151–160 of 368 posts
Solar panel investment has slowed down substantially in Sweden. Basically, when the sun is shining, electricity is close to free. Similar situation with wind power. Neither technology can move forward until there's a 100x leap in electricity storage costs. Like a bunch of us said 10 years ago, because we remembered high school physics.
It's wild how overpriced Tesla Powerwalls are. 16 kWh battery with all of the UL supported listings etc = $3300 [0] 13.5 kWh Tesla Powerwall is $12k~$15k You would get your return way back quicker. [0] - https://www.ruixubattery.com/product-page/lithi2-16-battery-... EDIT: As others have pointed out, powerwalls have inverters built in so it's not totally apples to apples. You can get a beefy inverter for $5k and it's…
This is indeed nice for a well-to-do home. But there is a tragedy of the commons issue here. The grid needs to be up 24/7. And while peak usage is just that, the grid capacity still needs to support peak usage. This can theoretically be done using batteries but not for an extended amount of time. To say we can have batteries for 2 weeks of normal consumption is highly improbable. The metals do build those batteries d…
The rooftop solar game in Texas is strongly into scam territory. Most homes I see with panels on the roof are two story homes where you have a negligible amount of area to work with relative to interior space. There was a point where you'd have to deal with a door-to-door salesman approximately every 48h for an entire summer. The most realistic residential installation I've seen was firmly on the ground at a ~2 acre…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Awesome. Feel you have more unknowns on the safety front? vs. the expensive off-the-shelf. [in the USA, it’d also be “fewer names to sue” in that unlikely tragedy of combustion in home, but no euro /kWh targets there]
LFP batteries are as likely to burn down your house as a stack of wood is. I'd be worried about the inverter or botched DIY wiring (especially not to spec torque on terminal connections and botched crimps leading to hot spots), but not about the batteries themselves. For a person who wants to save some money, but doesn't know how to work with electricity, the best move is probably to get cheap LFP cells from China, b…
On a tangent, I’m amazed at how bad most random crimps I see on the internet are. Also, the number of people who debate the use of solder on crimps without discussing potential issues with said solder is too high.
> Having our full costs returned in ~11 years is definitely something we're happy with Except that after 11 years the equipment will have broken down or become obsolete, at which point you have to start over. > we've also had protection against several power outages in our area along the way, which is a very nice bonus. This seems to be the real benefit of the setup.
The equipment doesn’t have moving parts so I wouldn’t expect it to break down so quickly. The real surprise for me was how much having solar panels on your roof adds to the cost of roofing work. Which is a problem because the roof is likely to need repairs more often than the solar panels.
Solar panels are incredibly durable, there's a thriving secondary market for used panels, and we're likely to see 30-50 years of usage out of any panel created today.
Cracking the problem of making the roof out of solar panels seems like a fantastic engineering challenge. But not one with small tiles, make the roof out of the bigger cheap large panels. I would love to see startups working on that. Asphalt roofs look like crap anyway, changing to shiny panels would be a huge improvement IMHO
9-11 year payback isn't bad based on the projections. You could probably goose it a bit with inflation of electrical prices (depends on how the electrical policies change and what they pass through). I'll also add theres some O&M coming down the line. Inverters @ year 10, small maintenance and Im assuming you re-did your roof before you installed. Anyone putting solar up make sure you do it at the same time as a roof…
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9-11 year payback isn't bad based on the projections. You could probably goose it a bit with inflation of electrical prices (depends on how the electrical policies change and what they pass through). I'll also add theres some O&M coming down the line. Inverters @ year 10, small maintenance and Im assuming you re-did your roof before you installed. Anyone putting solar up make sure you do it at the same time as a roof…
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I'm happy to pay monthly to let my electrical provider handle all that, and I'll invest my money in something with a better return.
9-11 year payback isn't bad based on the projections. You could probably goose it a bit with inflation of electrical prices (depends on how the electrical policies change and what they pass through). I'll also add theres some O&M coming down the line. Inverters @ year 10, small maintenance and Im assuming you re-did your roof before you installed. Anyone putting solar up make sure you do it at the same time as a roof…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IIRC, the original idea was that they would pull older batteries from circulation when their capacities dipped, and then repurpose them as powerwalls, an application where weight is irrelevant. This was back when they expected the batteries to plateau at ~80% capacity after a few years, and they had battery swapping on the roadmap, so they needed to plan for a future where they had a steady supply of batteries that c…
Any idea why swapping didn't pan out for Tesla? My understanding is they are doing that in China.
> they are doing that in China
Are they actually doing that at scale?