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I really hope at some point we can stop having every conversation about renewable and electrifying tech be about "payback". Especially among people who can affo

I really hope at some point we can stop having every conversation about renewable and electrifying tech be about "payback". Especially among people who can afford to take some loss on it for the greater good (ie. much of the HN demographic). There are benefits besides money from removing your dependencies on fossil fuels. The fact that it's even in the ballpark of breaking even is a very nice side effect, but it's not the point.

jonnycomputer 5y ago
In rural, very red California, solar is installed everywhere. I doubt its being done because of climate change, or "for the environment". Its the payback.
- stormbrew 5y ago
  I'm not sure why you think I said anything that contradicts this.
- jabroni_salad 5y ago
  Personal electricity generation can be surprisingly diverse. You have hippie homesteaders, catastrophe bunker preppers, libertarians who just want to be off grid because they want to, etc. Environmentalists are just one of many groups that solar sellers are targeting. Also, if you are extremely remote, getting the grid built out to you might cost tens of thousands, to the point that the up-front costs of nongrid power are even more palatable.
- hnburnsy 5y ago
  Could unreliability from their power provider be a bigger factor? No one wants to suffer rotating blackouts and have their freezer food spoil or miss meetings when working from home.
  - SubiculumCode 5y ago
    Everyone seems convinced Californian's are all suffering from blackouts all the time. I'm in Sac area, and I've only experienced one in the last three years, and it was just a few hours.
    - hnburnsy 5y ago
      Thanks that is good to know. PG&E put out some stats... System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI). This index is based on the amount of time the average PG&E customer experiences a sustained outage (being without power for more than five minutes) in a given year. In 2020, the PG&E SAIDI was about 153.2 minutes per customer. System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI). This metric represents the number of times the average PG&E customer experiences a sustained outage in a given year. In 2020, the PG&E SAIFI was about 1.179, or slightly more than one per customer. Customer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI). This index represents the average restoration time when customers are impacted by a sustained outage. It is determined by dividing SAIDI by SAIFI. In 2020, the PG&E CAIDI was 130.0 minutes. Momentary Average Interruption Frequency Index (MAIFI). This index is based on the number of times the average customer is interrupted by Momentary Outage events each year. Momentary Outage events are outages that last 5 minutes or less. In 2020, the PG&E MAIFI was 1.317 per customer. https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/outages/planning-and-preparedness/safety-and-preparedness/grid-reliability/electric-reliability-reports/electric-reliability-reports.page https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/outages/planning-and-p...
  - jandrese 5y ago
    Unless you install a fairly pricey battery system in addition to the solar array it doesn't help with blackouts at all. When the grid goes down the inverter shuts off and the whole system produces no power. Adding the battery increases the payback window, often adding 50-100% to the hardware costs of the install. Plus they are in very short supply currently, so including a battery in your build may push it back several months.
  - jonnycomputer 5y ago
    These are exaggerated. Not wide spread.
Syonyk 5y ago
Ok. Can you agree that it should at least be an improvement in carbon emissions? Grid tied solar often manages this, though exceedingly poor panel utilization as in the article typically won't. By the time you start adding batteries, you're unlikely to be net carbon negative during the system life. It's hard to get solid numbers for modern battery construction, though. They tend to be trade secret sort of values.
- stormbrew 5y ago
  Do you think I wouldn't agree with that? What a weird thing to ask. I'm literally saying "the conversation should be dominated by the long term benefits rather than your wallet." That means ghg. A lot of this depends a lot on where you live and what your energy mix is to begin with, so there's no one size fits all answer. My issue isn't with any of these specifics though, it's that the conversation is always dominated entirely by "will it result in me paying less in the short term?" which is exactly the kind of short term thinking that's gotten us into this mess. Anyways, I think it's too early for widespread use of battery systems, for sure. I'm also personally not keen to put a giant fire hazard into my house or garage if I don't have to. I think the tech for solar and the tech for batteries are on similar but offset curves, where battery storage for an entire home just isn't quite there yet like panels are.
- Tade0 5y ago
  > By the time you start adding batteries, you're unlikely to be net carbon negative during the system life. Batteries are around 100kg of CO2 per kWh of capacity on a really dirty grid (China). So after the usual 2000 cycles a LiFePO4 battery can stand it will amount to around 50g of CO2 per kWh delivered (or 60g taking into account losses). Solar panels are 45-80g per kWh so worst case scenario you're doubling the system's footprint if you're going for 1 hour of full capacity.
losvedir 5y ago
Along these lines, as someone in the demographic you mention, I was just thinking about this the other day, about whether replacing my HVAC system, which is on its last legs, with a heat pump system would be good for the environment, even if the payback is not really there. But given where I live, I wasn't actually sure if it is net good for the environment. But resources are kind of hard to find. Is there a good list of things you could consider that would be environmentally helpful upgrades to your home? Heat pump, solar, electric car, native plant garden, the latest and greatest in insulation, that sort of thing?
- turtlebits 5y ago
  I "augmented" my HVAC system by putting a heat pump (mini split) in my living room. Mainly because with heat wave in Seattle, I wanted cooling, also it was relatively inexpensive. (The unit was ~$850 USD, it heats and cools, is more efficient. I installed it myself with $150 in tools).
- stormbrew 5y ago
  I don't really consider myself an expert, honestly. Part of my frustration with the bent of this kind of conversation is how hard it makes it to really suss out answers to these kinds of questions honestly. That said, I live in an area where most home heating is done by natural gas delivered to homes and installed a heat pump last year. I had a lot of trouble finding an hvac company that would do it because it's still quite uncommon where I live, and even they had a lot of misinformation about it. I had a lot of reasons for doing this both related and unrelated to climate change: - The heat dome demonstrated that our house, which is relatively new and built to modern standards so is designed to soak up heat like a sponge, could not be comfortable without AC in a summer like that, of which I expect many more in the future. - If I was getting an AC anyways, there's literally no reason not to have a heat pump and use it for heating in the milder months and reduce my direct use of gas to only when it's absolutely necessary (ie. the last few weeks where we've had a shockingly long cold snap). - And if I was going to run AC I should absolutely have solar as well so I'm not using grid energy to power it (where I live grid energy is very much dominated by coal and natural gas, though coal is thankfully reducing quickly). - Even though the energy mix is mostly GHG-emitting where I live, down to some specific temperature (probably around -10 to -15C with the expensive heat pump I got), a heat pump simply uses far less electric energy than an equivalent amount of gas burned in the house. It's quite a big difference. It doesn't look like it because electricity is priced much higher per kWh-equivalent than gas. But I think there's a lot of more complicated things people 'should' do as well? Since my house is new, the trees on the lot are quite small so provide very little shade in summer. Hopefully this improves as they grow, and maybe we'll plant some more. We're also probably going to install awnings on the windows that are more or less positioned to block direct sunlight in the summer and let it through in the winter. Generally finding ways to passively heat and cool your house is the best thing you can possibly do and even though I'm doing the above as part of electrifying, I plan to do a lot more of the other sorts of things as well.
parkingrift 5y ago
You can't expect people en masse to selflessly lose money. If you want a greener planet, support nuclear.
- stormbrew 5y ago
  Ok, I do. Congrats. My "support" though is doing very little against inertia, because unlike solar on my own roof I can't unilaterally cause a nuclear plant to be built. Let me know if you invent a safe back yard nuclear plant and maybe I'll install one. I also didn't say anything about what I expect "people en masse" to do. You'd think I shot someone's dog when all I did was say "maybe we could talk about something other than money?"
- iso1210 5y ago
  Nuclear costs more than solar I'm afraid. Should have been building it 20 years ago. The time and money it takes to get a new nuclear plant up is meaningless now, just put down solar and wind
ljhsiung 5y ago
I definitely share your opinion. I do think those more fortunate should put less weight on one's "wallet" and be "good samaritans". But I don't think that's a good solution to invoke the widespread change necessary for the environment. Consider a similar "tragedy of the commons" externality-- air pollution. LA smog was quite infamously disastrous for decades. This was not fixed by "good Samaritans" trailblazing, but rather regulation enabled by the Clean Air Act, in which California was especially liberal in using-- car smog checks, centralized landfills, catalytic cracker carbon controls, etc. This was, in my opinion, wildly successful. Just look around LA. It's not the hellhole it once was. But these controls were, and still are, mildly unpopular [1]. The point I want to make is this-- change will not happen with single trailblazers e.g. the HN demographic. It has to happen with widespread change. That can either happen top down (e.g. air pollution) or bottoms up (e.g. making costs/revenues break even). I personally don't think a top-down approach will ever happen in today's political climate. Thus, the reality is, we need a hyper-focus on making breakeven. Because that's the reality of the vast majority of people, not just the HN community. [1]: https://publicintegrity.org/environment/a-california-regulators-curious-crusade-to-remake-the-clean-air-act/ https://publicintegrity.org/environment/a-california-regulat...
- stormbrew 5y ago
  I agree with pretty much everything you're saying, except your conclusion. I definitely see the value as a way to sell solar. And I agree with it. I think many people will only do it if it makes financial sense. But I don't think that means it needs to be the only carrot or stick. I don't think we really have time to pretend that only One Simple Pitch will get us there. Nor do I think it means that the conversations about it need to be so thoroughly dominated by it. I'm not talking about the OP here, I'm talking about this thread, on which nearly every top level post is just someone declaring whether solar breaks even for them or not. I don't think this is terribly useful dialog, and it makes it very hard to talk about anything else.

jonnycomputer 5y ago

In rural, very red California, solar is installed everywhere. I doubt its being done because of climate change, or "for the environment". Its the payback.

stormbrew 5y ago
I'm not sure why you think I said anything that contradicts this.
jabroni_salad 5y ago
Personal electricity generation can be surprisingly diverse. You have hippie homesteaders, catastrophe bunker preppers, libertarians who just want to be off grid because they want to, etc. Environmentalists are just one of many groups that solar sellers are targeting. Also, if you are extremely remote, getting the grid built out to you might cost tens of thousands, to the point that the up-front costs of nongrid power are even more palatable.
hnburnsy 5y ago
Could unreliability from their power provider be a bigger factor? No one wants to suffer rotating blackouts and have their freezer food spoil or miss meetings when working from home.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  Everyone seems convinced Californian's are all suffering from blackouts all the time. I'm in Sac area, and I've only experienced one in the last three years, and it was just a few hours.
  - hnburnsy 5y ago
    Thanks that is good to know. PG&E put out some stats... System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI). This index is based on the amount of time the average PG&E customer experiences a sustained outage (being without power for more than five minutes) in a given year. In 2020, the PG&E SAIDI was about 153.2 minutes per customer. System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI). This metric represents the number of times the average PG&E customer experiences a sustained outage in a given year. In 2020, the PG&E SAIFI was about 1.179, or slightly more than one per customer. Customer Average Interruption Duration Index (CAIDI). This index represents the average restoration time when customers are impacted by a sustained outage. It is determined by dividing SAIDI by SAIFI. In 2020, the PG&E CAIDI was 130.0 minutes. Momentary Average Interruption Frequency Index (MAIFI). This index is based on the number of times the average customer is interrupted by Momentary Outage events each year. Momentary Outage events are outages that last 5 minutes or less. In 2020, the PG&E MAIFI was 1.317 per customer. https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/outages/planning-and-preparedness/safety-and-preparedness/grid-reliability/electric-reliability-reports/electric-reliability-reports.page https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/outages/planning-and-p...
- jandrese 5y ago
  Unless you install a fairly pricey battery system in addition to the solar array it doesn't help with blackouts at all. When the grid goes down the inverter shuts off and the whole system produces no power. Adding the battery increases the payback window, often adding 50-100% to the hardware costs of the install. Plus they are in very short supply currently, so including a battery in your build may push it back several months.
- jonnycomputer 5y ago
  These are exaggerated. Not wide spread.

Syonyk 5y ago

Ok. Can you agree that it should at least be an improvement in carbon emissions? Grid tied solar often manages this, though exceedingly poor panel utilization as in the article typically won't. By the time you start adding batteries, you're unlikely to be net carbon negative during the system life. It's hard to get solid numbers for modern battery construction, though. They tend to be trade secret sort of values.

stormbrew 5y ago
Do you think I wouldn't agree with that? What a weird thing to ask. I'm literally saying "the conversation should be dominated by the long term benefits rather than your wallet." That means ghg. A lot of this depends a lot on where you live and what your energy mix is to begin with, so there's no one size fits all answer. My issue isn't with any of these specifics though, it's that the conversation is always dominated entirely by "will it result in me paying less in the short term?" which is exactly the kind of short term thinking that's gotten us into this mess. Anyways, I think it's too early for widespread use of battery systems, for sure. I'm also personally not keen to put a giant fire hazard into my house or garage if I don't have to. I think the tech for solar and the tech for batteries are on similar but offset curves, where battery storage for an entire home just isn't quite there yet like panels are.
Tade0 5y ago
> By the time you start adding batteries, you're unlikely to be net carbon negative during the system life. Batteries are around 100kg of CO2 per kWh of capacity on a really dirty grid (China). So after the usual 2000 cycles a LiFePO4 battery can stand it will amount to around 50g of CO2 per kWh delivered (or 60g taking into account losses). Solar panels are 45-80g per kWh so worst case scenario you're doubling the system's footprint if you're going for 1 hour of full capacity.

losvedir 5y ago

Along these lines, as someone in the demographic you mention, I was just thinking about this the other day, about whether replacing my HVAC system, which is on its last legs, with a heat pump system would be good for the environment, even if the payback is not really there. But given where I live, I wasn't actually sure if it is net good for the environment. But resources are kind of hard to find. Is there a good list of things you could consider that would be environmentally helpful upgrades to your home? Heat pump, solar, electric car, native plant garden, the latest and greatest in insulation, that sort of thing?

turtlebits 5y ago
I "augmented" my HVAC system by putting a heat pump (mini split) in my living room. Mainly because with heat wave in Seattle, I wanted cooling, also it was relatively inexpensive. (The unit was ~$850 USD, it heats and cools, is more efficient. I installed it myself with $150 in tools).
stormbrew 5y ago
I don't really consider myself an expert, honestly. Part of my frustration with the bent of this kind of conversation is how hard it makes it to really suss out answers to these kinds of questions honestly. That said, I live in an area where most home heating is done by natural gas delivered to homes and installed a heat pump last year. I had a lot of trouble finding an hvac company that would do it because it's still quite uncommon where I live, and even they had a lot of misinformation about it. I had a lot of reasons for doing this both related and unrelated to climate change: - The heat dome demonstrated that our house, which is relatively new and built to modern standards so is designed to soak up heat like a sponge, could not be comfortable without AC in a summer like that, of which I expect many more in the future. - If I was getting an AC anyways, there's literally no reason not to have a heat pump and use it for heating in the milder months and reduce my direct use of gas to only when it's absolutely necessary (ie. the last few weeks where we've had a shockingly long cold snap). - And if I was going to run AC I should absolutely have solar as well so I'm not using grid energy to power it (where I live grid energy is very much dominated by coal and natural gas, though coal is thankfully reducing quickly). - Even though the energy mix is mostly GHG-emitting where I live, down to some specific temperature (probably around -10 to -15C with the expensive heat pump I got), a heat pump simply uses far less electric energy than an equivalent amount of gas burned in the house. It's quite a big difference. It doesn't look like it because electricity is priced much higher per kWh-equivalent than gas. But I think there's a lot of more complicated things people 'should' do as well? Since my house is new, the trees on the lot are quite small so provide very little shade in summer. Hopefully this improves as they grow, and maybe we'll plant some more. We're also probably going to install awnings on the windows that are more or less positioned to block direct sunlight in the summer and let it through in the winter. Generally finding ways to passively heat and cool your house is the best thing you can possibly do and even though I'm doing the above as part of electrifying, I plan to do a lot more of the other sorts of things as well.

parkingrift 5y ago

You can't expect people en masse to selflessly lose money. If you want a greener planet, support nuclear.

stormbrew 5y ago
Ok, I do. Congrats. My "support" though is doing very little against inertia, because unlike solar on my own roof I can't unilaterally cause a nuclear plant to be built. Let me know if you invent a safe back yard nuclear plant and maybe I'll install one. I also didn't say anything about what I expect "people en masse" to do. You'd think I shot someone's dog when all I did was say "maybe we could talk about something other than money?"
iso1210 5y ago
Nuclear costs more than solar I'm afraid. Should have been building it 20 years ago. The time and money it takes to get a new nuclear plant up is meaningless now, just put down solar and wind

ljhsiung 5y ago

I definitely share your opinion. I do think those more fortunate should put less weight on one's "wallet" and be "good samaritans". But I don't think that's a good solution to invoke the widespread change necessary for the environment. Consider a similar "tragedy of the commons" externality-- air pollution. LA smog was quite infamously disastrous for decades. This was not fixed by "good Samaritans" trailblazing, but rather regulation enabled by the Clean Air Act, in which California was especially liberal in using-- car smog checks, centralized landfills, catalytic cracker carbon controls, etc. This was, in my opinion, wildly successful. Just look around LA. It's not the hellhole it once was. But these controls were, and still are, mildly unpopular [1]. The point I want to make is this-- change will not happen with single trailblazers e.g. the HN demographic. It has to happen with widespread change. That can either happen top down (e.g. air pollution) or bottoms up (e.g. making costs/revenues break even). I personally don't think a top-down approach will ever happen in today's political climate. Thus, the reality is, we need a hyper-focus on making breakeven. Because that's the reality of the vast majority of people, not just the HN community. [1]: https://publicintegrity.org/environment/a-california-regulators-curious-crusade-to-remake-the-clean-air-act/ https://publicintegrity.org/environment/a-california-regulat...

stormbrew 5y ago
I agree with pretty much everything you're saying, except your conclusion. I definitely see the value as a way to sell solar. And I agree with it. I think many people will only do it if it makes financial sense. But I don't think that means it needs to be the only carrot or stick. I don't think we really have time to pretend that only One Simple Pitch will get us there. Nor do I think it means that the conversations about it need to be so thoroughly dominated by it. I'm not talking about the OP here, I'm talking about this thread, on which nearly every top level post is just someone declaring whether solar breaks even for them or not. I don't think this is terribly useful dialog, and it makes it very hard to talk about anything else.