... with apologies to William Shakespeare, of course. In this case, I'm referring to the firms marketing rooftop solar energy systems to homeowners. They're a major pest in these parts; I daresay we get at least one every month ringing our doorbell and trying to hard-sell us on the "benefits" of such installations. When I counter by showing them the real costs and disadvantages of such projects, they either deny the facts, or insist that they're false, or just walk away.
Now they're complaining that they can't make money without a very generous government subsidy.
Companies that put solar panels on U.S. homes say a Republican budget bill advanced in Congress this week would deal a massive blow to the industry by eliminating a generous subsidy for homeowners that had buttressed the industry's growth.
The bill would scrap a 30% federal credit for taxpayers who put up rooftop systems, stifling an industry that has grown ten-fold over the last decade and which now employs more than 100,000 workers, industry players said.
"It certainly is a giant setback," said Charlie Hadlow, president of EnergySage, an online solar marketplace. "I have solar installers in our large network passing around the contact information for bankruptcy attorneys. That's not alarmist, that's happening."
There's more at the link.
Son, if you can't make money on your product without taxpayers giving you thousands of dollars per installation, you don't deserve to be in business. If you can't make a fair and reasonable profit without gouging others for it, you're the problem - not the government.
The entire alternative energy sphere is filled with subsidies and special-interest money like this. I know one wind power project in Colorado that's been sold twice in the past decade or so. Every time, the sale was at the end of a ten-year federal subsidy for wind energy for the "new" field - and the new owner got a renewed ten-year subsidy every time he/it/they bought the project. It's basically a license to fleece taxpayers, and they get away with it every time, thanks to a complaisant Congress and the lobbyists who hand out money to politicians who support their favored schemes.
As far as I'm concerned, Congress should never have passed the subsidy in the first place. Getting rid of it now is rather late, but at least we won't be hemorrhaging even more money that way in future.
Peter
28 comments:
A bunch of people in our neighborhood here in North Texas have fallen for it. Waiting for the first big hail storm.
Spot on. When we first moved to Texas 10 years ago, I signed up for a power plan that was billed as "100% wind". 4.7 cents per kwh IIRC. Figured that we were at least getting a small return for our tax dollars. I rather like this clip from "Landman"--
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmbZwxEnAFc
Yeah, it's a scam
Decades ago, I knew a couple of guys out in the small town of Sanderson, TX who had a small business converting pickups to run on natural gas. Pickups because they put the fuel tank in the bed. Just sayin'....
I love when those people come over.
Look at my home. Do you really think it makes any sense to put a solar system on that roof? Do you really think this home, or any of the other homes on this street, will stay standing long enough to pay off a solar system, let alone save money using one?
That, young man, is a 25 year old roof on a 25 year old doublewide.
In Florida.
Agreed. A viable technology will stand on its own without "government" "help." EV's are in that same boat. Alottta people don't remember when Obama dumped a bunch of money into a failing EV company by the name of... Tesla... Alotta people also don't realize that EV's were tried before and failed for the same reasons they are now; limited range, too long to "refuel," and limited battery life. The purveyor of these early EV's was an obscure fellow named... Edison...
"Green" subsidies are nothing more than theft from the blue collar Joe to be pocketed by the rich, who could afford the subsidized items anyway...
I'm pretty much in favor of no subsidies, for anything.
We are building a new energy-efficient house. After we have been in it for a year or two (to get an accurate baseline) we plan on buying a Solar/Battery system so we have more independence from the grid. We already have a solar well pump and are on a septic system so two out of three major utilities will be covered when we move in.
We had solar in California so I'm familiar with the costs and offsets.
Do away with the supplements. Let them actually be honest with homeowners and stop lying to them. The ROI is upside down on ANY solar system, much less the batteries required. In our area to actually be productive, one needs are 28 degree southern exposure. My roof is oriented E-W and a 6 pitch. The salesman said it was fine as is... snort...
this is something I know a little about.. :)
Solar Panels and all the other complicated bits are the cats meow. Be prepared to be able to do maintenance and troubleshooting. Charge controllers fail, batteries die, solar panels get dirty or shaded and stop producing power. Then they catch on fire and burn your house down.
If your a bit of a do it yourself-er or you have the money to pay someone to fix stuff then more power to you.
You can if your careful build a system yourself that has a under 3 to 5 year payback and will provide most if not all your power needs for keeping the lights on and even ac if you upgrade to certain low power draw ac units like some of the really efficient mini splits and you put enough batteries in.
if you let one of the solar companies talk you into installing a system you will pay 4x as much and most likely it wont even work after they finish installing it and they will not come back to warranty the broken or not working stuff. The biggest part of the scam is that you finance it through them but it's not really them even though it is and if you have a system that doesn't work and they wont fix it the "mortgage holder!" will tell you it isn't their problem and you need to pay. The companies that install have about a 3 to 4 year life cycle from filing for incorporation to going under or disappearing. Same people will be doing work the next day under a new name.
if they haven't been in business for 10 years or more with good bbb ratings I wouldn't do business with a solar company.
oh other note.. that tax credit only helps people with a lot of income. If you don't pay much in taxes then it won't offset much in taxes :)
ok if you want solar and can purchase components yourself and feel froggy enough to install then I can give a very broad outline of what would be the best way to go.
first. DO NOT INSTALL ON THE ROOF OF YOUR HOUSE! every once in a while solar panels will catch on fire from shorts in the connectors and the high voltage the newer panels run at. Just do a google search for solar panel fires.
also just remember someone has to uninstall the entire system off the roof and then re-install it on your new roof when you replace the existing one. and they are then going to put lots of holes in your new roof mounting the solar panels. Just on this much less safety say now. Down the road when you do need a new roof it can easy double the cost of the new roof because of the removal and re installation.
second.. do install on ground mounts, or on a gazebo or shed that if it burns down it wont end your life.
3rd... don't cheap out and use lead acid battery's. Not that they wont work but at most they might work 4 or 5 years.. usually with the ones nowdays that might be even shorter. It is expensive replacing your battery bank.
4th do use lithium iron phosphate batterys.. you should get at least a 10 year lifespan and probably double that. the charge cycles they will withstand are 4 or 5 times as many as a lead iron battery.
You can also go old school and build old school nickle iron battery banks.. there is still a chinese company manufacturing them. They are lower power density but you and after 8 or 15 years replace the electrolyte and just keep going. some have lasted as long as 40+ years. It's almost as cheap though to just go for the lithium iron phosphate batteries.
solar panels.. get them first before your charge controller. depending on what ones you can find a great deal on will change what charge controller you get. are they 12v ,24v, 90v like mine, or as high as 240 volt panels. Higher voltage is more efficient and uses smaller wiring. higher voltage also increases risk of arcing if connections build up resistance.
though i have had issues with dealing with them in the past sunelec.com is still one of the best places to purchase panels from and other stuff. they will actually help you get the right components and design for your system. they specialize in factory seconds, refurbished and used panels that you can pay pennies on the dollar to purchase. a 3 or 4 year old panel with an expected warrantied usable life span of 25 years for 40 cents a watt is a great deal. all the manufactures warranty their panels for 25 years mostly and that is that the panel will still produce 80% of rated power in 25years.. to me a panel producing 80% of rated power is still producing power. a lot of what they sell are just blem's which are perfectly fine just some cosmetic issue that doesn't affect function.
ive done this twice.. once for system on boat.. and then ones for house.
not sure what the current good deal or best solar charges are right now or inverters. I have used morningstar charge controllers and been very happy for my smaller solar projects.
It depends on your area, my parents have solar on their place in Arizona, it pretty much powers the AC and because Arizona that means it has paid for itself and then some. I've been seeing some going up around where I am and I've talked to the one company that installs them here and going by their numbers, including the 30% tax credit, by selling the excess you generate in the summer as credit to the power company it's about a six year ROI. Then the profit still won't be much every year as I just don't pay that much for electricity. I also don't know how old my roof is, but I've been living here for 24 years and I've never had it redone.
At least our subsidies weren't as insane as Germany's, where installing a panel that had no sun on it would result in the owner making money.
I looked into solar when the subsidies (and costs) were higher, but did not know if the morning and evening fog would make it viable. Fortunately, a bowling alley not far from the house installed solar panels and put the data on their website. This told me it was not a good deal. A co-worker who lived further inland ran the numbers, installed them, and has been happy with them for about 20 years now.
Without subsidies, including Net Metering, the viable market is a lot smaller, but with the electricity prices in my state it will still go on.
will somebody please tell me where these solar panels are made; are they made here in the U.S.A. or are we supporting the CCP?
There should be no subsidies for anyone or anything. Market manipulation by the government causes huge problems down the road.
If the government does need to manipulate the markets then tariffs are a much better idea.
My dad put in solar systems. We live in a mountain desert climate, we sacrificed a little garden space to put in enough panels to power our house and the shop, and recently we got batteries so we could go off the city grid. We also have solar-heated water that keeps our floors warm in winter - we have very cold winters, and it sure is nice to have essentially infinite hot water.
Is solar energy perfectly good for the planet? No. Is solar energy a renewable resource? Debatable. But we like being somewhat self-sufficient, and it's really nice to have power and heat when no one else on the block does.
Solar panels have their uses with small devices for keeping them charged. But for a whole house set up where availed power present they're a waste of money. Buy a genset instead.
What annoys me about the whole solar thing is that here, in California, you’ll still get a pretty high bill *with* solar because PG&E just keeps hiking the rates. I’ve seen people comment on Nextdoor that they still have $500, or more, energy bills even with solar. So what exactly is the point? We have solar (it came with the house) and it offsets the cost most of the time but definitely isn’t the solution we were all promised.
With very rare exceptions no solar system recoups the costs of purchase and installation. You don't do it to save money. You do it to have power when the utility company can't keep your lights on. You do it so you can run your well and have water when the grid is down. You do it so your refrigerator works when the power lines are down. But NOT to make a profit.
Natzsofast.
Where's the BMWing about the Defense Interstate Highway System, and a return to the rutted dirt roads that once linked the country...?
Crickets, as always.
Pardon, but your slip is showing.
Solar makes sense for a lot of reasons, and in a lot of places. But not everywhere, for everyone.
Minneapolis is retard-stupid. Phoenix or Vegas is a slam dunk. YMMV.
Just not from some local jackhole looking to snag your money and Uncle Sugar's and leave you holding a pig in a poke, who's doing solar today, and five years ago, was doing pressure washing, and five years before that, was doing auto detailing. And probably employing ten guys named Julio for $3/hr. with installer certs from the copier store.
If you're lazy, or stupid, and can't be bothered to do the homework, solar is not for you.
As multiple commenters have noted, there's a right way, and right places, to do it.
It's not for the faint of heart, but if you want power when other people are blacked out, or you're far beyond the grid and the local electric shysters are charging you $50/foot or something equally asinine to run power up your mile-long driveway, it's a blessing.
Caveat emptor has never been revoked.
If you buy stupid, you'll get stupid.
And the least of the problems are that most home contractors built the rooves on their cracker-box houses solar-stupid, with the wrong pitch and wrong direction to fully take advantage of solar in the first place. You can't fix that on the cheap; you're going to pay for it in output, or else re-do your roof less stupid in the first place, for yuuuuge amounts of money.
Like always, you get what you pay for.
Hiring Fly By Night Solar Contractors LLC is always a bonehead move.
And government subsidies have also paved the way to panel efficiency and output to go up greatly in the last decade, as well as improved battery technology, so don't throw the baby out with the bathwater just because some homeowners have neither the time nor wit to do this right, instead of falling for every door-knocking Magic Bean salesman looking for a fast buck.
Start by finding contractors and companies that have been doing this right, for 20-25 years, and know WTF they're doing, and selling. And then listen to them when they tell what you don't know you don't know. Then double check that.
If you do this smart, and careful, like in most endeavors, you'll be fine. And if you do the work yourself, you get that subsidy. They don't. Which was the point all along. It wasn't put in to enrich shoddy contractors, but people are lazy, and government money always attracts the worst, like rose fertilizer attracts flies.
If the government subsidized water well drilling, you'd get idiots who'd try to drill wells in 2000' of bedrock in the desert, and then come out against water when that didn't work out well, except for the guy with the drilling truck taking the money.
Well, duh.
I'm not anti-solar or anti-windmill, but there are better ways to generate electricity 24/7 to power a grid and we need to focus on that and eliminate the Green New Scam.
That is a PG&E billing issue but you may need to add panels too.
We were in Southern California Edison territory and our monthly bills were almost always the minimum connection charge if we didn't have a credit balance because of one of the rebate programs for all ratepayers. I told designer to add one extra panel to our system and we ended up net positive, delivering ~450kw-hr per year to the grid over a full year.
I live off grid in Alaska and have a few solar panels which don’t do me much good most of the year especially since there are some 5000 foot mountains south of us so we use a small generator to charge our battteries. I don’t have a problem with roof top systems where practical but no subsidies and building solar taking farm land out of production should be banned not subsidized!
If i got a buck for every inwanted insurance, solar, and auto warrenty call I get, it'd add a couple hunnert' bucks to my finances....
I'm 390 paces from the Gulf in hurricane country, our electricity is reasonably priced and they have made heroic efforts to restore power after storms. I have several gensets, they're good as long as there's gas and after Katrina they ran for two weeks, but outages are usually a day or two at most. Hardly worth cranking the genny for. You cannot live here in the summer without air conditioning, so a large solcell array/battery bank would be required and would likely not stand up to hurricane force winds. I keep a couple of window AC's that the genset will run. Since you have to be ready to evacuate at short notice with everything you need and can carry, it's all that I can practically do at my age. After Katrina there were plenty of demolished solar panels all over in the debris.You don't see a lot of solar here other than insurable public installations. Wouldn't pencil out without subsidies or somebody's tax money.
Rick m
My daughter is in real estate, and she says the matter of a house on the market with solar panels is problematic. Is the installer still in business? What if the roof itself needs to be replaced. And indeed - what about the fire hazard of bad electrical connections, and hail damage...
I can see the utility of solar panels on a mount away from the house itself, for emergency power or an off-grid place, if there is space enough. Some of the homesteader youtube videos that I follow have such. But I'd never have a panel set up mounted on the roof, for those reasons and aesthetics - they are pretty ugly.
That is why Californication's mandate that all new construction homes have solar panels was insane. Not every site is viable.
Heck, we had a mature liquid amber tree that gave us afternoon shade in our bedroom. Great for temperature control but it made doing solar a waste of money. We had to remove the tree because of it's invasive root system and once we had full sun on our southern-facing roof our solar system worked great.
The only true benefit (thermodynamically speaking) to wind or solar is the grid-independence it can provide. For some people, that benefit is enough to tip the scales. For anybody else who values of it in terms of "being green" and "socially responsible," you're idiots. And if you are taking the tax breaks and incentives to go that way, you're part of the big scam, and deserve a hailstorm with 3" hail, uninsured.
I am in a new house as of 18 months ago. I am 64. I did the math on putting in an off grid solar system/battery inverter system. For my 2800 sq ft house it would cost me $34k for the premium batteries and the better solar panels. It would be another $8k for instillation. Batteries would last 9 to 10 years. The panels would last 25 to 28 years before they needed to be replaced. It would take 12 years to break even on the initial investment but there would be a $9k reinvestment for new batteries at 10 years for the premium batteries or $5k for lead acid batteries that last 5 to 6 years. The conclusion is it is not worth the additional hassle for the 3 or 4 year of free power over 26 years of the system. Todays technology is not quite there on energy storage and panel efficacy.
Noted.
So what would it be worth to you if the grid went down temporarily?
What about for an extended period?
Call the residents in rural North Carolina after that last hurricane for some perspective.
The internet is not all about 1s and 0s, and the worth of things is not always measured in dollars and cents.
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