12 ms·

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 fi

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.

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.