Prices for the batteries and panels themselevs5have dropped. Just not the cost to install them.
Comment on Solar power and storage prices have dropped almost 90%
hark@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I heard the prices dropped a lot around 2012 too. Why are solar installations still rare?
Pirky@lemmy.world 9 months ago
hark@lemmy.world 9 months ago
What a shame. Is there no competition among contractors or is it inherently expensive?
vagrantprodigy@lemmy.whynotdrs.org 9 months ago
Lots of red tape, at least in the US. And lots of scammy contractors out there.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 9 months ago
As the guy in charge of the red tape - there really isn’t much.
Show that it’s designed to be safely installed on the roof and that you have a licensed electrician doing the install.
Then submit to an inspection.
It takes 15 minutes to get a solar permit, and the whole thing videos like $250 in permitting - most of which is inspections.
But the contractor invoices $3,000 for permitting, so of course they’re gonna say there’s a bunch of red tape to justify it.
CletusVanDamme@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It’s mostly just time consuming. It took 5 days to get the solar installed on our roof.
coffeebiscuit@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Seems like a huge project. Or a challenging roof layout.
Professorozone@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Where I live, power companies successfully lobbied to charge a minimum fee to people using a grid-tied system (as opposed to off-grid). So now a bill that might have been lowered to $9.00 will cost the minimum fee of $30.00 (actual example). You might say, that $30.00 is still a very low power bill but how long will it take before that starts going up? They are also lobbying to buy power from homeowners for less than they charge homeowners. This was a huge turn-off for me considering the high cost of installation. When I asked the solar installer about off-grid installations, he said they weren’t allowed to offer those. Not sure why but got the impression it was a government thing and not a company thing. Not sure.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It’s a company thing. Government can’t force you to pay for electricity if you don’t want it.
However off grid setups are more complicated and require a different design philosophy, so most solar companies don’t do them. You have to shop for companies that specialize in off-grid setups.
htrayl@lemmy.world 9 months ago
They are not rare. It is the fastest growing energy production mode and is growing faster every year.
Residential installations lag behind the commercial due to installation costs, but they are blowing up as well. I can walk around my neighborhood and see a couple dozen homes with it.
It’s also highly regional. The further south in the northern hemisphere the more common.
evranch@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Here in Canada prices have stayed stubbornly high. It’s the Canadian way.
I have panels that I bought for under $0.50/watt that they were clearing out at the local wholesaler years ago. Haven’t been able to find anything even near that price range since, and I’m an electrician with access to wholesale pricing.
I have found some decent prices recently but they’re all on full pallet lots. So you need to be a business dedicated to solar installs to get a fair price, and those businesses obviously don’t pass the savings on as that’s not the Canadian way.
Batteries are an even worse situation! If you live here and want storage, I hope you like lead-acid.
Zeoic@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Have you looked into Lifepo4 batteries lately? Their capacity and deep cycle life are quite price competitive these days, even up here in Canada.
evranch@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Not like lately lately, prices were so bad for so long. Got a supplier you could recommend?
I had hoped to start by building a pack for my small car using something like b-grade prismatics or good salvage cells from batteryhookup.com.
Currently running 8kWh of lead-acid which as we know might as well be around 3kWh usable. Going to lithium would really make a car out if it, but the car itself is a weird old thing and not worth much so I don’t want to invest a ton into it.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 9 months ago
For a medium to large house, one pallet of panels is a normal size for an install
tankplanker@lemmy.world 9 months ago
UK its partly roof size/shape limiting the amount of panels you can get in the optimum location, partly the weather, and partly install costs.
If its going to take me 8 years at least to pay back vs. not having it I am not going to bother. Some people got lucky with lifetime buy back rates for the panels to the grid so they made bank of theirs with 50p a kwh ( and electric was around 24p a kwh to buy from the grid) but those rates got cut to like 4p a kwh, when even a cheap EV tarrif is like 9p a kwh
There are some finance deals available from the likes of Eon but its hardly high end gear, which I think is needed to make the most of the UK roofs and UK sun. Time you start paying interest on it, it becomes an even worse deal.
I would save more money by just having a battery installed and charging it on my EV tarrif overnight.
Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 9 months ago
In america the installation costs as much as or more than the panels. Until the install costs come down no one is going to do it.
Octavio@lemmy.world 9 months ago
About a third of the houses in my neighborhood have gone solar. My household was one of the first to do it about five years ago and every time I go for a walk I notice a new one that popped up. Our solar system payment is about half what our electric bill used to be and we make more electricity than we use every month of the year, even with charging a plug-in hybrid car. Far from “no one is going to do it.” I frankly don’t understand why more people don’t do it.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Weird, here we got 11kW solar panels with inverter and 7½ kW battery for USD $12900,- and complete installation (starting monday next week) is USD $ 4300,-
So clearly the panels are way more expensive, even if we had bought a much smaller system, and that is in Denmark, where skilled workers are among the highest paid in Europe. AND on a ceramic tiled roof, which is the most demanding and expensive to have it installed on.
This is a completely new solar panel installation, which should begin next week. so prices are fresh as they are now here.
PS:
For the above prices the hardware needed for installation is included with the panels.But I think that’s standard.
Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Insurance companies have a lot of bullshit rules in certain states about the roof(Florida) which drives up the costs to install.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 8 months ago
That sucks, seems like an opening for an Insurance company to capture some market share. Unless of course it’s all one big cartel.
brlemworld@lemmy.world 9 months ago
This is why I pay extra for my co-op to source it. Cheaper to build/maintain solar/wind farms
blazeknave@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Keyword coop. People hate sharing here. It’s like a “socialist threat” to their autonomy.