5 ms·

Most renters shut out of energy-saving upgrades – study

74 points by hhs 9mo ago

antonymoose 9mo ago
Considering that tax credits cover only 1/3rd of the materials (not the installation) and have hard caps of 1,500 it should come as no surprise that landlords don’t care and won’t cover improvements. They’re not paying the power or suffering the cold at the end of the day.
- Aurornis 9mo ago
  And the tenants have to be moved out of the unit and housed somewhere else during some of these renovations, which is going to cost the landlord far more than $1500. This article is silly.
  - acheron 9mo ago
    Most Internet commentary about landlords and renting is very silly, yes.
- cptskippy 9mo ago
  This is pretty much it. Most renters are paying for utilities and don't realize why they're so high. My kid has been renting the same apartment while in school and their fridge failed over the summer. She manages the utilities and mentioned that their power bill halved as a result of the replacement. She said what they were paying before didn't seem outrageous so it came as a surprise to see the newer bills were consistently half of what it had been before.
mystraline 9mo ago
[flagged]
- immibis 9mo ago
  A landlord is a parasite by definition, since they don't produce anything, and charge money for producing nothing. But they perform important functions in our society, like providing housing. Even though landlords don't actually produce housing, without landlords there would be no housing and that would suck.
  - tehjoker 9mo ago
    If there were no landlords we would have a robust public housing program. The government would build out housing then lease/sell it to the public and then they would be obligated to sell it back to the government when they finished with it - eliminating the market and preserving personal liberties to use the property.
    - tpmoney 9mo ago
      So without landlords, we'd still have landlords, they would just all be named Donald Trump?
      - tehjoker 9mo ago
        Does your landlord stand for election? That's a huge huge difference. The landlord is only out for themselves, but the government can potentially make decisions that benefit society as a whole and are rational. The basic problem in America today is an absolute lack of democratic control of the government and our capitalist class. I can go into this in some detail but it is a large digression from the topic at hand. But I will add, that even Donald Trump is afraid to directly cut popular programs, or at least has some limits.
        tpmoney 9mo ago
        > Does your landlord stand for election? Yes, every time my lease was up, I elected to stay or move. I did that multiple times for 15 years. By contrast, every time I moved, I was in the same state, so never changed governments.
ghaff 9mo ago
How many renters would even want to replace appliances, get new insulation installed, get all their lights replaced, etc.? I had a bunch of work done after a kitchen fire in my house and it did genuinely cut my electrical bill. It also cost a lot of money and is something I wouldn't have done by choice especially in a rental property.
- roughly 9mo ago
  I’ve lived in my rental for ~15 years now (rent control) - to be honest, if I’d known when I moved in how long I’d be here, I’d have paid for some upgrades. It’s not equity, but I do still live here.
  - fragmede 9mo ago
    Do you plan on moving any time soon? The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago. The second best time is now.
    - roughly 9mo ago
      Oh I know. Started tackling a couple things already, and it does make a difference. The two I really can’t do on my own that I absolutely would are replace the windows and put in solar.
      - ghaff 9mo ago
        I've had a bunch of windows replaced over time. It is expensive but some had gotten really ugly looking--in addition to being, I'm sure very inefficient. I have oil heat and have just never seen the justification for solar especially given my electrical usage and all the scammy solar stuff out there.
      - fragmede 9mo ago
        FWIW, https://indowwindows.com/ https://indowwindows.com/ (San Francisco) make window inserts that are the exact same size as the existing window, plus a wooden frame, so they look exactly like the existing windows. Mostly for keeping the exterior look of buildings in SF due to regulations, they block out sound and help with temperature control. They're pricey tho. As for solar. If you have the budget and the disaster preparedness for it, there are some camping grade solar + battery systems that aren't house-grade, but great for power outages. The systems range from small (affordable), to the 1000 Plus, consisting of a battery with 1264Wh capacity and 120 v inverter, along with 200W of solar panels. That one'll run. you $1,500.
foxglacier 9mo ago
Could be solved with more free markets. What a funny phenomenon this is: "reluctance to make even basic upgrades" -- landlords don't care because they have too much market power and aren't even attempting to compete with each other. Imagine if car makers didn't bother with fuel efficiency because buyers had almost no choice and any car is better than nothing. We'd say that market isn't functioning well. Perhaps the problem is caused by price caps so it's not worth carmakers competing, or perhaps the law limits the number of cars that can be produced so there's always a shortage. Or perhaps it's the soviet union and there's no incentive for them to improve anything because the planners haven't demanded that they do.
- tharkun__ 9mo ago
  Car makers really don't care about fuel economy and have to be made to care about it by regulations and even those they try to skirt.
  - gruez 9mo ago
    >Car makers really don't care about fuel economy and have to be made to care about it by regulations The fact that people buy EVs and hybrids at all, despite their higher upfront cost, suggests that at least some care about fuel efficiency.
    - tharkun__ 9mo ago
      Not talking about consumers. Car makers, as that's what my parent posited. "The market made car makers do fuel efficiency all by itself!". Yeah, no. Which traditional car maker actually cared about EVs before Tesla came along? (Even Toyota, which was sorta "caring about it" did not believe in going "all in" and for a very very long time would only do Hybrid and nothing more). Every other established car maker did not invest in this until "forced" by Tesla so to speak. And then spurred on by things like the EU regulations to no longer allow any non-EV new car registrations by ... was it 2035? Which I hear they're now thinking about undoing.
      - 9mo ago
Glyptodon 9mo ago
Nobody has incentives or cashflow that will change this. At best if we built more housing it's something landlords might face competitive pressure over. In which case it might change. But currently cases where someone has a choice between two equivalent rentals and can try to pick the efficient one are pretty few and far between. Most people just try to balance as low of a monthly rent payment as possible with their commute and not having to rent from a slumlord type.
- ggm 9mo ago
  You're describing a problem which regulation is designed to fix. People argue about how effective that is, and post counter intuitive outcomes, but I think the central point remains: there's little evidence a deregulated housing market fixes it either. Corporate landlords probably have more motivation to repect enforced obligations. So the ultimate corporate landlord is some level of government, and then we've arrived where I think we should be: public housing is a right.
  - lostlogin 9mo ago
    New Zealand recently brought in some minimum requirements around insulation. It’s a low bar, and even lower when you know how poor the average house quality is within New Zealand. The average European house is ludicrous hot inside compared to NZ housing.
- ortusdux 9mo ago
  In my area you can request the last 12 months of utility costs for most properties. It doesn't reflect everything, but the transparency is helpful.
robotburrito 9mo ago
Most times your land lord won't let you make anything nicer. They basically want the place to degrade around you so that they can low key force you to leave causing you to abandon your rent control.
- Aurornis 9mo ago
  Most rentals across the US and even the world don't have rent control. You've highlighted one of the downsides of rent control: It changes the incentive structure dramatically in ways that aren't always a win for the tenant. I had a friend in a rent controlled apartment who would quietly do things like upgrade his appliances and fix things because his rent was so low he didn't want to rock the boat for any reason at all.
- groundzeros2015 9mo ago
  Wouldn’t this be a negative unforeseen side effect of the rent control?
jmyeet 9mo ago
There is always going to be an adversarial relationship between landlords and renters. Make no mistake: that we allow this to happen is state violence. Why? Because we are allowing individuals and corporations to deny housing to people by raising prices to make it unaffordable. We even allow them to collude [1]. The only solution to this that demonstrably works is for the state to provide a significant amount of housing to keep the private secotr honest [2]. Everything else is just propping a system that steals from the poor to give to the already rich. [1]: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-realpage-algorithmic-pricing-scheme-harms-millions-american-renters https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s... [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41VJudBdYXY&t=7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41VJudBdYXY&t=7s
- ChadNauseam 9mo ago
  What I don't get is what are you really supposed to do if you don't want to buy a house and being a landlord is illegal? I often hear people online say that being a landlord is incredibly unethical, but I have no interest in buying a house. So I don't understand how someone is wronging me by renting me one. And I'm in a lucky situation where I probably could afford to buy a house if I wanted to. Many people could not. That said, I would obviously support the government building a large amount of high quality housing, assuming they could do it at a reasonable price.
- 7speter 9mo ago
  Why yes, those evil wallstreet adjacent millionaire landlords who may rent out their basement to keep the lights on, are evil lizard people.
jvvw 9mo ago
In the UK if you sell or rent out a house it has to have an energy certificate with a rating (specified by a letter). I'm pretty sure that you aren't allowed to rent out properties with less than a certain rating and that rating which is higher than you might expect.
- Nextgrid 9mo ago
  But surely a higher rating would generally commend higher rents meaning either way it's the landlord pocketing the savings and the tenant is no better?
- jen20 9mo ago
  Currently “E” without an exemption.
  - maccard 9mo ago
    It’s changing to C in a few years. But the ratings are odd - only fully completed items count so if you insulate the rooms as you go, you won’t get the EPC benefit until everything has been completed. There’s no partial credit
- maccard 9mo ago
  This is true. The rating is actually pretty low though - they only need to be a band E on the EPC. It’s soon to be C though. One of the… problems with that is that a lot of our housing stock is very old, and honestly not ever going to reach that. The grading don’t take partial improvements into account so if you do internal wall insulation on half your house it means absolutely nothing on the EPC. The means to get to C for older properties basically require insulation (not practical in pre cavity wall buildings without an ungodly amount of work) and renewable installs. That’s not to say we shouldn’t try but it’s a tall order to ask anyone to rip everything back to brick and build cavity walls in th pre 1930 stock (which there’s absolutely craploads of)
reactordev 9mo ago
This is a silly study. Home efficiency matters to people who own a home, not renters. Renters only care about making rent and being able to eat. They don’t have the luxury of thinking about energy saving appliances when the landlord hasn’t fixed the appliances they do have. Renters are trapped with capped wages and increasing rents.
- mayneack 9mo ago
  Renters often pay for utilities.
  - AlotOfReading 9mo ago
    It's quite common for utilities like water and gas to be shared, where the renter is billed proportionally to the usage of the entire block/rental complex. Plus, people generally aren't doing chores or using appliances unnecessarily. That means it's difficult to find ways to save meaningful amounts of energy other than adjusting the thermostat. Most household energy use outside heating /cooling comes from the appliances they can't upgrade, so the alternatives are quality of life issues like fewer showers and less laundry.
  - reactordev 9mo ago
    Yes, what they don’t do is pay for a new fridge. Or energy efficient windows.
    - lou1306 9mo ago
      Yes, because it's silly to pay for things that effectively won't belong to them anymore if they move/get kicked out.
      - compsciphd 9mo ago
        not silly if they have confidence that they will live in the place long enough to get paid back (and more). shortsighted to think otherwise. I've renovated kitchens in apartments Ive lived in with coordination with the landlord (when I had confidence that I was going to be there 3+ years, with likelihood of 5+) as the $10k or so it cost me when amortized over a 36 month period came out to a few hundred a year, and finding an equivalent place with such a kitchen would have cost me significantly more in the area. While I can't say its universally true (many landlords are just as shortsighted as renters), good landlords will be happy to give certainty to good tenants who want to take care and improve their unit in manner that the landlord is happy with. I had an apartment in NYC that over a 10+ year period my landlord never raised my rent, because I never complained, paid my rent on time and took care of the place in a manner that enabled him to rent it for even more than he could have otherwise after I moved out. Part of this is NYC rules (rent stabilization and other rent rules would have controlled how much he could have raised it anyways and also provided me certainty), but also partly that good tenants are worth their weight in gold.
purplecats 9mo ago
its all a scam. every year everything gets more energy efficient but the cost of energy gets jacked up so u never win
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- gruez 9mo ago
  >so u never win So why do anything to improve rental units? Make them slightly better than a corrugated steel shack? No thanks, that just means the landlord can market it as a "luxury condo" and charge me up the ass for it. I'll live in my steel shack thank you very much.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
ww520 9mo ago
There's the plug-in solar panel system. It's very easy to install. It's suitable for renters to add supplemental solar power with little cost and effort. It's portable enough that renters can bring them to their next rentals. It's very popular in Germany, with several million units installed. They call it balcony solar panel. People hang the panels on their balconies in apartment buildings. Germany allows up to 800-watt systems. It's a very simple system, a solar panel coupled with a micro inverter that converts DC to AC power. It is plugged into a regular wall outlet to provide additional power to the home. The added power is an additional source of electricity in addition to the grid. Any electrical devices drawing power from the circuit draw from the closet source first (due to Kirchhoff's Law), i.e. from the solar panel, then any additional need will be drawn from the farther away grid. The micro inverter needs to be UL 16741 compliant for anti-islanding protection, to shut off in case the grid has shut power down, so that the solar panel won't back feed power into the grid. In U.S., Utah has already passed a law to allow plug-in solar systems for up to 1200 watts without permit requirement and allowing back-feed into the grid. A few other states are considering. There are limits to the power fed into a circuit. Normal household electrical wire can handle up to 15amp (1800 watts on 120V) of electric load. The plug-in power from the solar panels should not exceed the limit. This means the power generated is meant to supplement the household power need rather than completely covering it. Any reduction from the grid helps. I talked to my city's (in California) building department. They haven't heard of it and need time to do research. The building inspector says that as long as the solar panels are not modifying the structure of the building (on roof or on wall), they don't care. They said putting the panels on the ground in the yard is fine.
- throwaway81523 9mo ago
  > balcony solar That's swell if you have a balcony facing the sun and enough space for 4m2 of solar without blocking your neighbors' sun. In my unit for example, it's completely infeasible.
  - sgerenser 9mo ago
    These also aren’t allowed by code anywhere in the U.S. AFAIK.

74 points by hhs 9mo ago

Considering that tax credits cover only 1/3rd of the materials (not the installation) and have hard caps of 1,500 it should come as no surprise that landlords don’t care and won’t cover improvements. They’re not paying the power or suffering the cold at the end of the day.

Aurornis 9mo ago
And the tenants have to be moved out of the unit and housed somewhere else during some of these renovations, which is going to cost the landlord far more than $1500. This article is silly.
- acheron 9mo ago
  Most Internet commentary about landlords and renting is very silly, yes.
cptskippy 9mo ago
This is pretty much it. Most renters are paying for utilities and don't realize why they're so high. My kid has been renting the same apartment while in school and their fridge failed over the summer. She manages the utilities and mentioned that their power bill halved as a result of the replacement. She said what they were paying before didn't seem outrageous so it came as a surprise to see the newer bills were consistently half of what it had been before.

mystraline 9mo ago

[flagged]

immibis 9mo ago
A landlord is a parasite by definition, since they don't produce anything, and charge money for producing nothing. But they perform important functions in our society, like providing housing. Even though landlords don't actually produce housing, without landlords there would be no housing and that would suck.
- tehjoker 9mo ago
  If there were no landlords we would have a robust public housing program. The government would build out housing then lease/sell it to the public and then they would be obligated to sell it back to the government when they finished with it - eliminating the market and preserving personal liberties to use the property.
  - tpmoney 9mo ago
    So without landlords, we'd still have landlords, they would just all be named Donald Trump?
    - tehjoker 9mo ago
      Does your landlord stand for election? That's a huge huge difference. The landlord is only out for themselves, but the government can potentially make decisions that benefit society as a whole and are rational. The basic problem in America today is an absolute lack of democratic control of the government and our capitalist class. I can go into this in some detail but it is a large digression from the topic at hand. But I will add, that even Donald Trump is afraid to directly cut popular programs, or at least has some limits.
      - tpmoney 9mo ago
        > Does your landlord stand for election? Yes, every time my lease was up, I elected to stay or move. I did that multiple times for 15 years. By contrast, every time I moved, I was in the same state, so never changed governments.

ghaff 9mo ago

How many renters would even want to replace appliances, get new insulation installed, get all their lights replaced, etc.? I had a bunch of work done after a kitchen fire in my house and it did genuinely cut my electrical bill. It also cost a lot of money and is something I wouldn't have done by choice especially in a rental property.

roughly 9mo ago
I’ve lived in my rental for ~15 years now (rent control) - to be honest, if I’d known when I moved in how long I’d be here, I’d have paid for some upgrades. It’s not equity, but I do still live here.
- fragmede 9mo ago
  Do you plan on moving any time soon? The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago. The second best time is now.
  - roughly 9mo ago
    Oh I know. Started tackling a couple things already, and it does make a difference. The two I really can’t do on my own that I absolutely would are replace the windows and put in solar.
    - ghaff 9mo ago
      I've had a bunch of windows replaced over time. It is expensive but some had gotten really ugly looking--in addition to being, I'm sure very inefficient. I have oil heat and have just never seen the justification for solar especially given my electrical usage and all the scammy solar stuff out there.
    - fragmede 9mo ago
      FWIW, https://indowwindows.com/ https://indowwindows.com/ (San Francisco) make window inserts that are the exact same size as the existing window, plus a wooden frame, so they look exactly like the existing windows. Mostly for keeping the exterior look of buildings in SF due to regulations, they block out sound and help with temperature control. They're pricey tho. As for solar. If you have the budget and the disaster preparedness for it, there are some camping grade solar + battery systems that aren't house-grade, but great for power outages. The systems range from small (affordable), to the 1000 Plus, consisting of a battery with 1264Wh capacity and 120 v inverter, along with 200W of solar panels. That one'll run. you $1,500.

foxglacier 9mo ago

Could be solved with more free markets. What a funny phenomenon this is: "reluctance to make even basic upgrades" -- landlords don't care because they have too much market power and aren't even attempting to compete with each other. Imagine if car makers didn't bother with fuel efficiency because buyers had almost no choice and any car is better than nothing. We'd say that market isn't functioning well. Perhaps the problem is caused by price caps so it's not worth carmakers competing, or perhaps the law limits the number of cars that can be produced so there's always a shortage. Or perhaps it's the soviet union and there's no incentive for them to improve anything because the planners haven't demanded that they do.

tharkun__ 9mo ago
Car makers really don't care about fuel economy and have to be made to care about it by regulations and even those they try to skirt.
- gruez 9mo ago
  >Car makers really don't care about fuel economy and have to be made to care about it by regulations The fact that people buy EVs and hybrids at all, despite their higher upfront cost, suggests that at least some care about fuel efficiency.
  - tharkun__ 9mo ago
    Not talking about consumers. Car makers, as that's what my parent posited. "The market made car makers do fuel efficiency all by itself!". Yeah, no. Which traditional car maker actually cared about EVs before Tesla came along? (Even Toyota, which was sorta "caring about it" did not believe in going "all in" and for a very very long time would only do Hybrid and nothing more). Every other established car maker did not invest in this until "forced" by Tesla so to speak. And then spurred on by things like the EU regulations to no longer allow any non-EV new car registrations by ... was it 2035? Which I hear they're now thinking about undoing.
    - 9mo ago

Glyptodon 9mo ago

Nobody has incentives or cashflow that will change this. At best if we built more housing it's something landlords might face competitive pressure over. In which case it might change. But currently cases where someone has a choice between two equivalent rentals and can try to pick the efficient one are pretty few and far between. Most people just try to balance as low of a monthly rent payment as possible with their commute and not having to rent from a slumlord type.

ggm 9mo ago
You're describing a problem which regulation is designed to fix. People argue about how effective that is, and post counter intuitive outcomes, but I think the central point remains: there's little evidence a deregulated housing market fixes it either. Corporate landlords probably have more motivation to repect enforced obligations. So the ultimate corporate landlord is some level of government, and then we've arrived where I think we should be: public housing is a right.
- lostlogin 9mo ago
  New Zealand recently brought in some minimum requirements around insulation. It’s a low bar, and even lower when you know how poor the average house quality is within New Zealand. The average European house is ludicrous hot inside compared to NZ housing.
ortusdux 9mo ago
In my area you can request the last 12 months of utility costs for most properties. It doesn't reflect everything, but the transparency is helpful.

robotburrito 9mo ago

Most times your land lord won't let you make anything nicer. They basically want the place to degrade around you so that they can low key force you to leave causing you to abandon your rent control.

Aurornis 9mo ago
Most rentals across the US and even the world don't have rent control. You've highlighted one of the downsides of rent control: It changes the incentive structure dramatically in ways that aren't always a win for the tenant. I had a friend in a rent controlled apartment who would quietly do things like upgrade his appliances and fix things because his rent was so low he didn't want to rock the boat for any reason at all.
groundzeros2015 9mo ago
Wouldn’t this be a negative unforeseen side effect of the rent control?

jmyeet 9mo ago

There is always going to be an adversarial relationship between landlords and renters. Make no mistake: that we allow this to happen is state violence. Why? Because we are allowing individuals and corporations to deny housing to people by raising prices to make it unaffordable. We even allow them to collude [1]. The only solution to this that demonstrably works is for the state to provide a significant amount of housing to keep the private secotr honest [2]. Everything else is just propping a system that steals from the poor to give to the already rich. [1]: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-realpage-algorithmic-pricing-scheme-harms-millions-american-renters https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s... [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41VJudBdYXY&t=7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41VJudBdYXY&t=7s

ChadNauseam 9mo ago
What I don't get is what are you really supposed to do if you don't want to buy a house and being a landlord is illegal? I often hear people online say that being a landlord is incredibly unethical, but I have no interest in buying a house. So I don't understand how someone is wronging me by renting me one. And I'm in a lucky situation where I probably could afford to buy a house if I wanted to. Many people could not. That said, I would obviously support the government building a large amount of high quality housing, assuming they could do it at a reasonable price.
7speter 9mo ago
Why yes, those evil wallstreet adjacent millionaire landlords who may rent out their basement to keep the lights on, are evil lizard people.

jvvw 9mo ago

In the UK if you sell or rent out a house it has to have an energy certificate with a rating (specified by a letter). I'm pretty sure that you aren't allowed to rent out properties with less than a certain rating and that rating which is higher than you might expect.

Nextgrid 9mo ago
But surely a higher rating would generally commend higher rents meaning either way it's the landlord pocketing the savings and the tenant is no better?
jen20 9mo ago
Currently “E” without an exemption.
- maccard 9mo ago
  It’s changing to C in a few years. But the ratings are odd - only fully completed items count so if you insulate the rooms as you go, you won’t get the EPC benefit until everything has been completed. There’s no partial credit
maccard 9mo ago
This is true. The rating is actually pretty low though - they only need to be a band E on the EPC. It’s soon to be C though. One of the… problems with that is that a lot of our housing stock is very old, and honestly not ever going to reach that. The grading don’t take partial improvements into account so if you do internal wall insulation on half your house it means absolutely nothing on the EPC. The means to get to C for older properties basically require insulation (not practical in pre cavity wall buildings without an ungodly amount of work) and renewable installs. That’s not to say we shouldn’t try but it’s a tall order to ask anyone to rip everything back to brick and build cavity walls in th pre 1930 stock (which there’s absolutely craploads of)

reactordev 9mo ago

This is a silly study. Home efficiency matters to people who own a home, not renters. Renters only care about making rent and being able to eat. They don’t have the luxury of thinking about energy saving appliances when the landlord hasn’t fixed the appliances they do have. Renters are trapped with capped wages and increasing rents.

mayneack 9mo ago
Renters often pay for utilities.
- AlotOfReading 9mo ago
  It's quite common for utilities like water and gas to be shared, where the renter is billed proportionally to the usage of the entire block/rental complex. Plus, people generally aren't doing chores or using appliances unnecessarily. That means it's difficult to find ways to save meaningful amounts of energy other than adjusting the thermostat. Most household energy use outside heating /cooling comes from the appliances they can't upgrade, so the alternatives are quality of life issues like fewer showers and less laundry.
- reactordev 9mo ago
  Yes, what they don’t do is pay for a new fridge. Or energy efficient windows.
  - lou1306 9mo ago
    Yes, because it's silly to pay for things that effectively won't belong to them anymore if they move/get kicked out.
    - compsciphd 9mo ago
      not silly if they have confidence that they will live in the place long enough to get paid back (and more). shortsighted to think otherwise. I've renovated kitchens in apartments Ive lived in with coordination with the landlord (when I had confidence that I was going to be there 3+ years, with likelihood of 5+) as the $10k or so it cost me when amortized over a 36 month period came out to a few hundred a year, and finding an equivalent place with such a kitchen would have cost me significantly more in the area. While I can't say its universally true (many landlords are just as shortsighted as renters), good landlords will be happy to give certainty to good tenants who want to take care and improve their unit in manner that the landlord is happy with. I had an apartment in NYC that over a 10+ year period my landlord never raised my rent, because I never complained, paid my rent on time and took care of the place in a manner that enabled him to rent it for even more than he could have otherwise after I moved out. Part of this is NYC rules (rent stabilization and other rent rules would have controlled how much he could have raised it anyways and also provided me certainty), but also partly that good tenants are worth their weight in gold.

purplecats 9mo ago

its all a scam. every year everything gets more energy efficient but the cost of energy gets jacked up so u never win

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
gruez 9mo ago
>so u never win So why do anything to improve rental units? Make them slightly better than a corrugated steel shack? No thanks, that just means the landlord can market it as a "luxury condo" and charge me up the ass for it. I'll live in my steel shack thank you very much.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

ww520 9mo ago

There's the plug-in solar panel system. It's very easy to install. It's suitable for renters to add supplemental solar power with little cost and effort. It's portable enough that renters can bring them to their next rentals. It's very popular in Germany, with several million units installed. They call it balcony solar panel. People hang the panels on their balconies in apartment buildings. Germany allows up to 800-watt systems. It's a very simple system, a solar panel coupled with a micro inverter that converts DC to AC power. It is plugged into a regular wall outlet to provide additional power to the home. The added power is an additional source of electricity in addition to the grid. Any electrical devices drawing power from the circuit draw from the closet source first (due to Kirchhoff's Law), i.e. from the solar panel, then any additional need will be drawn from the farther away grid. The micro inverter needs to be UL 16741 compliant for anti-islanding protection, to shut off in case the grid has shut power down, so that the solar panel won't back feed power into the grid. In U.S., Utah has already passed a law to allow plug-in solar systems for up to 1200 watts without permit requirement and allowing back-feed into the grid. A few other states are considering. There are limits to the power fed into a circuit. Normal household electrical wire can handle up to 15amp (1800 watts on 120V) of electric load. The plug-in power from the solar panels should not exceed the limit. This means the power generated is meant to supplement the household power need rather than completely covering it. Any reduction from the grid helps. I talked to my city's (in California) building department. They haven't heard of it and need time to do research. The building inspector says that as long as the solar panels are not modifying the structure of the building (on roof or on wall), they don't care. They said putting the panels on the ground in the yard is fine.

throwaway81523 9mo ago
> balcony solar That's swell if you have a balcony facing the sun and enough space for 4m2 of solar without blocking your neighbors' sun. In my unit for example, it's completely infeasible.
- sgerenser 9mo ago
  These also aren’t allowed by code anywhere in the U.S. AFAIK.