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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

#231

Post by ben_w »

sp332 wrote: post #38
ben_w wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that price it should save money after one year. But you’re right to care about perverse incentives; it’s hard for governments to get that right for the same reason it’s hard to make an AI that doesn’t reward hack.

One year? Someone up the page said theirs would take 8 years to pay for itself, and the article says: Installing a solar system and complying with other energy-efficiency measures required will add about $9,500 to the cost of a new home, according the the California Energy Commission. That would be offset by about $19,000 in expected energy and maintenance savings over 30 years, the commission estimates.

That sounds like the cost of installing a system on top of an existing roof. I’m talking about instead of — PV panels are US$0.23 per watt, which is about a tenth of what you just quoted for a 4kW system. That said, I know almost nothing of the soft costs, only that soft costs in the USA are vastly greater than soft costs in the UK, which isn’t very helpful in a discussion about California.

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

#232

Post by chipotle_coyote »

ppeetteerr wrote: post #50
DeepYogurt wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the near- to even medium-term future, adding another $10K to the cost of a new home in much of California is going to have a pretty negligible effect on demand. If you're expecting to pay over half a million for a home -- the median listing price for homes in CA right now is %515K, according to Zillow -- it's not much of an exaggeration to say that another $10K would be a rounding error.

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

#233

Post by taysic »

jpk wrote: post #150
ams6110 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> require a total net power draw for the home Not good either. Just let people pay for what they use. Each person can decide how to optimize for his or her needs.

That's basically what we do now, but the trouble is cheap power sources with undesirable externalities win the energy market because consumers want more energy for less money.

That's not really how it is now as some localities are massively subsidized by others.

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

#234

Post by jedberg »

djrogers wrote: post #216
jedberg wrote: post #186

This is interesting to me, because I've been advocating for a similar law for a while now, with a few crucial differences: I propose we make a law that says any home that sells for greater than the Freddie Mac super conforming loan limit (currently $679,650) must be retrofitted to have a net energy draw of zero or less from the grid (with rules about exceptions for shade and roof angles and whatnot). This would solve…

> must be retrofitted to have a net energy draw of zero or less from the grid How would you do this, when a huge percentage of that engergy draw comes from appliances that don't get sold with the house? What you're proposing would likely result in home sellers 'installing' tiny cheap refrigerators and washer/dryer combos that would immediately be thrown out by the home buyers and replaced with the ones they actually…

You could base it off of the size of the house or median usage of surrounding homes per square foot, or something similar.

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

#236

Post by sp332 »

ben_w wrote: post #231
sp332 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One year? Someone up the page said theirs would take 8 years to pay for itself, and the article says: Installing a solar system and complying with other energy-efficiency measures required will add about $9,500 to the cost of a new home, according the the California Energy Commission. That would be offset by about $19,000 in expected energy and maintenance savings over 30 years, the commission estimates.

That sounds like the cost of installing a system on top of an existing roof. I’m talking about instead of — PV panels are US$0.23 per watt, which is about a tenth of what you just quoted for a 4kW system. That said, I know almost nothing of the soft costs, only that soft costs in the USA are vastly greater than soft costs in the UK, which isn’t very helpful in a discussion about California.

Yeah, maybe. It also works if you finance the panels into the mortgage (one estimate I saw was $40/month) and start saving on electricity costs right away (same estimate said $80/month).

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

#237

Post by Dylan16807 »

rwcarlsen wrote: post #213
elihu wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle I agree, but I think in this particular case you might have trouble if you mandated a particular maximum level of energy consumption or a minimum level of on-site power generation, since some houses just aren't in a good place to get sun and there aren't any compelling alternatives to solar for power generation in residential areas. Perhaps we should discourage people from building in shady places, but t…

> In principle I agree, but I think in this particular case you might have trouble if you mandated a particular maximum level of energy consumption or a minimum level of on-site power generation, since some houses just aren't in a good place to get sun Which is exactly why mandating a specific solution like rooftop solar doesn't make sense. Your counterargument actually somewhat supports the original argument :)

Do you want those houses to have some half-efficient solar, or do you want them to be unable to be built at all?

Forcing solar on a house like that is suboptimal, forcing a certain generation metric is even worse.

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

#238

Post by cahomeown456 »

grizzles wrote: post #62
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…

Though prices can drop and even go negative sometimes it's never a long term thing. There is kind of a price floor in the market, if prices get too low energy intensive businesses will move into the state, eg. aluminum smelters, bitcoin miners, and so on. I posted in the other thread about why I think this policy is a really good idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17008950 Also it's only for new homes. You ca…

What this does is force new homeowners to make an iffy investment that they probably wouldn't otherwise make given a choice in the free market, but cleverly hides it in the price of new construction.

If it was such a slam-dunk great idea, everyone would be installing solar systems right now but they aren't because it isn't clear that it makes any financial sense.

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

#239

Post by Dylan16807 »

jedberg wrote: post #203
bhickey wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why basically every carbon tax scheme ever proposed involves remitting the revenue back to people on a per capita basis.

Remitting on a per capita basis doesn't change the regressive nature. You can only fix the regressive nature if you return it based on income. And even then, the poorest people don't have the float necessary to pay for the bill now and get a tax refund later.

The tax not being regressive was already addressed, so I'll note that there's no need for float. The remit can be built into the energy bill.

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

#240

Post by alacombe »

prostoalex wrote: post #24
mslate wrote: post #2

Everyone who’s long CA real estate can bank it because the government is doing its best to ensure that no new housing gets built. Gg “environmentalist” Sierra Club. FTA specifically larger housing developers have been preparing for this for years—along with the solar lobby. So dumb, CA deserves to go bankrupt and be overrun by homelessness.

It's perpetual employment for Sacramento though. Step 1: Lobby for legislation that slaps an extra $30-40k on top of every newly constructed unit. Step 2: Lament about the lack of affordable housing, conduct exhaustive studies to pin down the reasons.

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

-- Ronald Reagan

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