energy that are better then the current (don't close nuclear plants for example). This is also better for prices. - Allow more house building. No brainer. - Make a proper water market with block pricing so poor people have basically free water and water is directed where it is sensable. Farmers SHOULD consider water cost when making a choice of crops. People should pay to have a green garden and/or clean their car every day.

anonuser123456 8y ago

Maybe we should do what 99% of economists suggest and just tax carbon instead?

wdn 8y ago

With the mandate, it will take even longer for the homeowner to breakeven on the solar panel. Another reason why it paid to invest in politicians.

tzs 8y ago

Many people have expressed concern that this will make houses less affordable. That's not clear to me, at least in the case of people who borrow most of the money for their house (which is the vast majority). The solar part of this adds about $15k to the cost of the house. That's about $75/month on a 30 year fixed mortgage at current rates. Much of that, if not all or more, comes back in savings on the electric bill. Doesn't that mean that for most single family home buyers the difference will mostly just be a slightly higher down payment?

pishpash 8y ago
You're being optimistic. There is depreciation and maintenance cost. It also assumes a lot about the cost of electricity in the future, given how if this has any real effect it is meant to move exactly that market.
paulddraper 8y ago
Yes...$15k on a house is a non-trivial amount.

Karishma1234 8y ago

Just how much more bullshit do we have to take from California's politicians ?

Karishma1234 8y ago

Housing is already very expensive and you are going to make it even more expensive by ridiculous regulations like these ? What if I want a roof that is not ugly ?

Reedx 8y ago
Telsa's solar roof looks nice, though it's even more expensive...

acef 8y ago

Doesn’t mean much as long as they don’t build enough new housing. Most important cities in CA are failing to add affordable housing.

jjeaff 8y ago

Only new homes. In other words, NIMBY.

jessaustin 8y ago
Which will be the first neighborhood to forbid solar panels, thereby forbidding new home construction completely?

jjeaff 8y ago

This will go down as one of the most successful special interest industry lobbying win of all time. And one of the industry lobby representatives quoted in this article has the gall to say this isn't enough. But just a "compromise".

cobbzilla 8y ago
Funny, but it's not gall -- that lobbyist is paid well to be constantly pushing the Overton Window of acceptable policy towards ever more crony capitalism. Why stop now? Why stop ever?

fiatjaf 8y ago

With big governments come big mistakes.

hindsightbias 8y ago

Subsidize corporate profits, socialize losses, deinsentivize distributed local power, destroy the environment. For an alternative view:http://www.mojavedesertblog.com/2009/11/solar-energy-development-in-mojave.html?m=1 http://www.mojavedesertblog.com/2009/11/solar-energy-develop...

guest 8y ago
You should look up how it went once the EU project got known to larger hidden players of the world. The only thing missing from that project was HVDC "breakers" (idk the enlgish word), which got engineered in time, though the project fell apart. Solarcells currently are around 20 in efficiency (give or take) there is technology for 40-50% efficiency ready to go and be mass produced (being held back, you can argue oil and aristocracy or that consistant fast technological evolution kills those investing early in it as causes) and the theoretical roof around 70% was broken (99.9 something is possible). Either way the only other way of producing or harnessing energy is torium - due to partial beneficiary effect on halftimes on currently radioactive materials produced. Afaik China is the only ones who have a torium plant up and running (for the western world to survive the energy boom advance solarpower quickly through regulation nationally and make the huge investments on other continents/nations to upkeep status quo).

wollstonecraft 8y ago

Do you want housing shortage? Because that's how you get housing shortage

cpeterso 8y ago

Google has a tool called "Sunroof" that uses Google Maps satellite data to identify the best location to install solar panels on your roof: https://www.google.com/get/sunroof#p=0 https://www.google.com/get/sunroof#p=0

bradlys 8y ago

This is one of those things that sounds nice at first - especially as a soundbite. But, it's clearly a NIMBY move to protect existing home owners financial asset. It's a clever trick to protect existing home owners even more by making new development even more difficult and expensive while making it look like it's an environmental move. Tack on $30k in expense to any new home development and (probably) some lovely legislation about how it has to be installed. On top of this, now they're "encouraging" all-electric homes. What does that mean?! No gas range?! Please, god, no. Why not enforce this legislation on existing home owners, raising the property tax to fund solar farms, enforce better building standards on existing homes, or /something/ that would actually have a substantial effect on the environment? Cause, that ain't helping existing home owners or helping push their home prices even higher. As a renter who wishes to have a home /somewhere/ in the bay area, this is killing me inside. The existing home owner lobby is so ridiculously strong here. California has the Superman of home owner lobbies. Each day, it's nailed into me that Prop 13 will never go away and home prices are just gonna keep climbing so that non-1% income outsiders cannot get them. Meanwhile, estates will be passed down generation by generation tax free and with no reassessment.

jogjayr 8y ago
> But, it's clearly a NIMBY move to protect existing home owners financial asset. It doesn't apply to new construction over 3 stories. Especially for the Bay Area, building up seems like the only way out of the current morass, so is it really that clear-cut? Also most of the house price in high-demand areas is the land cost. $30k sounds like a lot but is less than 5% of the median house price. People pay that much over asking quite regularly.
- pzone 8y ago
  Dismissing large sums of money like that in terms of percentages can really get you into trouble. Sure, it's "only" 5% more for a $1.5M property. Another way to think of it is as a 30 thousand dollar roadblock facing anyone who wants to move to California.
  - 8y ago

jeremyt 8y ago

There’s a genius way to lower housing prices. Why didn’t anyone think of this before?

ryao 8y ago

It would have been better to adopt the passivhaus standard as part of the building code.

xupybd 8y ago

Is roof top solar going to help anything? It's my understanding that roof top solar does little to reduce peak loads when the sun is not out. But decreases demand during the day. Meaning you need coal plants standing at the ready to catch the peak.

esmi 8y ago
The article addresses this question. "While net-zero remains an admirable goal, getting there is not yet cost-effective, state officials and experts said. And it fails to address the state’s ultimate goal of curbing global warming. Because electric utilities now rely on renewable energy for much of their power, daytime energy already is quite clean, said McAllister, the lead state commissioner on energy efficiency. At night when there’s no solar power, people come home, turn on the lights, the TV and possibly the air conditioning and start pulling power from the grid, he said. Some gas-powered generating plants then are fired up to help meet that additional load, boosting carbon emissions. “That additional (home-generated) solar kilowatt-hour isn’t worth very much because it’s displacing what is already clean energy,” McAllister said. “That net-zero home is not a net-carbon-zero home.”"

grizzles 8y ago

This is how you build wealth as a society. Californians should be proud. The housing crisis is a separate issue. This policy decreases the TCO (cost) of housing by planting a money tree on the roof. Rooftop solar is great for consumers because it avoids the ~30% efficiency loss to heat that you otherwise pay using transmission lines. Mandating BIPV at the design/build stage improves aesthetics & resale value.

jedberg 8y ago

This is interesting to me, because I've been advocating for a similar law for a while now, with a few crucial differences: I propose we make a law that says any home that sells for greater than the Freddie Mac super conforming loan limit (currently $679,650) must be retrofitted to have a net energy draw of zero or less from the grid (with rules about exceptions for shade and roof angles and whatnot). This would solve a lot of problems with this bill: It would exempt all the folks who are selling cheap homes throughout the state, it would apply to both old and new homes, and it allows for new technologies that don't exist yet or are cost prohibitive, instead of require solar panels. It wouldn't really affect prices much, because there is already a flattening at the Freddie Mac limits, and when you get to the super conforming level, a solar install only represents 5% or less today (but I imagine the prices would fall with economies of scale).

megaman22 8y ago

Dumb. So fucking dumb. My blood is boiling a little bit contemplating how dumb this could be. So glad I don't live in California, the land of regulation.

dang 8y ago
Please don't do this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Proven 8y ago

Great, that will speed up the ongoing flight of net contributors. Can’t wait for this bastion of green fascism to collapse onto itself.

exabrial 8y ago

Did we examine the full ewaste impact when the cells need to bring disposed of? Are we sure that the net CO2 in the manufacturing process is carbon negative? Does the manufacturing, shipping, installation, and disposal process release heavy metals or organic solvents into the environment? I want clean and efficient energy, but I want it to be good for the environment, not worse, and it appears none of this was studied nor confirmed. And also once again, California is ensuring that low income families cannot afford to buy a home as an investment to exit the poverty cycle. From requiring new homes to have an EV jack in the garage, to solar cells on the roofs, the continually make sure that equality is out of the poor's reach by force of the law.

GhostVII 8y ago

That seems like a pretty significant government overreach. Forcing solar panels on every house just doesn't make sense, and I think people should have the freedom to chose whether or not they want them. Its fine to add incentives, but forcing them seems extremely especially when there are houses in very shady areas that will not benefit much from solar panels.

citrus1330 8y ago

Why does the state with the best weather and scenery have such a retarded government

greatamerican 8y ago

oh good! another way to make housing in California more expensive to build!

ryankupyn 8y ago

I'm really interested in seeing how this will play out if solar continues to get cheaper. I'd imagine that at a certain point, the panels themselves will be cheap(er) compared to the installation cost (so that the cost structure changes to favor the most efficient installation/maintenance regime), and that residential-scale solar will be uneconomical compared to large-scale installations in the desert, where you can get a couple of hundred megawatts all in one place getting the advantages of optimal weather, easily-installable sun-tracking, and more regular maintenance than what you'd get on a 1,500 sqf roof in SF. It's entirely possible that, 10-15 years from now, this ends up being a "tax" paid by all homeowners to the residential-solar-installation industry so that they can put solar panels on roofs that will never earn their money back, just so that the homeowner can displace what might be equally clean energy generated elsewhere.

thetruthseeker1 8y ago

My view is also that it would be better policy if the california government taxed all homes and generated a certain amount of revenue which they could use to generate certain percentage GW of solar power( A goal they should set for themselves). That way it is fair to all, the problem is also solved at scale which is important as opposed to mandating new home owners only which I am not sure is that efficient

rogerlb 8y ago

Wow

aagha 8y ago

What's being missed in this conversation is that California is at "peak solar", meaning that having more solar is NOT good for the state. We can't yet effectively store solar, so in the summer when everyone comes home, they turn on their AC's (in SoCal) and in order to be able to provide enough energy as the sun starts to set, Cal ISO (http://www.caiso.com http://www.caiso.com) needs to tell gas fired plants to turn on (quickly) to have enough capacity in the grid. This causes--you guessed it--pollution. Source: Worked 7 years for an ISO.

resalisbury 8y ago

What's another $30k in home costs. That's less thank 1% of my $3.2 million home in Palo Alto ;) Whatever you do just make sure the neighborhood is zoned single family. Multi family just doesn't have enough roof space.