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Florida and most dry / sunny states having little to no solar panels is pretty damn wild. I know in florida you have janky laws stopping you, but below 10kw it
by himata4113 6mo ago
Florida and most dry / sunny states having little to no solar panels is pretty damn wild.
I know in florida you have janky laws stopping you, but below 10kw it's still relatively easy.
I have a friend who installed <10kw of solar panels and they're now 97% off-grid in hot, wet florida weather with an old low-seer AC, single-pane windows and poor roof insulation which is roughly 60% of the energy usage.
The reason they got it is actually not to save money or anything, but to have power when grid goes down after hurricanes.
- the_sleaze_ 6mo agoIn Alabama regulatory capture is such that installing solar panels attached to the grid incurs fees higher than just buying the electricity from Alabama Power.
- wing-_-nuts 6mo agoI'm interested to read a source on this if you have it
- the_sleaze_ 6mo agoSure. > Alabama Power, with approval from the Alabama PSC, charges residential solar customers a monthly fee of $5.41 per kilowatt based on the size of their solar system > Alabama Power's residential electricity rates generally range from approximately 11 to 13 cents per kWh, plus a $14.50 monthly base charge https://www.selc.org/press-release/court-allows-alabama-power-solar-fees-to-continue/ https://www.selc.org/press-release/court-allows-alabama-powe...
- wing-_-nuts 6mo agointeresting, ty for the follow up
- chung8123 6mo agoWhy not install and not attach to the grid? My understanding is if you have them attached to batteries and not feeding back it is considered off grid in some places.
- jeffbee 6mo agoI don't know anything about Alabama but in California you generally can't create off-grid developments without permission from a local authority, because it's a recognized problem that "off-grid" systems are often under specified, leading to danger for the occupants. And nobody really wants off-grid to proliferate because it would tend to concentrate the costs of the grid upon the remaining users who will be the ones least able to afford it. For a place that was two miles from a power line, I would think anyone would approve of off-grid.
- lazide 6mo agoLots of places that will get $150k+ quotes for electrical service too. At that point, off grid is a no-brainer for everyone except industrial users (and those lots aren’t useful for them anyway).
- otterpro 6mo agoIn Florida, the irony is that hurricane is the reason for not having too many solar panels. For example, Miami-Dade county requires commercial solar panel installation to have hurricane-approved solar mounts, which can withstand up to 160mph+ winds. This means installation is very costly. Even for homes, many insurance company will not insure homes with roof solar panel because of hurricane.
- himata4113 6mo agoThat's a requirement for everything, not just solar panels. The price premium for it is not that big since that's the only type of mounts you can get in florida. All modern housing is mostly category 5 rated due to the fact that hurricane damage grows exponentially as it picks up mass.
- nick_ 6mo agoDo they build a lot of cinder block homes with flat, tarred roofs?
- parpfish 6mo agoDon’t underestimate how politicized renewables have become. You’d think essentially free energy would sell itself, but any time solar comes up in a rural community there’s a whole host of bad faith “but what about x?” comments
- himata4113 6mo agoI do have a funny story to share for this specific case: A landowner wanted to run power to their land, they got quoted 100k and possibly 250k to run less than 2 miles of powerlines. The land owner fired back with the question of installing solar panels instead as it would be cheaper and free. The representitive replied with: "Look around you, there's no solar panels because they don't work." Less than 100k later, the landowner had full off-grid power via solar and a backup generator. I guess at the end of the day they saw all the sunshine around them and said: "You're right, all that sun is mine and mine alone."
- nashashmi 6mo ago2 miles of power line? 11k ft of line? For 100-250k$? About $10-23/ft? Sounds about right. I’m guessing the land was far from the right of way. And a little bit off road.
- lazide 6mo agoProbably needed a transformer off a medium voltage distribution line too. It would also likely have some expensive maintenance at times.
- enraged_camel 6mo ago>> You’d think essentially free energy would sell itself I think it would if it was indeed “essentially free”. Rooftop solar is unfortunately a racket though, and companies price-gouge like crazy and also collude to keep prices inflated.
- CalRobert 6mo ago
- vondur 6mo agoI know California has reduced the incentives to purchase solar panels. You have to also have a battery backup system which increases the costs considerably. I'm guessing we may have too much solar in the day and not enough storage for the energy created.
- applied_heat 6mo agoA partly cloudy or partly sunny day produces some insane changes in output without a battery system to smooth them out There is a limit to the size of the instantaneous increases and decreases in generation that the other generators on the grid can compensate for
- Haemm0r 6mo agoThe battery increases the upfront cost but also increases the roi very much (at least where I am living). You get way less money for feeding energy to the grid than you have to pay for withdrawing energy(as you said some utilities even limit/forbid feeding during peak hours). In my case that means (Austria): Sell 1 kWh - 0,04€ Buy 1 kWh - 0,25€
- alternatex 6mo agoDon't you have to replace the batteries every few years though? That should be factored in the equation.
- fredophile 6mo agoYou have to replace everything you own on some cadence. Eventually I'll need to replace the battery on my solar system. I'll also need to replace the panels at some point and even the roof the system is installed on. My solar system uses a Tesla powerwall. I'd expect its real world performance over time to be about the same as what you see in batteries for Tesla vehicles.
- danaw 6mo agomost batteries can last 10+ years
- balderdash 6mo agoI could have sworn that FL was like top five in solar production. Edit : it is! It’s 3rd https://seia.org/solar-state-by-state/ https://seia.org/solar-state-by-state/
- dzonga 6mo agoI have said it before in another comment - on a related post. It's wild that Southern US which gets most of the sun - has relatively little solar compared to the North - which gets less sun days - but has more solar. the damage politics has done to the US is crazy n sad.
- rootusrootus 6mo agoOptimistically, I would expect to see more panels in raw numbers up north due to necessarily overbuilding the capacity to account for fewer sun-hours per year.
- rconti 6mo agoWell also the desert southwest is still relatively sparsely populated, so rooftop solar won't show up as much on a map like this. Plus their power is cheap(er) than CA. But yeah, you'd expect some bigger utility-scale installations.
- lazide 6mo agoMany utility scale solar plants are indeed being built out in the desert. The Antelope Valley and along the 15 corridor in particular, as they have the power distribution lines already in place. However even along 80 you’ll see a few. They tend to be where high voltage distribution lines leave high demand urban areas, and the land gets cheap enough. A lot of other places just need some high tension power lines, and it will happen. Permitting for those is a nightmare.
- rootusrootus 6mo agoIIRC we are at the point now where the cost of high tension lines is significantly greater than just overbuilding the PV. No need to put all the panels out in the southwest and run wires everywhere, just put 2x, 3x, or whatever you need much closer to where you need it and skip those expensive lines.
- HoldOnAMinute 6mo agoHawaii is the one I don't get. Every building there should be festooned with panels. They have the best opportunity to be a world leader in electrification. Instead they import bunker fuel. The tankers dock at the power station, which then burns it, to power the island.
- lazide 6mo agoThe vast majority of natives have very little capital. The industries with more capital (mostly tourism) don’t usually have a lot of land, or would prefer to use it for tourism activities. They also tend to be seasonal, which messes up the math. But yes, it is silly.
- MisterTea 6mo agoWasn't there an article years ago about how there was so much PV in Hawaii the power grid went negative causing problems for its operators?
- Aurornis 6mo ago> Every building there should be festooned with panels The dataset used in this blog is for ground-mounted solar. Rooftop solar would be excluded.
- mbfg 6mo agoWhat are all the tables and plots for rooftop solar presented in the article then? I am confused.
- brk 6mo agoI'm not aware of janky laws in Florida, when I had panels installed on my last house in 2017 there wasn't much friction from the perspective of laws. Standard permitting process (basically just expensive paperwork). The issue was with the insurance companies. We had an 11.6Kw array, and it was getting difficult to find insurers that would allow more than 6Kw of rooftop solar.
- himata4113 6mo agoYah sorry janky insurance policites - not laws.
- Aurornis 6mo agoThis dataset is for ground-mounted solar arrays. It excludes rooftop mounted solar. It doesn’t indicate total solar deployment. Florida has a lot of solar panels on roof tops, but not as many ground-mounted solar farms.