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And getting cheaper everyday. A year ago I paid $8k for 7.8kw on my roof. My Dad just paid $5k for 10kw. Neither of us will ever pay for power again. Edit: W

• isoprophlex 2y ago
  ... during daytime, in summer. Or did you install a load of batteries, too?
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • testing22321 2y ago
    We use the grid like a battery, getting a one for one credit for everything we put in. So during summer/daytime we put in enough to then use up our credit in winter/nighttime. The power we put in even covers the monthly connection fee. I’m just about to hit 12 months with mine, 8 Mwh generated, never paid a bill. In our area the cost of electricity is already Confirmed to increase 5% a year forever, so this will only get better for us.
    • belorn 2y ago
      Subsidies like one for one credit are generally going away since those are prohibitively expensive and not sustainable when the ratio of renewables start to climb. It can be useful to jump start adoption, but having the government pay the true cost of the grid only moves the energy bill to the tax bill.
      • testing22321 2y ago
        When that happens, I’ll get batteries.
        • tasuki 2y ago
          You'll need a lot of batteries. It might or might not be economical, but definitely not ecological. So... depends on your values and goals.
          • bryanlarsen 2y ago
            Compared to what? Yes, batteries have ecological costs, but compared to fossil fuels it's minor. Home storage batteries will likely be LFP which are all abundant and recyclable.
            • berdario 2y ago
              A Tesla Powerwall3 (which apparently uses LFP) has a capacity of 13.5kWh A household uses up at least around 2MWh per year, most of which during the winter, if you don't use air conditioning in the summer and don't have an electric car to charge. That means you'd need around 150 (!) Powerwall 3 units. At a price of around 10k GBP each, you'd have to shell out more than 1 million pounds just for the batteries. Not to mention the space that they'd have to take, and the increased risk in having something failing. In the USA, homes are even less efficient (and depending on locale, people run AC all year round, and drive tens of thousands of kilometers on cars which also need to be powered). 2 years ago MKBHD published a video about his experience with the Tesla roof: https://youtu.be/UJeSWbR6W04 https://youtu.be/UJeSWbR6W04 In it, he revealed that his yearly power consumption is 55MWh. His battery was able to tide him over the next cloudy day, and during the winter the solar panel wouldn't ever fully recharge again. Expecting every household to be energy independent year-round via solar is patently absurd. Renewable energy tided over with massive batteries upstream? Maybe that could work, I haven't run the numbers... But you cannot hope to push that responsibility downstream to every household. Reliable baseline is still going to be necessary for the foreseeable future.
              • hiatus 2y ago
                Why would a household need enough batteries to store a year's worth of energy?
    • tasuki 2y ago
      This is unsustainable: you deliver power when its real market value is close to zero, and you want to take power out of the grid when its real market value is large.
      • morcus 2y ago
        I don't follow - where I am, peak demand seems to be in the summer during the day when everyone has air conditioning on.
        • LunaSea 2y ago
          Sure, but everyone else with solar panels will produce more than they consume at the same time as you.
        • tasuki 2y ago
          Good. Then you can live off grid actually! "Using the grid as a battery" is the unsustainable part.
          • morcus 2y ago
            That is not at all what I said. Thanks for the snark, though!
• Mistletoe 2y ago
  That’s really neat. Can you share what part of the world you live in? I’d love to do that.
  • testing22321 2y ago
    South western Canada in a very snowy mountain town.
• fullstop 2y ago
  Where are you, geographically? I'm interested in adding them but I have a large tree on the south side of my house that I really do not want to cut down.
• homebrewer 2y ago
  At current rates, 5k USD is enough to cover my electricity costs for the next 87 years. Your quoted prices still make them a non-starter in (probably) most of the world.
  • kasey_junk 2y ago
    You are paying less than $5 a month for that level of energy generation? Thats ummm extremely cheap.
    • byefruit 2y ago
      Indeed, average in CA is $260/month so $5k pays off very fast in some places.
      • kasey_junk 2y ago
        I live in a locale that has cheap energy, in fact one that makes solar a pretty bad deal. Depending on the real generation numbers of the panels it would take about 20 years for me to payback that level of generation. So saying most people have an 80 year payback period just feels wildly off (depending on the assumptions in the calculation I think that implies less than a penny per kWh generated).
  • testing22321 2y ago
    Many parts of the US have staggeringly cheap power compared to the rest of the world. Before all this our power bills were smack on $100 per month, so I’ve got about a 6.5 year pay off. Electricity here is 13 cents per kWh, but is confirmed to increase 5% per year basically forever. So my pay off is less than that.
  • enlyth 2y ago
    That's if the price of electricity doesn't change in the next 87 years The panels are also a hedge against that uncertainty and provide self reliance
    • 2y ago
• hyperhello 2y ago
  While the cost of power will be reduced, I think that's overly optimistic in the long run. Fixing the lines and power distribution systems when they wear out or get hit by weather is really the cost of your electricity bill. You can have a shared power grid, or not pay for it, but you can't have both. Even areas powered by hydro have to maintain cherry pickers for that.
  • atonse 2y ago
    So you’re saying the equivalent of managing solar panels is the same as what I’d pay monthly? That’s the first I’ve ever heard this stat. Right now I pay about $180 a month for electricity. So let’s round it to $2,000 a year. If I got solar panels, I’d be spending average of $2k a year maintaining them? There are literally no moving parts anywhere. I can imagine having to replace an inverter here and there, or maybe even a panel at some point. So my guess would be more line $200 a year average, if that.
    • s1artibartfast 2y ago
      No, I think they are saying you will be charged $2k for your grid connection and sporadic use, unless you are legally allowed to fully disconnect. They are saying the cost for grid running to your house, and for the hydro dams that provide power on a cloudy day are basically fixed. Net metering doesn't scale at population levels.
      • atonse 2y ago
        Ah yeah good point. That’s already happening with EVs. In my state in the US, since they are earning less from the gas taxes (used to pay for roads) from EV owners, they’ve raised the car registration fees for EV owners only. And at superchargers they’ve raised prices to 45c/KWh. So eventually I feel it won’t be much of a cost savings to have an EV anymore. Don’t see why it wouldn’t be the same with Solar.
• jmyeet 2y ago
  I believe solar is the future. And hydro where approppriate. China is doing massive things with hydro. The largest hydro power station in the world is the Three Gorges Dam and they've just announced building one three times as large in Tibet for $137 billion [1]. But there's an issue with solar most people don't talk about. Yes it can be variable due to weather and day/night cycles. That's obvious. But a real issue is power lines. Power lines are built to deliver power to businesses and homes. The cost of that is amortized over the electricity purchased by consumers. If people end up purchasing only half as much power due to more energy-efficient building standards, the use of solar, etc then the cost of the power lines is still the same except now it needs to be amortized over less electricity sold. This I think is why municipalities tend to limit how much solar power houses are allowed to have. How do you build and maintain a grid when houses are generally self-suficient? Should you? Is it acceptable to not have a grid? [1]: https://newatlas.com/energy/yarlung-tsangpo-hydroelectric-project-china/ https://newatlas.com/energy/yarlung-tsangpo-hydroelectric-pr...
  • lifeoflejf 2y ago
    Do you think that will just be moved to the flat connection fee? I had an apt with a gas stove, and nothing else gas. The $8/m connection fee was pretty much my entire gas bill. If it’s $50/m per building to be connected to the grid, plus demand charges, then charge that and pass along wholesale energy costs.
    • jmyeet 2y ago
      A connection fee helps but not as much as you think. You could turn that off but there are still pipes built into your house or apartment down to the street. There's still a pipe that runs down the street. There is distribution infrastructure. You might be paying for your connection separately on your bill but you're still amortizing all that downstream infrastructure. If overall usage drops, that connection fee still has to go up.
  • vikramkr 2y ago
    The real issue is politics - grids are absolutely going to be required for all the folks who can't generate enough solar on their own roofs, industry, cities, restauraunts, etc. Plus how else are you going to make use of wind, grid scale utility solar installations, etc. I have a feeling many countries in the world (especially china) will not have much trouble forcing the grid to do what's needed and subsidizing shared infrastructure with taxes as a shared societal good. If we insist on not doing that though, the grid system as is is not going to be able to financially and logistically figure out this transition, which is probably a competitive disadvantage for us long term if our own energy grid is stopping us from competing on energy because of the way it's structured.
• aweiland 2y ago
  Those are great prices. In the US we are at least double that for an equivalent system. Many solar installers/sellers here are very predatory and have been for a long time. Prices have dropped, but not by enough for it to be worth it for me.
• usaar333 2y ago
  > Neither of us will ever pay for power again. Seems optimistic? With 2 EVs and almost all electric utilities, I'm well past the ~26 KWH a day electricity your system might generate. I'm also impressed how cheap your costs are. The install cost alone in the Bay Area is going to be past that. Panels getting cheaper just don't matter much.
  • gwbas1c 2y ago
    I spent $60k for panels to support 2 EVs and a heat pump. I live in the Northeastern US. I generate ~80% of my electricity. Assuming the parent doesn't have EVs and uses gas, oil, or wood for heat, the cost makes sense. "Domestic" electricity usage, when you aren't using it for heat and cars, is quite low.
  • testing22321 2y ago
    My system has generated 50kwh on a few day. Many over 45.
• alabastervlog 2y ago
  Installed?! Just the electrician's part would be a good chunk of the $5k, where we live (East coast US) before you even get into placing the panels themselves. I keep seeing cheap panel costs with a "look, now you can afford it!" thing, but for those of us who may be handy but aren't quite willing to do high-power lines & boxes, or confident bolting steel to a roof without either killing ourselves or ruining the roof, the labor costs continue to be very high, and that part's not going down. From what I'm seeing for online "average costs for 10kw in your area" I'd hesitate to pull the trigger even if it were $5k lower than it is, which would probably be an even bigger discount than if the panels and other hardware were simply free.
  • cogman10 2y ago
    Back in the first Trump presidency, there was a 30% tariff on solar panels and equipment, which has significantly increased the price of going solar in the US. Couple that with the fact that Canada very likely has subsidies for people adopting solar power.
    • lenkite 2y ago
      Doesn't Canada have 150%+ import duty on solar panels from China ?
  • klipt 2y ago
    Probably helps the Canadian government isn't trying to tariff solar power in the hopes of promoting "beautiful clean coal" instead
    • alabastervlog 2y ago
      I mean, yes, separately that's going to put solar plans on hold for a lot of people in the US. I just meant that labor costs alone already tended to easily exceed $5k for rooftop solar projects in the US, so I was surprised at that price for that much solar.
    • bawolff 2y ago
      Canada does actually apply significant tarrifs to chinese solar panel companies https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/sima-lmsi/mif-mev/sml-eng.html https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/sima-lmsi/mif-mev/sml-eng.html
• hinkley 2y ago
  With solar the power per panel speaks a bit to the labor cost of installation. For one you are less likely to have to go to lengths to squeeze the system onto your roof and gang the correct number together.
• EnPissant 2y ago
  Meanwhile, new construction in California is required by law to include solar panels, and builders can price them however they want. You will typically see prices of $27,000 for a 5.7 kWh system. You can also choose a lease if you wish, but it's the same as buying the panels, except with a much higher interest rate than including it in your mortgage.