261–270 of 510 posts
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No (potential) customer is required to make any company profitable.
And should a company be forced to subsidize a customer?
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They took 7 months to install the panels. I'm sure times during all that the OP thought if they forgot about him, called them to ask for a installation date, etc. As a way to curb any thought about undue wait time, the company made a contract guaranteeing installation between 6 month after signing. They didn't comply and the loan lapsed. Now the company needed to negotiate a new contract with OP or go for the legal r…
> There is nothing unethical about this. I dont consider strong arming someone due to your now advantageous position against something you previously agreed upon and reasonably similarly delivered (7 months instead of 6, we're not talking about multiple years later here). A similar ethical framework would allow someone in marriage say "I quit my job, can get alimony from you, better do as I say or I'm filing for divo…
So? Do you seriously think the solar company was ignorant of the loan terms? Was this their first job and they just didn't realize it?
Any1 built their own battery-arrays? I am interested in solar in part to avoid blackouts. But for that I will need batteries. And my house being 100% electric, tesla's powerwall quickly becomes expensive. On a first glance, using lead-acid batteries appears to be straightforward, but I wonder what edge-cases and gotchas others experienced with it. How much time is needed to maintain it. So far 10kW gas generator was…
30kwh of batteries is about $10k wholesale, and inverters run about $1500, although most of the time you need 2 if you want to supply 240v.
Sample system: https://signaturesolar.com/off-grid-eg4-system-13kw-120-240v...
Assuming you are grid-tied, the reduction of electric bills is predicated on net metering, where the utility company gives you (ideally) 1-for-1 credit for the electricity you produce. In California, this was called NEM 1.0 and NEM 2.0. Every few years the California utilities lobby the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to chip away at the NEM program. This year the PUC voted unanimously to cut net energy metering an…
Was the California grid always private or was it run by the state government at one point? To me it makes no sense to privatize services where no competition is possible. You just end up with perverse incentives to do stuff like the above.
Theoretically, the grid is supervised by the California Public Utilities Commission, which has wide latitude to set standards and regulations for PG&E and others. The Public Utility Code is the highest law in the state of California[2], so IMHO a large part of the blame for PG&E's failures fall on CPUC's failed oversight[3][4]
[1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40913
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Public_Utilities_Co...
[3]: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/CPUC-head-Michael-Peev...
[4]: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/pge-probation-lift...
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Perhaps instead of being angry that people are using taxes that come from the working class, instead you should ask why the wealthy aren't paying their share of the taxes? And nobody pays for anything with inflation. That's not how inflation works.
"The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (38.8 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (29.2 percent)."[1] How is that not paying their share? [1] https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...
Particularly since you carefully ignore that income is typically small fraction of the wealth of the 1%, most of which is capital and which largely escapes taxation.
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if you generate excess energy, can you store it for a later time when you need more energy (presumably summer time)?
While you wait decades for home battery storage technology to improve, you can make a water battery in the meantime with a few things from the hardware store. https://hackaday.com/2021/10/08/power-your-home-with-a-water...
Assuming you are grid-tied, the reduction of electric bills is predicated on net metering, where the utility company gives you (ideally) 1-for-1 credit for the electricity you produce. In California, this was called NEM 1.0 and NEM 2.0. Every few years the California utilities lobby the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to chip away at the NEM program. This year the PUC voted unanimously to cut net energy metering an…
Net metering just doesn't make sense though. Everyone who wants to rely on the grid for power availability ought to pay for grid upkeep costs. Net metering would make sense if it came on top of a baseline "connectivity fee" that covered grid maintenance, but that's not the current policy, would likely be politically infeasible, and would hurt rooftop solar customers financially anyway. Subsidizing solar is a perfectl…
I joked with my neighbour that we should wire up our homes and sell my excess to him at mid point and we would both be better off.
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That is technically true, but why is no one asking how and why his electricity bill is $223 at minimum, plied higher since the bill was only reduced by that amount. Also, “subsidies” are really just a quaint term for “made the working and lower middle class that can’t pay for such exorbitant luxuries pay for it through taxes and inflation”. I’m always a bit confused if seemingly otherwise smart people simply don’t un…
> I’m always a bit confused if seemingly otherwise smart people simply don’t understand something so basic Are you surprised, truly? All right, I’ll play along. We have a progressive tax system. So the majority of the costs are born by the wealthy and the well-off, rather than the working class. Some of the well-to-do got that way by grit and hard work; others by luck; and at least a few by fraud and worse. They’re t…
> The unsubsidized all-in price for buying and installing the panels was $25,525.43... after counting this $6,636.61 tax credit, the subsidized price was $18,888.82 Looks like a 7 year return on investment after subsidies, 10 years without.
I'm not affiliated, but Solar Wholesale is a DIY that can be 1/4 the cost of hiring a contractor: https://www.solarwholesale.com Even the wiring is DIY. Most people think this requires a lot of skill, but you are just adding an input to your panel board on your house.
Can somebody explain where the return on investment comes from in residential solar? It just strikes me that if there was easy money to be had on solar installations, we'd just get tons of utility scale solar installs (which would likely by more capital efficient) and my utility bill would over time converge on the expected total utility bill for a home with residential solar. Is it just because we're in that transit…