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California Votes to Require Rooftop Solar Power on New Homes

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Re: California Votes to Require Rooftop Solar Power on New Homes

#41

Post by tmh79 »

esaym wrote: post #7

Good night. Once upon a time in 1983, my grandparents bought a mobile home and put it out on rural property. They paid $300 for the water company to install a water meter and about $1500 for a septic tank install. Now I'm trying to do the same thing (and on the same property). The water meter is $5,000 (cash only in full), and the septic tank is $15,000. If I was also required to have solar, I'd really be screwed...…

they probably have a lot of overhead for the following things:

office rental, increasing cost of septic tank hardware itself increased environmental regulations increase cost of permitting (money and time) with local government impact fees maybe increased insurance costs

people are making money on this, I just doubt its your tank installer

Re: California Votes to Require Rooftop Solar Power on New Homes

#43

Post by tsmarsh »

cahomeown456 wrote: post #34

I'm a homeowner in southern California. I've looked into it and a solar system would cost me about $15k and it would pay itself off after about 8 years. However that assumes constant price conditions. If there's a glut of solar installations, prices for daytime generation may fall to where it no longer offsets all evening/night consumption. Once that happens you're forced to either invest in extremely expensive batte…

The argument for me around solar was more that I expect fossil fuels to become vastly more expensive in the lifetime of the panels.

I agree the risk profile is wrong, so I offloaded the risk to SolarCity for this iteration (25 years), but if I'm still in the house when those panels expire I will almost certianly need to re-roof, and I'm hoping solar tiles are a no-brainer by that point.

22 years from now? I expect fossil fuels to be crazy expensive. I expect solar tech and home storage options to be commoditized, and I haven't seen anything to make me thing I'm wrong about any of that.

Re: California Votes to Require Rooftop Solar Power on New Homes

#44

Post by supercanuck »

esaym wrote: post #7

Good night. Once upon a time in 1983, my grandparents bought a mobile home and put it out on rural property. They paid $300 for the water company to install a water meter and about $1500 for a septic tank install. Now I'm trying to do the same thing (and on the same property). The water meter is $5,000 (cash only in full), and the septic tank is $15,000. If I was also required to have solar, I'd really be screwed...…

> $3k-$5k+ (profit) a week in septic installs

Did you factor in healthcare?

Re: California Votes to Require Rooftop Solar Power on New Homes

#45

Post by dangero »

cahomeown456 wrote: post #34

I'm a homeowner in southern California. I've looked into it and a solar system would cost me about $15k and it would pay itself off after about 8 years. However that assumes constant price conditions. If there's a glut of solar installations, prices for daytime generation may fall to where it no longer offsets all evening/night consumption. Once that happens you're forced to either invest in extremely expensive batte…

That's a good point. If this did actually reduce stress on the energy grid it may minimize solar savings for those who paid for it.

Re: California Votes to Require Rooftop Solar Power on New Homes

#46

Post by Analemma_ »

trimbo wrote: post #26
rwbt wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though rooftop solar might not be the most economical solution to reduce greenhouse gas footprints, I would argue it's very effective. The costs are directly baked into the real estate mortgage and requires zero changes with regards to zoning and planning. In an ideal world SB827 makes sense, but it was rejected. So I'm glad CA is trying something more pragmatic instead of waiting for a 'perfect' solution. Even…

Won't this new law actually disincentivize more affordable housing?

My cynical side would say that the California housing market is already so completely fucked, with only millionaires and Chinese expats able to buy new houses, that if there's no chance of getting it fixed (and with SB827 dead, that seems to be the case) one might as well do this to get something useful from the situation. It's like a tax on the 1% that funds renewable energy programs.

I'd rather have cheap housing, but if the NIMBY's are going to have their way, I can at least extract more money from them for useful purposes.

Re: California Votes to Require Rooftop Solar Power on New Homes

#47

Post by ppeetteerr »

So you can't mandate that neighbourhoods build taller buildings to curb the astronomical rise in real estate prices but making new buildings (and by association old buildings) more expensive is easy.

California, what are you doing? Fix your housing problem!

Re: California Votes to Require Rooftop Solar Power on New Homes

#48

Post by DeepYogurt »

alkonaut wrote: post #23

Requiring specific technical solutions is rarely a good idea. For example mandating that all new cars have catalytic converters is a common but not very good requirement. The requirement should be formulated as a goal/limit, not a solution. Having one solution required means you can’t innovate to find a cheaper or better solution to the same problem. The answer in this context would be to require a total net power dr…

I agree that a a more general law would be better, but for the foreseeable future I don't see this law having detrimental side effects. Also this law can be addressed in the future when solar is a less compelling technology.

Re: California Votes to Require Rooftop Solar Power on New Homes

#49

Post by Matticus_Rex »

tsmarsh wrote: post #43
cahomeown456 wrote: post #34

I'm a homeowner in southern California. I've looked into it and a solar system would cost me about $15k and it would pay itself off after about 8 years. However that assumes constant price conditions. If there's a glut of solar installations, prices for daytime generation may fall to where it no longer offsets all evening/night consumption. Once that happens you're forced to either invest in extremely expensive batte…

The argument for me around solar was more that I expect fossil fuels to become vastly more expensive in the lifetime of the panels. I agree the risk profile is wrong, so I offloaded the risk to SolarCity for this iteration (25 years), but if I'm still in the house when those panels expire I will almost certianly need to re-roof, and I'm hoping solar tiles are a no-brainer by that point. 22 years from now? I expect fo…

The only way fossil fuels are going to skyrocket in price is if regulatory burdens push their prices up artificially. Yes, we use up oil and natural gas every year, but we also get more efficient at finding and tapping deeper reserves, and there are few limits on that in the next 25 years. "Peak" resources just aren't a thing we actually need to worry about in the foreseeable future.

Re: California Votes to Require Rooftop Solar Power on New Homes

#50

Post by ppeetteerr »

DeepYogurt wrote: post #48
alkonaut wrote: post #23

Requiring specific technical solutions is rarely a good idea. For example mandating that all new cars have catalytic converters is a common but not very good requirement. The requirement should be formulated as a goal/limit, not a solution. Having one solution required means you can’t innovate to find a cheaper or better solution to the same problem. The answer in this context would be to require a total net power dr…

I agree that a a more general law would be better, but for the foreseeable future I don't see this law having detrimental side effects. Also this law can be addressed in the future when solar is a less compelling technology.

Laws rarely get removed. The detrimental side effect is lower incentive to build new homes and rising cost of existing homes.
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