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I've been working on how to bring the cost of solar down, at least for "homeowner installed DIY" systems in my area (legal, grid tie, permitted, inspected, etc)

by Syonyk 4y ago

I've been working on how to bring the cost of solar down, at least for "homeowner installed DIY" systems in my area (legal, grid tie, permitted, inspected, etc), and I'm fairly certain the latest iteration of this will come in around the $1/W range, pre-incentives. That's without labor costs, just raw material and wire costs, but it's for a 21kW ground mount A-frame system with three string inverters, and a couple hundred foot of wire run through the ground between the panels and inverters. I'm not sure how Australia does rapid shutdown (if they do), but Enphase and the requirement for per-panel shutdown devices on arrays in the US is responsible for a decent chunk of cost - somewhere on the order of $0.30/kWh. If you have lots of shading, microinverters are fine, but by NEC 2017, they're basically required (or you have to have per-panel optimizers and shutdown boxes, which add about the same cost as just going to microinverters). I don't know the exact details of it, but everyone I've talked to in the solar industry seems to feel Enphase "lobbied hard" for this particular shutdown requirement, because it's very much to their market advantage, even if it has no meaningful safety benefits in actual array failure conditions. I hate to say "Because installers think they can get people to pay," but I've also seen a lot of "around the edges" evidence that the sales commissions for solar are fairly obscene (couple grand, if not more), just "tacked on" to the price. Hey, they're interested in solar, dial the commission up, and make it look like they'll save money! Even if the assumptions embedded are simply wrong. And then, of course, there's the "solar loan" price inflation, in which your "0.99% APR" loan has a couple grand in fees up front, tacked onto the price. You can often save quite a bit by asking for the "cash price," but nobody does that out of the gate, because of course you want an expensive up front and low interest loan, right? Who wouldn't? Oh, and those loan origination fees count as install cost for the purposes of the tax credit... ;) There are a lot of things that go into it, but from my point of view, it really feels like it's a lot of "Because we can, and because we convince people to pay it" going on with the installed costs. When I can get, as a random low volume homeowner, the equipment to do solar for $1-$1.25/W, I have to wonder about the prices installers charge.

martin_a 4y ago
> $1/W range That is similar to what you'd have to pay in Germany, up to the beginning of this year. My landlord installed 30 kW of panels and a 10 kWh battery storage for around 40 k€ including all fasteners, cables etc. Installation can be done by yourself, although I think you'll have to use certified fasteners etc. for the insurance company. Connecting to the grid and checking everything once has to be done by a certified professional (electrician) once, which differs in price. Some only check systems they have installed (and therefore made money with) themselves, but that differs. Prices have obviously gone up like nothing after Russia decided to fuck everything up.
xienze 4y ago
> There are a lot of things that go into it, but from my point of view, it really feels like it's a lot of "Because we can, and because we convince people to pay it" going on with the installed costs. I think this happens a lot with anything that’s relatively expensive. I mean let’s say you could get your 21kW system down to $8K installed. A lot of people just don’t have that kind of money laying around. But they’d be more than happy to finance $12K (so 50% markup) if the monthly payment comes out OK. So basically, anything expensive has a lot of room for “value add” in the form of making it “affordable.” Solar I think is never going to be so cheap that people will generally pay for it outright, so you’re going to see a lot of this.
- Syonyk 4y ago
  > A lot of people just don’t have that kind of money laying around. Probably because they approach finances in terms of the "monthly payment, I can afford it!" solution that's so profitable to lenders. Paying 50% more for the system "so I can get monthly payments" is not a way to having any actual savings, long term. And when salestypes are playing games with the "dial-a-power-inflation-rate" knob to make your savings look amazing, it suckers some people in. Even as the power company is moving to change net metering requirements, very few salespeople seem to ever bother mentioning that you're unlikely to actually see 25 years of kWh for kWh net metering on a new install. I don't run in particularly high income circles, but I do run in quite frugal circles, and the people I've been helping out with solar installs are, in fact, just buying things cash (after scrounging around for the best deals). I've been able to help this process some by facilitating some bulk purchases (the last order was 100x 72 cell panels, we ordered enough to be under $0.50/W on them), and I've traded some panels and other equipment for labor on various things as well ("I'll pay for the materials, pay you in inverters or something for the labor"), but... loans just aren't how any of the people I know out here (rural mountain west farm country) work.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Then build a 'solar co-op', co-ops seem more popular in farming communities than cities. In sub-urban and more urban areas people don't tend to work together, hence take out loans on things like this. Of course at the same time, you're assuming power prices go down, or even remain stable at their current price over time, which may or may not happen. In Texas our bills have jumped after the great freeze debacle.

by Syonyk 4y ago

martin_a 4y ago

> $1/W range That is similar to what you'd have to pay in Germany, up to the beginning of this year. My landlord installed 30 kW of panels and a 10 kWh battery storage for around 40 k€ including all fasteners, cables etc. Installation can be done by yourself, although I think you'll have to use certified fasteners etc. for the insurance company. Connecting to the grid and checking everything once has to be done by a certified professional (electrician) once, which differs in price. Some only check systems they have installed (and therefore made money with) themselves, but that differs. Prices have obviously gone up like nothing after Russia decided to fuck everything up.

xienze 4y ago

> There are a lot of things that go into it, but from my point of view, it really feels like it's a lot of "Because we can, and because we convince people to pay it" going on with the installed costs. I think this happens a lot with anything that’s relatively expensive. I mean let’s say you could get your 21kW system down to $8K installed. A lot of people just don’t have that kind of money laying around. But they’d be more than happy to finance $12K (so 50% markup) if the monthly payment comes out OK. So basically, anything expensive has a lot of room for “value add” in the form of making it “affordable.” Solar I think is never going to be so cheap that people will generally pay for it outright, so you’re going to see a lot of this.

Syonyk 4y ago
> A lot of people just don’t have that kind of money laying around. Probably because they approach finances in terms of the "monthly payment, I can afford it!" solution that's so profitable to lenders. Paying 50% more for the system "so I can get monthly payments" is not a way to having any actual savings, long term. And when salestypes are playing games with the "dial-a-power-inflation-rate" knob to make your savings look amazing, it suckers some people in. Even as the power company is moving to change net metering requirements, very few salespeople seem to ever bother mentioning that you're unlikely to actually see 25 years of kWh for kWh net metering on a new install. I don't run in particularly high income circles, but I do run in quite frugal circles, and the people I've been helping out with solar installs are, in fact, just buying things cash (after scrounging around for the best deals). I've been able to help this process some by facilitating some bulk purchases (the last order was 100x 72 cell panels, we ordered enough to be under $0.50/W on them), and I've traded some panels and other equipment for labor on various things as well ("I'll pay for the materials, pay you in inverters or something for the labor"), but... loans just aren't how any of the people I know out here (rural mountain west farm country) work.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Then build a 'solar co-op', co-ops seem more popular in farming communities than cities. In sub-urban and more urban areas people don't tend to work together, hence take out loans on things like this. Of course at the same time, you're assuming power prices go down, or even remain stable at their current price over time, which may or may not happen. In Texas our bills have jumped after the great freeze debacle.