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Adding $30k to your mortgage would cost like $150 a month extra or so. It will produce about 15,000 kWh per month, which is about $150 off your electric bill.
by jhpriestley 8y ago
Adding $30k to your mortgage would cost like $150 a month extra or so. It will produce about 15,000 kWh per month, which is about $150 off your electric bill.
- pishpash 8y agoWhy isn't everyone installing then? There is a net cost somewhere.
- jhpriestley 8y agoA ton of people are installing them! Only on hacker news is rooftop solar some kind of horrible socialist boondoggle. edit: to answer your question more directly: many people just won't be bothered to install them or don't think of it, or can't get the financing easily. For some people the numbers don't work out, because their roof is old or they don't get enough sun or their electric bill is already low.
- killjoywashere 8y agoOn the flip side, if you bought a house from an old engineer who converted the entire house to electric appliances, and you bring your own electric dryer, and you have a family of 4, and a/c, in California, rooftop solar is dead obvious.
- FooHentai 8y agoSo then I guess we've hit QED - If all that is true why is a legislative mandate desirable?
- 3pt14159 8y agoSame reason most people in Canada weren't installing geothermal until the federal government started subsidizing them: Inertia. Despite what they may teach you in Econ 101, the efficient market hypothesis isn't an actually useful way of looking at human behaviour. It might work for modelling some of the actions of Goldman Sachs, but actual people are squishy and irrational.
- icebraining 8y agoThat's a misrepresentation of the efficient market hypothesis. It does not rely on the assumption that humans are rational.
- vonmoltke 8y agoNo, but it does assume the irrationality maps to a random distribution.
- icebraining 8y agoHow could it not?
- 3pt14159 8y agoCultural prejudice?
- icebraining 8y agoI don't think that prevents a random distribution, only some kinds of them. But I'm not expert in statistics, let alone the EMH.
- AFNobody 8y ago> Why isn't everyone installing then? There is a net cost somewhere. Because it is damn close to break even and would you spend money on something you didn't need just because it was good for the environment? Most people don't expend effort for $0/month to $50/month in returns. Despite all the solar proponents, once you factor in interest/maintenance/etc, its probably pretty close to that. We are probably 10 years from it being 100% obvious that all homes should have solar.
- KirinDave 8y agoBecause lots of people have tribally motivated objections. Or they don't have the cash on hand. Or they are landlords and won't do so until forced to. But the actual cost has never been lower and energy prices are falling. There are downsides but they're very different.
- pg_bot 8y agoOpportunity cost and the time value of money. You would likely be better off putting that money to work elsewhere.
- downandout 8y agoAdding $30k to your mortgage would cost like $150 a month extra or so. So instead of having ~$1800/yr going to your energy company's coffers, where they might use it to innovate and actually one day make clean energy cost effective, it should go straight to your bank's bottom line in the form of interest. While it may cost consumers the same amount, that sounds like a net negative to me.
- ajross 8y agoSo... You think we should forego installing a clean energy source that is available today and instead give that money to a company that does not provide clean energy in the hope that maybe they will provide the clean energy that we could have had today at some point in the future. And your argument for that is... banks?
- hueving 8y agoEnergy providers in California do have clean energy options. They are also more efficient than individual solar installs.
- downandout 8y agoIf you one day want financially viable clean energy, there are certainly better places for that money to go than into your bank's pocket - such as to energy providers, who could then use that money for R&D. Tell me how many banks are spending their profits doing clean energy research.
- hueving 8y agoThat's only a wash if you never have to maintain them in the lifetime of the 30 year mortgage.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoYou don’t have to maintain them. Their warranty is 25 years, they’ll produce beyond that. It’s a no brainer.
- bonesss 8y agoOk, this isn't "the thing" with solar panels, but: they're going to require maintenance, be subject to wiring issues, and you have to clean those bad boys. Roof work is notoriously 'dangerous', and impacts people with mobility/age issues differently than most of us. The maintenance burden is more than just the warranty, and any cost calculations of power savings should account for those costs as well. [Oh, and we should all be god enough at high school level physics to solve the "climate crisis" in a few hours...]
- toomuchtodo 8y agoI disagree with your argument that panels need maintenance except for replacement of failed components under warranty, which would be done by the installer.
- bonesss 8y agoYou disagree that solar panels need washing and that electrical installations in houses require maintenance over time? ... okie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "Solar Is NOT Maintenance Free" -- https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2014/02/accelerating-u-s-solar-om-market-solar-maintenance-free/ https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2014/02/accelerating-u... -- "We like to think PV is maintenance free but it is not ... if you don’t do the maintenance, you can have sub-optimal asset performance." https://www.wikihow.com/Maintain-a-Solar-Panel https://www.wikihow.com/Maintain-a-Solar-Panel https://www.civicsolar.com/support/installer/articles/snow-solar-panels-best-practices https://www.civicsolar.com/support/installer/articles/snow-s...
- refurb 8y agoSo basically I give up $30K now (or pay that, plus interest) for no net benefit until 30 years out? That sounds terrible. That $30K would turn into $100k if I put away for retirement.
- aquadrop 8y agoNo, it's vice versa, you put $30k more on your mortgage and pay it out over 30 years with lowest interest rate. So theoretically it should come at no cost to you since your additional mortgage payment will be countered by smaller electricity bill. But of course that depends on your electricity usage, pricing and how much money is required for maintaining the system.
- refurb 8y agoBut in the end, there is no net benefit to you. So why would you do it?
- aquadrop 8y agoSupport green energy, being more independent in case of grid electricity blackouts. That's the point of Tesla's roof tiles (at least how it's supposed to be), if you get same looking house and around the same net price, why don't do it?
- djrogers 8y ago> being more independent in case of grid electricity blackouts That's generally not the case in California, as we're net-metering here. Very few people install storage and transfer switches to handle blackouts.
- CalRobert 8y agoVery pro-solar, but lost in all this is that people assume an astronomical amount of electricity use. Am I just odd? In winter in SD (so no climate control needed) my electric bill was $12 a month. Solar's great and all but putting a 15kwh a month installation on the roof would be crazy.
- walshemj 8y agoin CA you need to for air con
- ghaff 8y agoYes? That seems extraordinarily low. I live in Massachusetts with oil heat and only rare use of one window unit AC in the summer and I’m a bit over $100/mo which the electric company tells me is about average for houses of my size.
- maxsilver 8y ago> Solar's great and all but putting a 15kwh a month installation on the roof would be crazy. Do you mean 15kw per daylight hour install, or a 15kwh total per month install? Because 15kwh per month is a really small amount of power, that's roughly equivalent to running a single desktop PC for one hour per day. That's hobby-kit amounts of electricity. A single 100w solar panel could almost produce 15kwh/month on it's own, in ideal sunlight conditions, and you can buy that for roughly $200 USD at retail.
- CalRobert 8y agoSorry, I misspoke! what I get for writing without adding. I averaged about 90 watts in winter, around 2kwh a day, so 60 ish a month, so roughly eight or so bucks for the power with the rest from the odd fixed charge. In summer I had one efficient window AC and would use about five times as much energy.
- Detect 8y agoDo you mean 1,500 kWh/mo? Generating 15 MWh/mo would be a very large residential system. $150 for 15,000 kWh of electricity saved/returned would only be $0.01/kWh.