25 ms·

Pre-built solar homes could make renewable energy almost 50% cheaper

196 points by elorant 7y ago

droithomme 7y ago
Passive solar for air and water temperatures is the way to design it into new homes. Cool in summer, warm in winter. Few to no moving parts or electricity needed. Little to ever replace. Anathema though to fancy solutions favored by VCs like photoelectric utilizing the strip-mining of millions of hectares of arable land, followed by toxic run-off, to produce panels and batteries. For retrofits of existing homes, geothermal whenever possible for upgrading central climate control when present. Current professional installers though are generally incompetent and price-gouge. Sufficiently motivated hackers can easily DIY.
- blackomen6 7y ago
  Passive design can be climate specific, but I agree, it needs to be built into new designs. The problem that I'm seeing is that "no one" cares: developers will build houses with gorgeous kitchens/bedrooms/living rooms, but the HVAC stem will be bottom-shelf equipment with flex duct run all over the place (and pinched in a few other places). Because no one sees it, nor thinks to question it. We really need to figure out how to make it desirable and something people demand. Maybe that's raising electrical rates or taxing antiquated system design? Some form of hitting a wallet? I like what you're thinking about geothermal; it sparked a few thoughts, though: Geothermal is expensive because of labor, not necessarily price gouging. Most installers (in my area) put a 10% mark up on everything: finding competent installers is harder and harder these days, so you're paying more and more. HVAC techs can make six figures if they have the experience and aren't afraid to negotiate. Unless, of course, they ARE price gouging, which happens, especially if they're already busy (which has been the case for the past three years). The technology is solid, though to be frank, a high efficiency air-to-air heat pump will be comparable to geothermal, depending on the climate zone. If we can figure out a cost-effective way to replace gas-fired heat in northern climates with something more eco friendly (and consumer friendly), progress would be made.
  - generatorguy 7y ago
    Charging higher prices when demand is high is not gouging. If people are making 200k At faang what’s wrong with tradespeople making 100k when their skills are also in demand. Everybody who supplies or resells equipment puts a mark up on it because there is some cost for them to select it, procure it, store it, transport it, finance it, etc.
    - Retric 7y ago
      In construction price gouging is often less about the rate than less ethical charges.
  - fyfy18 7y ago
    At least in the EU the "no one cares" is changing. Member states need to have legislation in place that means from 2020 all new builds are "nearly carbon zero" (unfortunately left to interpretation by country). In my country that means homes have insulation and heating requirements on par with Passive House standards, as well as the majority of their energy coming from renewable sources.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Solar hot water heating works really well in the northern US. It’s an odd tradeoff as you get less energy so you need to scale up, but you also use the system more days out of the year. You do want a large thermal mass which can be difficult to add to an existing home.
  - danans 7y ago
    > The problem that I'm seeing is that "no one" cares It even more fundamental: no one knows about passive buildings. With homes, it's like we are still in the 50s with gas guzzling cars. That required a major oil shock to force a shift in fuel economy. No such impetus yet for homes, but when it comes, hopefully we have figured out a way to retrofit our housing stock cost effectively.
  - floatrock 7y ago
    > The problem that I'm seeing is that "no one" cares... Because no one sees it, nor thinks to question it. Put another way: the cost of operations isn't factored into the sales price. The builders don't have exposure to how much the buyer will pay to heat the home, so there's no reason to do extra work to insulate or seal better. There are starting to be home efficiency standards that are being considered in the real estate markets (things like LEED certification for homes), but you're right, people are more likely to buy based on the look of the kitchen than the winter heating bill. I've been trying to think if there's a financialization play possible... something like monetizing the downstream efficiency savings to incentivize the upfront work. The solar PPA model has been the solar company's monthly bill becomes your new electricity bill, and (ideally) paying off the solar installation monthly over 20 years was still cheaper than paying for non-solar electricity during that time. I've been wondering if something similar can be done for home efficiency upgrades.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  The biggest "passive" design from my understanding is a few deciduous trees. In the summer, the leaves block out the sun, but in the winter, the leaves fall off and the sun directly heats the home.
  - Tharkun 7y ago
    That's fine when you live in a house. Not so relevant when you live 20 storeys up. I feel like way too much time and effort goes into improving single family houses, as opposed to larger multi-family buildings. They could be built to be much more efficient and just as comfortable. But alas.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      One problem is that fire prevention and safety has trumped energy efficiency. Can I open my window more than 4” no, someone could fall out. Can we prop our doors open to get a draft? No. The reduced external surface area to volume ratio really improves efficiency though.
  - danans 7y ago
    Bigger factors in passive house design are siting and orientation, building envelope air sealing, continuous insulation, and correct window placement and shading - usually with purpose designed shade structures - not trees. It's not that trees can't provide the shade, but they take a while to grow enough to achieve the immediate effect of an awning. If you have a mature tree on a site, however, you could design a house that takes advantage of the shade it already provides.
- calclimate 7y ago
  By geothermal you mean a ground-source heat pump? What is the bare minimum cost of the materials & digging & installation?
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    It’s always a lot. Can be kinda low if you’re allowed to do open loop water and a high water table but they’re often banned.
- KaiserPro 7y ago
  THe biggest thing you can do is properly insulate. 100-200mm of insulation on the outside of the house/loft/underfloor and triple glazing
- danans 7y ago
  Passive homes are great, but they aren't mutually exclusive with PV. In fact, passive homes typically use PV for powering systems that require electricity to run.
agumonkey 7y ago
It's very annoying when the cost of something advanced comes from very trivial legacy issues like that. I wish someone develops cheap adapters while construction code gets update to help panel frames.
Waterluvian 7y ago
I'm totally a layperson on the subject but the other day I thought about how far more devices in my house use DC than AC than 30 years ago. It seems odd that I convert solar to AC then back to DC. I wonder if there's any future to running both an AC and a DC bus through the house, or if that makes no sense for reasons beyond my basic understanding.
- shantly 7y ago
  I've seen (owned a house having) dual-fuel natural gas + electric light fixtures, mounted to walls, gas pipes to every room right alongside the (knob & tube) electrical wires. So we've done weirder shit in the past to deliver two types of power throughout houses. And no, I never tried lighting one. Hopefully none of them had had an active gas supply in decades.
- froindt 7y ago
  Also a layperson. How many different specs are running around the house, and what sorts of electrical variations can they withstand? I think you'd need to have a house-wide AC-DC converter to feed in energy when your solar supply drops down. Or a battery storage system probably makes more sense.
- adrianmonk 7y ago
  Power losses in wiring are an issue. Many of your DC devices also happen to be low-voltage. (For example, USB devices.) If you transmit the same number of watts at a higher voltage (lower current) rather than at a lower voltage (higher current) through a wire, you will lose less power. So for moving the power around the house at distances more than around 10 feet (~3 meters), it's more energy-efficient to convert it near the point of use. And if you're already going to convert it, it's probably not worth the expense and complication of running two separate wiring systems.
  - kragen 7y ago
    The USB power supply is probably a 5-volt switchmode power supply which doesn't care whether its input is 80 volts or 300 volts, or ac or dc. You could very reasonably run 100 volts dc or 200 volts dc to things that use switchmode power supplies like that.
sandworm101 7y ago
For all the talk of AC v DC, that debate is moot. Current on-grid solar tech integrates a spec inverter into each panel. In a net metering install (no batteries, generators etc) this is far far simpler. No loads to calibrate, no DC copper to run, no inverters to break, just plug the panel into the mains and see your bill drop. That is the way forward for urban/suburban solar power.
- KaiserPro 7y ago
  not entirely. It will also cause brownouts at scale, as there is no secure scalable way to stop production on peak solar days (save for shutting off the supply, which kills the inverters) solar + battery is a far better solution as it can soak up peak generation _and_ peak demand.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Once solar installations reach a scale where that becomes a problem, I'm sure you'll find enterprising people who find ways to suck up extra power when there is a surplus.
- rory096 7y ago
  >That is the way forward for urban/suburban solar power. No way. The future of residential solar is coupled with storage. And the future of storage is in DC coupling, not wastefully inverting solar to AC just to invert back to put it in the battery.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Tesla Powerwalls support either AC or DC coupling, depending on system architecture (grid tie, inverter type, etc). It's unlikely homes will be designed for DC powered loads considering the copper costs (versus conversion losses between current types).
    - rory096 7y ago
      TIL, never seen a DC-coupled PW2 in the field. Looks like it was killed off in 2017. (i.e. before PW2 was widely available) https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-new-tesla-powerwall-is-actually-two-different-products https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-new-tesla-p... https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/tesla-kills-off-dc-powerwall-2-ac-version-delayed/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/tesla-kills-off-dc-power...
ksec 7y ago
More than 50% of the Population will live inside Mega Cities by 2050 [1]. While it is good to have Solar cheaper for Houses, the reality is most people won't have a rooftop Solar option. Edit: This is not to say 50% cheaper is useless, it is a point of information for people living in houses and not realise large population around the world cant afford a house. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/17/two-thirds-of-global-population-will-live-in-cities-by-2050-un-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/17/two-thirds-of-global-populat...
- gnarbarian 7y ago
  I hope that telecommuting will prevent this. The same amount of money can net you a much higher standard of living in a rural area with less crime and pollution and an all around better place to raise children. Having half the world converge on urban centers scrambling to pay exorbitant rent and taxes for the privilege of 100sq feet of personal space while sharing an apartment with five strangers is misguided at best and dystopian at worst.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    > living in a rural area with less crime I doubt “rural” will continue to be “low crime”. In our fully automated future I expect criminals will also be telecommuting — stealing, vandalising, or trading illegal substances with drones, drones which are quite possibly either bio-mimicking or even bio-printed so as to make it less appealing to shoot them.
    - rocgf 7y ago
      That is a very far fetched idea.
      - ben_w 7y ago
        Why? Drones are already used for drug delivery, bioprinting is a thing albeit not an amazingly good thing yet, and biomimicry is demonstrated in occasional TED talks and military spy drone demonstration videos on YouTube.
velox_io 7y ago
Here's a good video on the problems of transmitting power, and why we need such high voltages. How do Electric Transmission Lines Work? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjY31x0m3d8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjY31x0m3d8
listenallyall 7y ago
Corporate press releases get voted up to #2 on HN these days? Unfortunate.
- smudgymcscmudge 7y ago
  It’s a Sunday. Weekend HN is a free-for-all. I kind of like it this way.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  Yeah. Only on the weekend does "buy a new house to get solar" make sense. And no one seems to be phased that the DOE is the one pushing it.
- Tempest1981 7y ago
  A glimmer of hope for clean energy, before it is too late... "I want to believe"
fyfy18 7y ago
Why is it so expensive to install solar in the US? In the UK you can get a 3kw grid tied system installed for under £5000 ($6100), and around double for a 9kw system - a lot of the cost is renting scaffolding and having people on site to do the work, so it gets cheaper per kw as you have more installed.
- pro8ndi 7y ago
  American businesses optimize for wealth extraction. Prices are inflated to pay for extra homes, yachts, privatized inflated healthcare prices, etc. Basically the emotional meme here is to wrap oneself in a reality distortion field fueled by avarice.
  - heimatau 7y ago
    I do think this is closer to the truth even though you're being downvoted. I worked in the industry for about a year and I'm working on starting up my own company now. If you removed the 30% tax credit, it would turn $3 a watt into the UK's ~$2 a watt. I know it's not that simple but it's not far from the truth. Even Tesla is trying to launch a product at $1 watt for commercial/industry clients.
  - coliveira 7y ago
    The way Americans rationalize this is saying that if a business is not insanely profitable, then it is not even worth starting. In tech this manifests itself as saying that you should only create "world changing" businesses, and if you have a so-called "lifestyle" business you're seen as a loser. The reality is that these insanely profitable business can only exist when you have a deep pocketed investor as a co-owner of the business, that is, a billionaire owning a large part of the business is a necessary part of the process.
- KaiserPro 7y ago
  This is my thought, looking at the graph, a good dollar per watt appears to come from getting permits and such. I'm not aware of having to notify the local council or power company about installing solar (you do have to get certification before you can receive money for generation though, but I don't think that costs significant money, its more a case of proving provenance of solar panels and equipment. )
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Animats 7y ago
So why are the pictures on the site clearly of retrofits of solar panels to an existing tile roof?
- barney54 7y ago
  It’s a start up and just started working with manufactured housing builders.
stretchwithme 7y ago
It's always cheaper to design a feature into a product than to add it later.
jake_morrison 7y ago
Combining the roof with the solar panels seems like a win. A very large percentage of the cost of solar installation (50% last I checked) was labor. So when it's time to redo the roof on a house, you can also install solar panels. The interesting question is whether the panel lifecycle is the same as the roof lifecycle.
ckdarby 7y ago
Wish I saw more CNC style designed houses :(
zarro 7y ago
Regardless of the long term trends toward populations moving toward the city, I don't see why most newly built suburban homes after 2025 wouldn't come with a Tesla (or competitor) solar roof. The 20-50k that it would cost would just get absorbed into the mortgage and become an asset that would increase the value of the home - besides that, over the over a 30 year period, if you are able to capture even half that value in electricity savings, it becomes a no brainer as it would cost what a normal roof costs anyway. There are also the benefits of more efficient energy transmission and resiliency of micro-grids as just bonuses.

196 points by elorant 7y ago

Passive solar for air and water temperatures is the way to design it into new homes. Cool in summer, warm in winter. Few to no moving parts or electricity needed. Little to ever replace. Anathema though to fancy solutions favored by VCs like photoelectric utilizing the strip-mining of millions of hectares of arable land, followed by toxic run-off, to produce panels and batteries. For retrofits of existing homes, geothermal whenever possible for upgrading central climate control when present. Current professional installers though are generally incompetent and price-gouge. Sufficiently motivated hackers can easily DIY.

blackomen6 7y ago
Passive design can be climate specific, but I agree, it needs to be built into new designs. The problem that I'm seeing is that "no one" cares: developers will build houses with gorgeous kitchens/bedrooms/living rooms, but the HVAC stem will be bottom-shelf equipment with flex duct run all over the place (and pinched in a few other places). Because no one sees it, nor thinks to question it. We really need to figure out how to make it desirable and something people demand. Maybe that's raising electrical rates or taxing antiquated system design? Some form of hitting a wallet? I like what you're thinking about geothermal; it sparked a few thoughts, though: Geothermal is expensive because of labor, not necessarily price gouging. Most installers (in my area) put a 10% mark up on everything: finding competent installers is harder and harder these days, so you're paying more and more. HVAC techs can make six figures if they have the experience and aren't afraid to negotiate. Unless, of course, they ARE price gouging, which happens, especially if they're already busy (which has been the case for the past three years). The technology is solid, though to be frank, a high efficiency air-to-air heat pump will be comparable to geothermal, depending on the climate zone. If we can figure out a cost-effective way to replace gas-fired heat in northern climates with something more eco friendly (and consumer friendly), progress would be made.
- generatorguy 7y ago
  Charging higher prices when demand is high is not gouging. If people are making 200k At faang what’s wrong with tradespeople making 100k when their skills are also in demand. Everybody who supplies or resells equipment puts a mark up on it because there is some cost for them to select it, procure it, store it, transport it, finance it, etc.
  - Retric 7y ago
    In construction price gouging is often less about the rate than less ethical charges.
- fyfy18 7y ago
  At least in the EU the "no one cares" is changing. Member states need to have legislation in place that means from 2020 all new builds are "nearly carbon zero" (unfortunately left to interpretation by country). In my country that means homes have insulation and heating requirements on par with Passive House standards, as well as the majority of their energy coming from renewable sources.
- Retric 7y ago
  Solar hot water heating works really well in the northern US. It’s an odd tradeoff as you get less energy so you need to scale up, but you also use the system more days out of the year. You do want a large thermal mass which can be difficult to add to an existing home.
- danans 7y ago
  > The problem that I'm seeing is that "no one" cares It even more fundamental: no one knows about passive buildings. With homes, it's like we are still in the 50s with gas guzzling cars. That required a major oil shock to force a shift in fuel economy. No such impetus yet for homes, but when it comes, hopefully we have figured out a way to retrofit our housing stock cost effectively.
- floatrock 7y ago
  > The problem that I'm seeing is that "no one" cares... Because no one sees it, nor thinks to question it. Put another way: the cost of operations isn't factored into the sales price. The builders don't have exposure to how much the buyer will pay to heat the home, so there's no reason to do extra work to insulate or seal better. There are starting to be home efficiency standards that are being considered in the real estate markets (things like LEED certification for homes), but you're right, people are more likely to buy based on the look of the kitchen than the winter heating bill. I've been trying to think if there's a financialization play possible... something like monetizing the downstream efficiency savings to incentivize the upfront work. The solar PPA model has been the solar company's monthly bill becomes your new electricity bill, and (ideally) paying off the solar installation monthly over 20 years was still cheaper than paying for non-solar electricity during that time. I've been wondering if something similar can be done for home efficiency upgrades.
dragontamer 7y ago
The biggest "passive" design from my understanding is a few deciduous trees. In the summer, the leaves block out the sun, but in the winter, the leaves fall off and the sun directly heats the home.
- Tharkun 7y ago
  That's fine when you live in a house. Not so relevant when you live 20 storeys up. I feel like way too much time and effort goes into improving single family houses, as opposed to larger multi-family buildings. They could be built to be much more efficient and just as comfortable. But alas.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    One problem is that fire prevention and safety has trumped energy efficiency. Can I open my window more than 4” no, someone could fall out. Can we prop our doors open to get a draft? No. The reduced external surface area to volume ratio really improves efficiency though.
- danans 7y ago
  Bigger factors in passive house design are siting and orientation, building envelope air sealing, continuous insulation, and correct window placement and shading - usually with purpose designed shade structures - not trees. It's not that trees can't provide the shade, but they take a while to grow enough to achieve the immediate effect of an awning. If you have a mature tree on a site, however, you could design a house that takes advantage of the shade it already provides.
calclimate 7y ago
By geothermal you mean a ground-source heat pump? What is the bare minimum cost of the materials & digging & installation?
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  It’s always a lot. Can be kinda low if you’re allowed to do open loop water and a high water table but they’re often banned.
KaiserPro 7y ago
THe biggest thing you can do is properly insulate. 100-200mm of insulation on the outside of the house/loft/underfloor and triple glazing
danans 7y ago
Passive homes are great, but they aren't mutually exclusive with PV. In fact, passive homes typically use PV for powering systems that require electricity to run.

agumonkey 7y ago

It's very annoying when the cost of something advanced comes from very trivial legacy issues like that. I wish someone develops cheap adapters while construction code gets update to help panel frames.

Waterluvian 7y ago

I'm totally a layperson on the subject but the other day I thought about how far more devices in my house use DC than AC than 30 years ago. It seems odd that I convert solar to AC then back to DC. I wonder if there's any future to running both an AC and a DC bus through the house, or if that makes no sense for reasons beyond my basic understanding.

shantly 7y ago
I've seen (owned a house having) dual-fuel natural gas + electric light fixtures, mounted to walls, gas pipes to every room right alongside the (knob & tube) electrical wires. So we've done weirder shit in the past to deliver two types of power throughout houses. And no, I never tried lighting one. Hopefully none of them had had an active gas supply in decades.
froindt 7y ago
Also a layperson. How many different specs are running around the house, and what sorts of electrical variations can they withstand? I think you'd need to have a house-wide AC-DC converter to feed in energy when your solar supply drops down. Or a battery storage system probably makes more sense.
adrianmonk 7y ago
Power losses in wiring are an issue. Many of your DC devices also happen to be low-voltage. (For example, USB devices.) If you transmit the same number of watts at a higher voltage (lower current) rather than at a lower voltage (higher current) through a wire, you will lose less power. So for moving the power around the house at distances more than around 10 feet (~3 meters), it's more energy-efficient to convert it near the point of use. And if you're already going to convert it, it's probably not worth the expense and complication of running two separate wiring systems.
- kragen 7y ago
  The USB power supply is probably a 5-volt switchmode power supply which doesn't care whether its input is 80 volts or 300 volts, or ac or dc. You could very reasonably run 100 volts dc or 200 volts dc to things that use switchmode power supplies like that.

sandworm101 7y ago

For all the talk of AC v DC, that debate is moot. Current on-grid solar tech integrates a spec inverter into each panel. In a net metering install (no batteries, generators etc) this is far far simpler. No loads to calibrate, no DC copper to run, no inverters to break, just plug the panel into the mains and see your bill drop. That is the way forward for urban/suburban solar power.

KaiserPro 7y ago
not entirely. It will also cause brownouts at scale, as there is no secure scalable way to stop production on peak solar days (save for shutting off the supply, which kills the inverters) solar + battery is a far better solution as it can soak up peak generation _and_ peak demand.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Once solar installations reach a scale where that becomes a problem, I'm sure you'll find enterprising people who find ways to suck up extra power when there is a surplus.
rory096 7y ago
>That is the way forward for urban/suburban solar power. No way. The future of residential solar is coupled with storage. And the future of storage is in DC coupling, not wastefully inverting solar to AC just to invert back to put it in the battery.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Tesla Powerwalls support either AC or DC coupling, depending on system architecture (grid tie, inverter type, etc). It's unlikely homes will be designed for DC powered loads considering the copper costs (versus conversion losses between current types).
  - rory096 7y ago
    TIL, never seen a DC-coupled PW2 in the field. Looks like it was killed off in 2017. (i.e. before PW2 was widely available) https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-new-tesla-powerwall-is-actually-two-different-products https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-new-tesla-p... https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/tesla-kills-off-dc-powerwall-2-ac-version-delayed/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/tesla-kills-off-dc-power...

ksec 7y ago

More than 50% of the Population will live inside Mega Cities by 2050 [1]. While it is good to have Solar cheaper for Houses, the reality is most people won't have a rooftop Solar option. Edit: This is not to say 50% cheaper is useless, it is a point of information for people living in houses and not realise large population around the world cant afford a house. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/17/two-thirds-of-global-population-will-live-in-cities-by-2050-un-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/17/two-thirds-of-global-populat...

gnarbarian 7y ago
I hope that telecommuting will prevent this. The same amount of money can net you a much higher standard of living in a rural area with less crime and pollution and an all around better place to raise children. Having half the world converge on urban centers scrambling to pay exorbitant rent and taxes for the privilege of 100sq feet of personal space while sharing an apartment with five strangers is misguided at best and dystopian at worst.
- ben_w 7y ago
  > living in a rural area with less crime I doubt “rural” will continue to be “low crime”. In our fully automated future I expect criminals will also be telecommuting — stealing, vandalising, or trading illegal substances with drones, drones which are quite possibly either bio-mimicking or even bio-printed so as to make it less appealing to shoot them.
  - rocgf 7y ago
    That is a very far fetched idea.
    - ben_w 7y ago
      Why? Drones are already used for drug delivery, bioprinting is a thing albeit not an amazingly good thing yet, and biomimicry is demonstrated in occasional TED talks and military spy drone demonstration videos on YouTube.

velox_io 7y ago

Here's a good video on the problems of transmitting power, and why we need such high voltages. How do Electric Transmission Lines Work? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjY31x0m3d8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjY31x0m3d8

listenallyall 7y ago

Corporate press releases get voted up to #2 on HN these days? Unfortunate.

smudgymcscmudge 7y ago
It’s a Sunday. Weekend HN is a free-for-all. I kind of like it this way.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
Yeah. Only on the weekend does "buy a new house to get solar" make sense. And no one seems to be phased that the DOE is the one pushing it.
Tempest1981 7y ago
A glimmer of hope for clean energy, before it is too late... "I want to believe"

fyfy18 7y ago

Why is it so expensive to install solar in the US? In the UK you can get a 3kw grid tied system installed for under £5000 ($6100), and around double for a 9kw system - a lot of the cost is renting scaffolding and having people on site to do the work, so it gets cheaper per kw as you have more installed.

pro8ndi 7y ago
American businesses optimize for wealth extraction. Prices are inflated to pay for extra homes, yachts, privatized inflated healthcare prices, etc. Basically the emotional meme here is to wrap oneself in a reality distortion field fueled by avarice.
- heimatau 7y ago
  I do think this is closer to the truth even though you're being downvoted. I worked in the industry for about a year and I'm working on starting up my own company now. If you removed the 30% tax credit, it would turn $3 a watt into the UK's ~$2 a watt. I know it's not that simple but it's not far from the truth. Even Tesla is trying to launch a product at $1 watt for commercial/industry clients.
- coliveira 7y ago
  The way Americans rationalize this is saying that if a business is not insanely profitable, then it is not even worth starting. In tech this manifests itself as saying that you should only create "world changing" businesses, and if you have a so-called "lifestyle" business you're seen as a loser. The reality is that these insanely profitable business can only exist when you have a deep pocketed investor as a co-owner of the business, that is, a billionaire owning a large part of the business is a necessary part of the process.
KaiserPro 7y ago
This is my thought, looking at the graph, a good dollar per watt appears to come from getting permits and such. I'm not aware of having to notify the local council or power company about installing solar (you do have to get certification before you can receive money for generation though, but I don't think that costs significant money, its more a case of proving provenance of solar panels and equipment. )

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Animats 7y ago

So why are the pictures on the site clearly of retrofits of solar panels to an existing tile roof?

barney54 7y ago
It’s a start up and just started working with manufactured housing builders.

stretchwithme 7y ago

It's always cheaper to design a feature into a product than to add it later.

jake_morrison 7y ago

Combining the roof with the solar panels seems like a win. A very large percentage of the cost of solar installation (50% last I checked) was labor. So when it's time to redo the roof on a house, you can also install solar panels. The interesting question is whether the panel lifecycle is the same as the roof lifecycle.

ckdarby 7y ago

Wish I saw more CNC style designed houses :(

zarro 7y ago

Regardless of the long term trends toward populations moving toward the city, I don't see why most newly built suburban homes after 2025 wouldn't come with a Tesla (or competitor) solar roof. The 20-50k that it would cost would just get absorbed into the mortgage and become an asset that would increase the value of the home - besides that, over the over a 30 year period, if you are able to capture even half that value in electricity savings, it becomes a no brainer as it would cost what a normal roof costs anyway. There are also the benefits of more efficient energy transmission and resiliency of micro-grids as just bonuses.