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Industrial-level deployments have dropped precipitously in price but personal-scale ones have not. It still takes two decades for home solar to pay for itself.

Industrial-level deployments have dropped precipitously in price but personal-scale ones have not. It still takes two decades for home solar to pay for itself. Portable panels for camping are about the same price they were five years ago.

ncmncm 4y ago
If you buy from Home Depot or any of the hawkers putting flyers in your mail, payback time is long. But they charge 4x the FOB price for a pallet-load.
epistasis 4y ago
Taking two decades to pay for itself depends entirely on the rate structure of the utility and the prices of the installer. Prices in the US are heavily inflated because rate regulations change dramatízale year to year, which means that the only installers that survive tend to be the ones that can dynamically expand into a market before the utility closes the market again. Which means that a huge fraction of US solar costs are actually customer acquisition costs, marketing and advertising and boots on the ground doing the hard sell to consumers. Where I live, even with super expensive installation, solar pays for itself in five years. When you say "pays for itself" does that include the cost of interest and the time value of money? If so, then you can finance the installation and still come out ahead. Even with the high price of residential solar, it's still pretty cheap compared to the cost of new transmission and distribution infrastructure, which is what utility-scale solar also requires. And utility scale solar is the cheapest energy out there. So we should find ways to make the US solar industry more efficient and cost effective for consumers, because pairing residential solar with batteries (for example in an EV) is a very cost effective future.
rapsey 4y ago
It actually costs double to install a solar roof in the US than in the EU. It takes about 5-8 years for the roof to pay for itself over here (of course depending on your location).
stephen_g 4y ago
Depends where you are. In Australia it's pretty cheap - I had 6.6kW installed for about US$4000 and it should pay off in about seven years. Would have been five or six but the feed in tariff went down - although with the massive increase in the price of coal and gas, the tariff should increase again, given the wholesale electricity cost is jumping up.

ncmncm 4y ago

If you buy from Home Depot or any of the hawkers putting flyers in your mail, payback time is long. But they charge 4x the FOB price for a pallet-load.

epistasis 4y ago

Taking two decades to pay for itself depends entirely on the rate structure of the utility and the prices of the installer. Prices in the US are heavily inflated because rate regulations change dramatízale year to year, which means that the only installers that survive tend to be the ones that can dynamically expand into a market before the utility closes the market again. Which means that a huge fraction of US solar costs are actually customer acquisition costs, marketing and advertising and boots on the ground doing the hard sell to consumers. Where I live, even with super expensive installation, solar pays for itself in five years. When you say "pays for itself" does that include the cost of interest and the time value of money? If so, then you can finance the installation and still come out ahead. Even with the high price of residential solar, it's still pretty cheap compared to the cost of new transmission and distribution infrastructure, which is what utility-scale solar also requires. And utility scale solar is the cheapest energy out there. So we should find ways to make the US solar industry more efficient and cost effective for consumers, because pairing residential solar with batteries (for example in an EV) is a very cost effective future.

rapsey 4y ago

It actually costs double to install a solar roof in the US than in the EU. It takes about 5-8 years for the roof to pay for itself over here (of course depending on your location).

stephen_g 4y ago

Depends where you are. In Australia it's pretty cheap - I had 6.6kW installed for about US$4000 and it should pay off in about seven years. Would have been five or six but the feed in tariff went down - although with the massive increase in the price of coal and gas, the tariff should increase again, given the wholesale electricity cost is jumping up.