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Unless subsidised its a long way before home PV makes sense. if I notice PV at the larger or more convenient locations for it in my area (the pool, the storage

Unless subsidised its a long way before home PV makes sense. if I notice PV at the larger or more convenient locations for it in my area (the pool, the storage warehouse, the substation, apartment blocks) I might start to consider whether viable as a cost effective single-house solution.

bsirkia 13y ago
I know that in New England, where I'm from, it's only major state govt subsidies that make home PV economically viable. Even then, it takes 15-20 years to break even.
- icefox 13y ago
  As someone that lives in Mass (which is in New England) and purchased them in 2011 See http://benjamin-meyer-home.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panel-installation.html http://benjamin-meyer-home.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panel-... looking at my data i'll be breaking even in about 3 more years (about what I planned which was 4-5 years). And this takes into account the fact that SRECs are worth a bunch less than when I started.
matthewbadeau 13y ago
In Hawaii, PV was subsidized for a long time. Unfortunately they've cut those back earlier this year. (Around January 2013) Since electricity is so expensive[1] here many people could reclaim their investments in as little as 5 years. With the subsidies reduced, it may be 7 years. That's incredibly short if you compared Hawaii to the mainland. [1]http://www.heco.com/heco/Residential/Electric-Rates/Average-Electricity-Prices-for-Hawaiian-Electric,-Maui-Electric,-and-Hawaii-Electric-Light-Company http://www.heco.com/heco/Residential/Electric-Rates/Average-...
- blazespin 13y ago
  You recoup your investment immediately when you sell, frequently with a healthy multiplier.
foxylad 13y ago
An awful lot of PV break-even analyses assume the cost of grid electricity will remain constant. Hawaii's electricity is oil-generated, and I suspect oil prices will continue to rise rapidly in the next decade.
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  ...and I suspect oil prices will continue to rise rapidly in the next decade. That was my thinking when I bought a bunch of oil ETFs a few years ago. Oops.
  - neltnerb 13y ago
    I mean, she did say "decades". http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=EER_EPD2F_PF4_Y35NY_DPG&f=D http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=EE... It's still rising faster than inflation, and on an island like Hawaii fuel oil is more expensive due to the shipping costs. Kind of surprised they don't use geothermal preferentially to solar, but I suppose that unlike Iceland they have a better mix of solar resources available there.
    - matthewbadeau 13y ago
      Geothermal was debated back in the late 80's but was protested against as source of heat (lava) is a god (Pele) in Native Hawaiian culture. It is especially controversial since the proposed geothermal site was on Native Hawaiian homelands.
      - stcredzero 13y ago
        Is there a native organization that could profit from this?
        matthewbadeau 13y ago
        If I remember correctly, the group didn't want any money from the proposal. They just didn't want the drilling to be done at all. The group battling the geothermal proposals believed that the drilling would damage their god and absorbing the heat to make energy was absorbing the life force of their god. I don't know this subject very well, so if you want more information you should look up what the Pele Defense Fund has done.
danielharan 13y ago
Define "long way"? HECO's price per kWh look pretty steep to me, $0.35 in Oahu: http://www.heco.com/heco/Residential/Electric-Rates/Average-Electricity-Prices-for-Hawaiian-Electric,-Maui-Electric,-and-Hawaii-Electric-Light-Company http://www.heco.com/heco/Residential/Electric-Rates/Average-... Meanwhile PV costs keep going down.
- crdoconnor 13y ago
  Only about 60% of the cost of installation of a solar system nowadays is the cost of the PVs themselves. You still need racks, mounts, wiring, inverters, etc.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    And labor.
- waps 13y ago
  First of all "keep going down" ? Good, but they're, well, not there yet. I don't think it's possible for residential solar to become actually profitable given that we already have an electricity grid, without causin the consequences illustrated below. For now lots of things are still under subsidy, and this masks the problem. Second solar has the problem that it creates a tragedy of the commons. This has been obvious in several European markets now. Once built, the electricity is free, but not continuous. That means that for the majority of the time, traditional utilities have no hope whatsoever of competing with solar prices ... and then comes the 10% not covered by solar or wind (it's easily more than 20%, but I get a feeling we'd get into an argument). At that point electricity is needed from traditional sources. Of course, because of this they need to be ready at a moment's notice. Capacity needs at that point might vary from 10% of total to 100% of total, so you still need the same fossil fuel capacity you have right now. It doesn't have to run at full speed anymore, of course. It can't be turned off, because when renewables fail, they don't give you much warning (we're talking minutes at most). Note that means that large scale renewable plants cannot be used to power homes, because of economics. The more of this you have, the less efficient the market becomes (because the smaller ones maintained "for free" by individuals can't be beaten on price). It has other pros and cons. In the case of plant failure, the system is much more resilient. And in the case that something disables most small plants (say, an earthquake), the system is much more affected than today (because rooftop solar just isn't built to power plant standards). Double this effect for comparison against nuclear (which is built to withstand ridiculous stress for obvious reasons, and that means it can almost always simply remain operational during a disaster) Here's the kicker : Disconnecting from the grid is not realistic for most people, Chung said. The current state of battery technology means they have to be replaced after a few years, he said. And putting a system with batteries on a typical house would cost $40,000 versus $25,000 for one without the storage component, he said. Moreover, the battery portion isn't eligible for the tax credits. (this isn't entirely true, it's only true if you "minimize" the storage component. A battery that can hold 3-5x the power that will ever be drawn from it will last 20-30 years -at least- under that load. If you load it up > 95%, you get 2 years at best) So we're stuck upgrading the grid ... Or making solar installations 2x or 3x more expensive than the currently are, and not just in money : you need battery chargers, space (batteries aren't small), maintenance, ... So there's 2 things we "can" do: 1) do what greens suggest, and make the rates reflect the new cost structure. Of course that means effectively raising the rates on traditional electricity by a factor of 10 or 100. This will mean that anyone who doesn't have solar right before this happens is so thoroughly screwed it's not funny. It will also disproportionately affect the poor. For two reasons. First, they can't pay for their own little renewable plant, and can't get the loan. Second they usually live in highrises that cannot be powered using renewables, except for the penthouse. If you think this is wrong, call up a picture of residential highrises in Hong Kong, you'll see what I mean. It will also reduce the size of the economy. Energy is one of those non-negotiable things, with almost zero price elasticity. It's effectively a tax. Even more so because the government usually controls the other side. Oh and, in toto (everything taken together), it's less efficient than centralized production. It's attractiveness (to non-believers) comes entirely from the front-loading of the cost. You invest once and you have 99.99% predictable costs over the entire period. Given that we're running out of oil, for things like Google's datacenters, that's a deal that just can't be beat. It also means that it's now actually possible to give Factories their "dream" electrical contracts : 20-30 year long contracts with fixed prices. You take out a bank loan, build a plant in a place with 100% predictable power usage, and deliver the power over dedicated infrastructure, not connected to the public grid at all. In short, option 1) will have a lot of victims, and few beneficiaries. 2) We could take the industry's arguments. They do have merit. Electricity is not an optional thing, and taking it away from at least some people is not a reasonable thing to do. So relegating the public grid, and power plants to backup status at 10x or 100x the price per kilowatt is not a reasonable thing to do (for starters, do this anywhere north of New York and you will have the poor in cities freeze to death in large numbers like we had 70 years ago). Furthermore, allowing people to upload power in the grid really does require modifications. Downward-only plants are much simpler than bidirectional plants. They're also smaller, so in many cases new land must be bought by the utility company. Who must pay for this ? The industry's argument is simple : if they're forced to accept power from solar, then the people actually doing the feeding in must pay for the modifications, and the loss of ROI in the plants. That's only reasonable, as their solar investment is worth much less without the ability to feed it into the grid, and those power plants. So ... So we're back to where we were 10 years ago. Many people want small solar (and in some industrial cases, small-scale wind plants). Who pays for the real cost, in the massive grid modifications, the new market equilibrium (that requires a much higher electricity price), and the necessity of keeping tons of plants spinning idle ? Either the people installing solar do, or everybody does. My personal opinion is probably clear : we don't have a choice : we must make anybody who wishes to feed in power to the grid pay. And when solar grows large enough without feeding into the grid (which will be the obvious response), we will need to tax renewable installations. The alternatives have consequences that are simply not acceptable. This is not an issue of crooks defending corporate profits (not that I'm saying that's not part of it). This is an issue of how powering a society gets financed.
BenoitEssiambre 13y ago
>if I notice PV at the larger or more convenient locations for it in my area You might not notice them. Last time I took a plane, when landing I was surprised at the installations I didn't realise were there. Large rooftop installations are common on stores such as Walmart, Ikea and others.
carlosrt 13y ago
The time is already here. Anyone can now buy panels at ~$0.50 per watt, from Alibaba. To power a 10,000 watt home costs ~$5,000 in panels. Add $1,000 for an inverter and misc, add another $4,000 for installation labor (I'd pay ~$1,000), so for $6,000 to~$10,000 in total costs one eliminate their electric bill. That's a payback of ~3 to ~4 years. A 3x to ~4x revenue multiple seems like a cheap price to pay for an income producing/saving asset. http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/price-per-watt-monocrystalline-silicon-solar-panel.html http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/price-per-watt-monocrystalli...
- maxerickson 13y ago
  The capacity factor for most of the U.S. is a lot lower than 1. If you actually have 10,000 watts of demand, you need more like 40,000 watts of panels. (Lots and lots of homes would probably meet most of their usage with less than 10,000 watts of panels, but they also aren't paying $3,000 a year in electric bills)

bsirkia 13y ago

I know that in New England, where I'm from, it's only major state govt subsidies that make home PV economically viable. Even then, it takes 15-20 years to break even.

icefox 13y ago
As someone that lives in Mass (which is in New England) and purchased them in 2011 See http://benjamin-meyer-home.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panel-installation.html http://benjamin-meyer-home.blogspot.com/2011/08/solar-panel-... looking at my data i'll be breaking even in about 3 more years (about what I planned which was 4-5 years). And this takes into account the fact that SRECs are worth a bunch less than when I started.

matthewbadeau 13y ago

In Hawaii, PV was subsidized for a long time. Unfortunately they've cut those back earlier this year. (Around January 2013) Since electricity is so expensive[1] here many people could reclaim their investments in as little as 5 years. With the subsidies reduced, it may be 7 years. That's incredibly short if you compared Hawaii to the mainland. [1]http://www.heco.com/heco/Residential/Electric-Rates/Average-Electricity-Prices-for-Hawaiian-Electric,-Maui-Electric,-and-Hawaii-Electric-Light-Company http://www.heco.com/heco/Residential/Electric-Rates/Average-...

blazespin 13y ago
You recoup your investment immediately when you sell, frequently with a healthy multiplier.

foxylad 13y ago

An awful lot of PV break-even analyses assume the cost of grid electricity will remain constant. Hawaii's electricity is oil-generated, and I suspect oil prices will continue to rise rapidly in the next decade.

CamperBob2 13y ago
...and I suspect oil prices will continue to rise rapidly in the next decade. That was my thinking when I bought a bunch of oil ETFs a few years ago. Oops.
- neltnerb 13y ago
  I mean, she did say "decades". http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=EER_EPD2F_PF4_Y35NY_DPG&f=D http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=EE... It's still rising faster than inflation, and on an island like Hawaii fuel oil is more expensive due to the shipping costs. Kind of surprised they don't use geothermal preferentially to solar, but I suppose that unlike Iceland they have a better mix of solar resources available there.
  - matthewbadeau 13y ago
    Geothermal was debated back in the late 80's but was protested against as source of heat (lava) is a god (Pele) in Native Hawaiian culture. It is especially controversial since the proposed geothermal site was on Native Hawaiian homelands.
    - stcredzero 13y ago
      Is there a native organization that could profit from this?
      - matthewbadeau 13y ago
        If I remember correctly, the group didn't want any money from the proposal. They just didn't want the drilling to be done at all. The group battling the geothermal proposals believed that the drilling would damage their god and absorbing the heat to make energy was absorbing the life force of their god. I don't know this subject very well, so if you want more information you should look up what the Pele Defense Fund has done.

danielharan 13y ago

Define "long way"? HECO's price per kWh look pretty steep to me, $0.35 in Oahu: http://www.heco.com/heco/Residential/Electric-Rates/Average-Electricity-Prices-for-Hawaiian-Electric,-Maui-Electric,-and-Hawaii-Electric-Light-Company http://www.heco.com/heco/Residential/Electric-Rates/Average-... Meanwhile PV costs keep going down.

crdoconnor 13y ago
Only about 60% of the cost of installation of a solar system nowadays is the cost of the PVs themselves. You still need racks, mounts, wiring, inverters, etc.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  And labor.
waps 13y ago
First of all "keep going down" ? Good, but they're, well, not there yet. I don't think it's possible for residential solar to become actually profitable given that we already have an electricity grid, without causin the consequences illustrated below. For now lots of things are still under subsidy, and this masks the problem. Second solar has the problem that it creates a tragedy of the commons. This has been obvious in several European markets now. Once built, the electricity is free, but not continuous. That means that for the majority of the time, traditional utilities have no hope whatsoever of competing with solar prices ... and then comes the 10% not covered by solar or wind (it's easily more than 20%, but I get a feeling we'd get into an argument). At that point electricity is needed from traditional sources. Of course, because of this they need to be ready at a moment's notice. Capacity needs at that point might vary from 10% of total to 100% of total, so you still need the same fossil fuel capacity you have right now. It doesn't have to run at full speed anymore, of course. It can't be turned off, because when renewables fail, they don't give you much warning (we're talking minutes at most). Note that means that large scale renewable plants cannot be used to power homes, because of economics. The more of this you have, the less efficient the market becomes (because the smaller ones maintained "for free" by individuals can't be beaten on price). It has other pros and cons. In the case of plant failure, the system is much more resilient. And in the case that something disables most small plants (say, an earthquake), the system is much more affected than today (because rooftop solar just isn't built to power plant standards). Double this effect for comparison against nuclear (which is built to withstand ridiculous stress for obvious reasons, and that means it can almost always simply remain operational during a disaster) Here's the kicker : Disconnecting from the grid is not realistic for most people, Chung said. The current state of battery technology means they have to be replaced after a few years, he said. And putting a system with batteries on a typical house would cost $40,000 versus $25,000 for one without the storage component, he said. Moreover, the battery portion isn't eligible for the tax credits. (this isn't entirely true, it's only true if you "minimize" the storage component. A battery that can hold 3-5x the power that will ever be drawn from it will last 20-30 years -at least- under that load. If you load it up > 95%, you get 2 years at best) So we're stuck upgrading the grid ... Or making solar installations 2x or 3x more expensive than the currently are, and not just in money : you need battery chargers, space (batteries aren't small), maintenance, ... So there's 2 things we "can" do: 1) do what greens suggest, and make the rates reflect the new cost structure. Of course that means effectively raising the rates on traditional electricity by a factor of 10 or 100. This will mean that anyone who doesn't have solar right before this happens is so thoroughly screwed it's not funny. It will also disproportionately affect the poor. For two reasons. First, they can't pay for their own little renewable plant, and can't get the loan. Second they usually live in highrises that cannot be powered using renewables, except for the penthouse. If you think this is wrong, call up a picture of residential highrises in Hong Kong, you'll see what I mean. It will also reduce the size of the economy. Energy is one of those non-negotiable things, with almost zero price elasticity. It's effectively a tax. Even more so because the government usually controls the other side. Oh and, in toto (everything taken together), it's less efficient than centralized production. It's attractiveness (to non-believers) comes entirely from the front-loading of the cost. You invest once and you have 99.99% predictable costs over the entire period. Given that we're running out of oil, for things like Google's datacenters, that's a deal that just can't be beat. It also means that it's now actually possible to give Factories their "dream" electrical contracts : 20-30 year long contracts with fixed prices. You take out a bank loan, build a plant in a place with 100% predictable power usage, and deliver the power over dedicated infrastructure, not connected to the public grid at all. In short, option 1) will have a lot of victims, and few beneficiaries. 2) We could take the industry's arguments. They do have merit. Electricity is not an optional thing, and taking it away from at least some people is not a reasonable thing to do. So relegating the public grid, and power plants to backup status at 10x or 100x the price per kilowatt is not a reasonable thing to do (for starters, do this anywhere north of New York and you will have the poor in cities freeze to death in large numbers like we had 70 years ago). Furthermore, allowing people to upload power in the grid really does require modifications. Downward-only plants are much simpler than bidirectional plants. They're also smaller, so in many cases new land must be bought by the utility company. Who must pay for this ? The industry's argument is simple : if they're forced to accept power from solar, then the people actually doing the feeding in must pay for the modifications, and the loss of ROI in the plants. That's only reasonable, as their solar investment is worth much less without the ability to feed it into the grid, and those power plants. So ... So we're back to where we were 10 years ago. Many people want small solar (and in some industrial cases, small-scale wind plants). Who pays for the real cost, in the massive grid modifications, the new market equilibrium (that requires a much higher electricity price), and the necessity of keeping tons of plants spinning idle ? Either the people installing solar do, or everybody does. My personal opinion is probably clear : we don't have a choice : we must make anybody who wishes to feed in power to the grid pay. And when solar grows large enough without feeding into the grid (which will be the obvious response), we will need to tax renewable installations. The alternatives have consequences that are simply not acceptable. This is not an issue of crooks defending corporate profits (not that I'm saying that's not part of it). This is an issue of how powering a society gets financed.

BenoitEssiambre 13y ago

>if I notice PV at the larger or more convenient locations for it in my area You might not notice them. Last time I took a plane, when landing I was surprised at the installations I didn't realise were there. Large rooftop installations are common on stores such as Walmart, Ikea and others.

carlosrt 13y ago

The time is already here. Anyone can now buy panels at ~$0.50 per watt, from Alibaba. To power a 10,000 watt home costs ~$5,000 in panels. Add $1,000 for an inverter and misc, add another $4,000 for installation labor (I'd pay ~$1,000), so for $6,000 to~$10,000 in total costs one eliminate their electric bill. That's a payback of ~3 to ~4 years. A 3x to ~4x revenue multiple seems like a cheap price to pay for an income producing/saving asset. http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/price-per-watt-monocrystalline-silicon-solar-panel.html http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/price-per-watt-monocrystalli...

maxerickson 13y ago
The capacity factor for most of the U.S. is a lot lower than 1. If you actually have 10,000 watts of demand, you need more like 40,000 watts of panels. (Lots and lots of homes would probably meet most of their usage with less than 10,000 watts of panels, but they also aren't paying $3,000 a year in electric bills)