311–320 of 632 posts
Soon (if not already) the largest costs associated with solar installations will be the labor. It's expensive to get people on roofs and electricians to reconfigure panels, install transfer switches, etc. The equipment could be free and it would still cost thousands for the skilled trades to install.
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Elon has dropped out of this game pretty much. Its Chinese manufacturing for pretty much all components. But as the article says: the hardware is now less than half of the cost and shrinking further.
Elon gave up on panels, but Tesla batteries are still a big player in home and grid scale storage.
I'm having a hard time getting past the assumption in the article that energy use is tied directly to GDP per capita and that by not following the 7% growth of the Henry Adams Curve we're somehow below where we should/could be as a country. That embeds so many assumptions about the economy and where GDP comes from, the decoupling seems more likely to be from the transition from manufacturing and other energy heavy se…
I clocked that too. Perhaps author is nodding towards replacing fossil fuels with electricity. Decarbonizing steel uses a lot more energy. Ditto cement, plastics, fertilizers, HVAC, etc. Anyone care to guess how much more energy our glorious renewable energy future perfect economy will require? 4x? 6x?
unless the humans die out as yet another sad single-planet species
We're there on solar panels. The next step is batteries. And roof systems. Cheaper ways to get solar panels on roofs. That's mostly installation cost. Does Tesla's solar roof [1] actually work? Anyone have one? [1] https://www.tesla.com/solarroof
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/40422084/inside-steel-pulse-the-...
[2] https://mansionengineer.com/2018/08/10/elon-musk-tesla-and-t...
Has the insurance & roof warranty issue been solved with panels on your roof? A few years ago I looked at putting solar panels on my roof. Both the company who roofed my house, and my insurance company - said it voided any warranty / claims against future roof damage if a solar panel was installed
Has the insurance & roof warranty issue been solved with panels on your roof? A few years ago I looked at putting solar panels on my roof. Both the company who roofed my house, and my insurance company - said it voided any warranty / claims against future roof damage if a solar panel was installed
TFA claims that it is idiotic to put solar panels on residential roofs, but them somewhere where installation cost are low instead, like on the ground or maybe factory roofs.
Installing a solar panel on a roof is not exactly expensive, complex, or difficult. Virtually every house in my neighborhood has them.
Soon (if not already) the largest costs associated with solar installations will be the labor. It's expensive to get people on roofs and electricians to reconfigure panels, install transfer switches, etc. The equipment could be free and it would still cost thousands for the skilled trades to install.
This has been the case for years now for pitched residential roofs - they stopped being competitive a long time ago. Thankfully, the impetus for residential roof solar was always more ideological than practical. There's plenty, PLENTY, of empty unused land within a 95% transmission efficiency (hundreds or even thousands of kilometers depending on tech) of the end user, for all non-island cases.
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this is awesome! i do have one quibble, though, and it's a big one. in the last two years, prices on mainstream solar panels (monocrystalline with warranty) have fallen from €0.25 per peak watt to €0.12 per peak watt; low-cost panels have fallen from €0.17 per peak watt to €0.07 per peak watt.† technically that is 'fallen by 25% or more' because it's fallen by almost 60%. 2400 watts of solar should cost you 290 us do…
400W solar panels cost $200-250. So 2400W will cost me roughly $1800. There are discounts if you can buy in bulk, but I don't have room for more than 6-8 panels at most. Like all things, the raw material cost is trivial. There are the tariffs you mention (I just skimmed your link, and don't speak German), but there's also economy of scale, packaging, logistics, etc. I'm sure I could get 400W panels for as little as $…
Related video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v33nbi7gKcY
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I think RVs that you can live/remote work in while traveling are interesting. (I'm speaking about large class A RVs like an apartment with washer/dryer etc...) But as solar becomes more prevalent, I don't see why they don't design RVs more around solar. It has only been recently that I've seen "all electric" type RVs. Before that, most RVs were hybrid propane/electric or diesel/electric, for example gas stoves, dual…
I do well in my tiny (20') RV for four months a year. It was a little cramped when I had a girlfriend with me, but still cozy. This is my third summer doing this. The first two summers, I wasn't working. This summer I'm working full-time remote (dev). It has its challenges. I plan to upgrade to a much larger 5th wheel trailer, likely in two years, with all the creature comforts you mention. Part of the reason solar i…
> The market isn't going to bear the cost of massive solar installations as standard equipment.
so doing some math...
Larger class A RVs seem to cost $300k and up, and retirees seem to happily pay for all conveniences. For "normal" people, who haven't cashed in their retirement, the good thing is that they depreciate like a car instead of appreciating like a house.
if you used all of a 40ft RV roof (40'x8') you could get ~ 5000 watts
If you had fold-out solar awnings, I don't know what you could get... 10k? 15k?
With a large tesla battery pack, you could get 100kwh of batteries.
I remember when tesla first came out with their cars. The batteries seemed unnecessarily large and expensive compared to 24 kwh batteries in other cars. But they survived the test of time/longevity being both practical and not charged and discharged 100% every day.
I think it will happen, I just wonder when.
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I find this fascinating. It really does take a variety of people to make up a culture. My ideal living situation includes being able to see someone I know every time I walk out side my home, being able to walk to a bagel shop, a grocery store, a post office, a train station, and ideally a library and bike shop and parks. It would be boring if we were all like me and clumped together.
I've lived like that. I lived in the Mission in San Francisco with four of my closest friends (all from NJ) within walking distance. It was great being able to meet up for lunch or drinks or go out clubbing, it was always a pleasant surprise to run into them randomly on the street or in a park. I lived in midtown Manhattan and I loved being able to go out at 3am in the middle of the winter and find a fresh produce st…
Lots of remote forested areas in Georgia and Alabama, but I can also understand opposition to the heat.
I would give a lot consideration to TN and NC mountains.