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One thing proponents of ideas like these miss is Solar is very geographical - this is clearly a good idea for California, West Texas and American South West - b

One thing proponents of ideas like these miss is Solar is very geographical - this is clearly a good idea for California, West Texas and American South West - but pretty much bad idea for the rest of the USA. Again, Solar panels do not grow on trees and their manufacturing process is chemically intensive. So, it is in the best interest of every one, that Solar PVs are deployed where they return both economic and environmental value. Again -- here is the link to Global Solar Atlas -- https://globalsolaratlas.info/ https://globalsolaratlas.info/ the areas in the Red is where you want to deploy PVs. Other places not so much.

ben_w 7y ago
Counterpoint: there is a lot of PV in the pale green of Germany and south England. It works well in a lot more places than most people realise.
- thedance 7y ago
  Germany doesn’t have a housing crisis. The context of the mandate is that USA lacks about fifteen million houses that it desperately needs. Solar power adds tens of thousands to the already-bloated cost of construction.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Don't build a house if you can't pay for the energy it's going to consume. You still come out ahead (versus utility power alone) if forced to pay for solar on the roof, and finance the system cost as part of your mortgage. Americans aren't entitled to the cheapest new construction housing possible while foisting the consequences of that on the rest of us. No different than cars being more expensive to meet higher CAFE mileage standards. Not living in a polluted hellscape costs money, who would've thought. Meta: Where did this entitlement complex come from that someone's pocketbook is more important than the air we breath?
    - thedance 7y ago
      I don’t know why you’re accusing me of having an entitled attitude. I worked to develop two of the largest solar power stations in California. And I happen to know that utility-scale solar makes a hell of a lot more sense that rooftop. If you’re worried about pollution tax the emissions, like any civilized country would. Mandating rooftop solar is way too indirect and exposes the public to corruption of the construction trades. Of course, that’s why the parties that stand to benefit from the corruption are going around the country pushing these laws.
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
        I'm not accusing you directly (that would be rude), but the idea in general when someone says "this makes housing more expensive!". It doesn't make the total cost of ownership more expensive, but it does front load some of the energy costs while still being cheaper in the long run for the homeowner. In some jurisdictions (California, the sixth largest world economy), it's been deemed a reasonable policy strategy. Utility scale makes sense, but so does rooftop solar at scale (if you can streamline soft costs; permitting is unnecessarily expensive AF in the US versus someplace like Australia). A pollution tax will take time to implement, if at all tenable in American politics. Unfortunately, indirect methods are needed at times due to the political landscape. I will take a decent solution today over the perfect solution when it's too late.
        thedance 7y ago
        California’s mandate has already been postponed over the objections of several municipal utility districts and probably will never take force in the way people who drafted it expected. I really think mandates like this are totally wrong approach. Consider that in virtually every jurisdiction in California a new home requires both solar power and a 2-car garage. If that isn’t perverse I don’t know what would be. Unlike you I consider a carbon tax almost trivially easy to implement. Way easier and more effective than construction mandates.
        toomuchtodo 7y ago
  - martin_a 7y ago
    Well, if you look from the outside, the USA seems to have a huge problem with the construction of houses in general. Start building houses out of bricks and mortar. They will last for a century, provide shelter to your children and grandchildren and in that case, 10k for a solar system do not really make much over the time.
    - thedance 7y ago
      Indeed, almost the whole of the USA housing stock is disposable hovels. The real problem is we don't replace them, we instead give them historic protections!
  - ben_w 7y ago
    First question: How much of the cost of a house is the cost of the land, and how much is the cost of the construction? Second question: if the PV is part of the construction, and not bolted on afterwards, what can you save? Third question: given that these save money and are a net economic win after a decade even when they are bolted on as an afterthought, even if the answer to #2 is “none” and even if the answer to #1 is that purchase prices go up rather than land owners can’t sell for as much, surely it’s still a win?
  - beatgammit 7y ago
    I calculated how much it would cost for me to DIY av solar setup, and it was <$10k to completely offset my electrical bill. To get a solar installer to do it, however, was ~2x the cost (best offer from multiple installers). If you're building a new house, it's going to be fairly inexpensive to install solar during the process since you can just include the permits and whatnot in the initial construction. That being said, I'm against a mandate. Solar panels look ugly, so sometimes it's preferable to have the energy company take care of it. It also requires a decent amount of additional equipment, which means certain types of additional risk. Instead of this type of legislation, at should just tax carbon and let individuals optimize. If fossil fuels become ~2x more expensive overnight, you can bet we'll transition to green energy much more quickly, but it doesn't push a specific solution. Maybe roof mount solar isn't the best option but some other centralised energy solution is (e.g. nuclear or wind).
danaris 7y ago
The idea that solar is guaranteed to be an environmental or economic net-negative in the northern US is misinformed at best, propaganda at worst. Just as a single data point, my parents, who live in rural upstate NY, installed solar panels on a portion of their (connected-to-the-house) barn's roof a few years ago. Aside from times when they're literally covered in snow (which is rare, due to their temperature), they're producing power, and even in the depths of winter they produce plenty enough to offset a huge chunk of their electric bill (and in the summer, there are days and weeks at a time where they're producing more than they need). I can't speak for the specifics of environmental impact, because I don't know the details for their panels, nor how one calculates such uneven things (how do you subtract electricity generated from the various kinds of environmental damage done to mine and refine the various rare minerals in solar panels...?), but at least economically, they're a huge win.
- marcell 7y ago
  A barn might have a lot more surface area compared to a typical home...
  - danaris 7y ago
    The area covered by the solar panels is roughly comparable to the size of one side of a typical roof in their area—and the area is mainly middle- to lower-class.
- IXxXI 7y ago
  Every energy solution in existence. Whether nuclear, steam, hydroelectric, solar or coal. Was manufactured from raw materials that were mined and refined. It makes no sense for you to single out solar as if it exclusively were the only energy source this precedent relates to.
martin_a 7y ago
> Solar is very geographical No, it's not. As already pointed out, Germany is full of PV, even very large systems. Deploying solar systems everywhere is very important to decentralize energy creation (and in the future: energy storage). The future of our electrical systems lies in decentralized systems, to minimize the need for huge infrastructure to get power from A to B and also to "harden" the grids against failures. So, it's a good idea to have solar on every house. And if it only takes care that your fridge is running on "your own" energy from the PV system that's a good start as well.

ben_w 7y ago

Counterpoint: there is a lot of PV in the pale green of Germany and south England. It works well in a lot more places than most people realise.

thedance 7y ago
Germany doesn’t have a housing crisis. The context of the mandate is that USA lacks about fifteen million houses that it desperately needs. Solar power adds tens of thousands to the already-bloated cost of construction.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Don't build a house if you can't pay for the energy it's going to consume. You still come out ahead (versus utility power alone) if forced to pay for solar on the roof, and finance the system cost as part of your mortgage. Americans aren't entitled to the cheapest new construction housing possible while foisting the consequences of that on the rest of us. No different than cars being more expensive to meet higher CAFE mileage standards. Not living in a polluted hellscape costs money, who would've thought. Meta: Where did this entitlement complex come from that someone's pocketbook is more important than the air we breath?
  - thedance 7y ago
    I don’t know why you’re accusing me of having an entitled attitude. I worked to develop two of the largest solar power stations in California. And I happen to know that utility-scale solar makes a hell of a lot more sense that rooftop. If you’re worried about pollution tax the emissions, like any civilized country would. Mandating rooftop solar is way too indirect and exposes the public to corruption of the construction trades. Of course, that’s why the parties that stand to benefit from the corruption are going around the country pushing these laws.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      I'm not accusing you directly (that would be rude), but the idea in general when someone says "this makes housing more expensive!". It doesn't make the total cost of ownership more expensive, but it does front load some of the energy costs while still being cheaper in the long run for the homeowner. In some jurisdictions (California, the sixth largest world economy), it's been deemed a reasonable policy strategy. Utility scale makes sense, but so does rooftop solar at scale (if you can streamline soft costs; permitting is unnecessarily expensive AF in the US versus someplace like Australia). A pollution tax will take time to implement, if at all tenable in American politics. Unfortunately, indirect methods are needed at times due to the political landscape. I will take a decent solution today over the perfect solution when it's too late.
      - thedance 7y ago
        California’s mandate has already been postponed over the objections of several municipal utility districts and probably will never take force in the way people who drafted it expected. I really think mandates like this are totally wrong approach. Consider that in virtually every jurisdiction in California a new home requires both solar power and a 2-car garage. If that isn’t perverse I don’t know what would be. Unlike you I consider a carbon tax almost trivially easy to implement. Way easier and more effective than construction mandates.
        toomuchtodo 7y ago
- martin_a 7y ago
  Well, if you look from the outside, the USA seems to have a huge problem with the construction of houses in general. Start building houses out of bricks and mortar. They will last for a century, provide shelter to your children and grandchildren and in that case, 10k for a solar system do not really make much over the time.
  - thedance 7y ago
    Indeed, almost the whole of the USA housing stock is disposable hovels. The real problem is we don't replace them, we instead give them historic protections!
- ben_w 7y ago
  First question: How much of the cost of a house is the cost of the land, and how much is the cost of the construction? Second question: if the PV is part of the construction, and not bolted on afterwards, what can you save? Third question: given that these save money and are a net economic win after a decade even when they are bolted on as an afterthought, even if the answer to #2 is “none” and even if the answer to #1 is that purchase prices go up rather than land owners can’t sell for as much, surely it’s still a win?
- beatgammit 7y ago
  I calculated how much it would cost for me to DIY av solar setup, and it was <$10k to completely offset my electrical bill. To get a solar installer to do it, however, was ~2x the cost (best offer from multiple installers). If you're building a new house, it's going to be fairly inexpensive to install solar during the process since you can just include the permits and whatnot in the initial construction. That being said, I'm against a mandate. Solar panels look ugly, so sometimes it's preferable to have the energy company take care of it. It also requires a decent amount of additional equipment, which means certain types of additional risk. Instead of this type of legislation, at should just tax carbon and let individuals optimize. If fossil fuels become ~2x more expensive overnight, you can bet we'll transition to green energy much more quickly, but it doesn't push a specific solution. Maybe roof mount solar isn't the best option but some other centralised energy solution is (e.g. nuclear or wind).

danaris 7y ago

The idea that solar is guaranteed to be an environmental or economic net-negative in the northern US is misinformed at best, propaganda at worst. Just as a single data point, my parents, who live in rural upstate NY, installed solar panels on a portion of their (connected-to-the-house) barn's roof a few years ago. Aside from times when they're literally covered in snow (which is rare, due to their temperature), they're producing power, and even in the depths of winter they produce plenty enough to offset a huge chunk of their electric bill (and in the summer, there are days and weeks at a time where they're producing more than they need). I can't speak for the specifics of environmental impact, because I don't know the details for their panels, nor how one calculates such uneven things (how do you subtract electricity generated from the various kinds of environmental damage done to mine and refine the various rare minerals in solar panels...?), but at least economically, they're a huge win.

marcell 7y ago
A barn might have a lot more surface area compared to a typical home...
- danaris 7y ago
  The area covered by the solar panels is roughly comparable to the size of one side of a typical roof in their area—and the area is mainly middle- to lower-class.
IXxXI 7y ago
Every energy solution in existence. Whether nuclear, steam, hydroelectric, solar or coal. Was manufactured from raw materials that were mined and refined. It makes no sense for you to single out solar as if it exclusively were the only energy source this precedent relates to.

martin_a 7y ago

> Solar is very geographical No, it's not. As already pointed out, Germany is full of PV, even very large systems. Deploying solar systems everywhere is very important to decentralize energy creation (and in the future: energy storage). The future of our electrical systems lies in decentralized systems, to minimize the need for huge infrastructure to get power from A to B and also to "harden" the grids against failures. So, it's a good idea to have solar on every house. And if it only takes care that your fridge is running on "your own" energy from the PV system that's a good start as well.