41–50 of 85 posts
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Can you take advantage of the shade from the Solar Panels? If you can install solar panels above the ceiling with enough space to keep the air flow, it can help you keep your house fresh and comfortable during the day. Specially in a hot and dry climate.
The Bay Area is not a "hot and dry climate."
I'm super excited about the promise of solar panels, because my house has unobstructed exposure to the sun, and I live in the Bay Area, so we get sunshine 300+ days per year. However, every time I revisit the math, it never works out. Even if I purchase it myself, the payoff times are never less than around 17-20 years, depending on how aggressive I project the rise in electricity rates. Given that solar panels have…
If you're sincerely interested in solar panels you should look into doing it yourself. It's not as complicated as many of the solar retailers want to make it out to be. Step 1) Buy panels direct with mounts Step 2) Mount the panels yourself. They aren't super heavy, just fragile. The tricky part here is measuring and drilling the holes you need to get them secured to your roof properly. Or buying a slanted frame if y…
I'm super excited about the promise of solar panels, because my house has unobstructed exposure to the sun, and I live in the Bay Area, so we get sunshine 300+ days per year. However, every time I revisit the math, it never works out. Even if I purchase it myself, the payoff times are never less than around 17-20 years, depending on how aggressive I project the rise in electricity rates. Given that solar panels have…
Its entirely unclear how much "additional" value they give the resale value of my house. It is clearly some, but I don't have a good way of knowing if it is $20,000 or more.
At the time we financed the purchase as part of a refinancing of the house, so we did know the interest cost for the money, we also went through the great Recession so in traditional financial analysis (the 'do nothing' option) we would have predicted our money would have had a better return than it actually did, although that didn't really change the math all that much.
So I can't see how you don't get it paid off in < 10 years these days. At this point I'm thinking of adding another string to offset the addition of an electric car.
I'm super excited about the promise of solar panels, because my house has unobstructed exposure to the sun, and I live in the Bay Area, so we get sunshine 300+ days per year. However, every time I revisit the math, it never works out. Even if I purchase it myself, the payoff times are never less than around 17-20 years, depending on how aggressive I project the rise in electricity rates. Given that solar panels have…
Can you take advantage of the shade from the Solar Panels? If you can install solar panels above the ceiling with enough space to keep the air flow, it can help you keep your house fresh and comfortable during the day. Specially in a hot and dry climate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you factoring in that you can stay hooked up to the grid and sell extra power back to the energy company?
Yes, I used some online calculators that predicted how much electricity I generated based on the size of the array, the amount of electricity I used, and how much I could make selling the electricity back, as well as rebates, etc. I can't remember the actual link for the calculator, but it was pretty thorough. Of course, there was a lot of guessing that needed to take place, like the rise in electricity prices, etc.…
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I don't see how that's relevant to the article in hand.
IKEA promotes itself as ethical and clean. Selling solar panels is part of this marketing buzz that IKEA has created. This submission is a direct result of IKEA marketing. Some people may not want to buy from a company engaged in such vigorous tax avoidance.
Sure, Ikea isn't doing it out of sheer altruism. They're doing it because, under the laws they're subject to, it's a sensible business strategy.
I have the means and the property (albeit small) to do this but.. no chance. The main payback (ignoring the environmentalism externality) is dependent upon a government subsidy rather than actual savings or efficiency gains and as soon as it suits them, the government can yank the benefit away and you're sat with an expensive piece of plastic on your roof that'll take 20 or more years to pay for itself. (I seem to re…
I have the means and the property (albeit small) to do this but.. no chance. The main payback (ignoring the environmentalism externality) is dependent upon a government subsidy rather than actual savings or efficiency gains and as soon as it suits them, the government can yank the benefit away and you're sat with an expensive piece of plastic on your roof that'll take 20 or more years to pay for itself. (I seem to re…
Is that true for these particular subsidies? Or has the UK government committed to them over the coming 15-20 years? I thought the latter.
Britain isn’t known for an abundance of sunshine, but Hanergy’s solar panels are designed to generate electricity from ultraviolet rays rather than sunlight. Seems to me that these solar panels are designed to generate government subsidies more than anything else...
Market competition in energy is arguably more about access to capital than consumer choice. Currently individuals provide most of the money through tax and bills but only large energy companies can easily access the resulting capital. It is wrong to criticize individuals for wanting access to this money.
I find this article bit too skeptical. Solar panels improved a lot in recent years, and you can break even with investment even in UK without subsidies. My friend in Czech Republic is a software developer. He works from home and his house is not connected to grid. He has 12-volt house grid with dozen car batteries. His office has 2 LED screens. Everything is powered by solar energy, except once a week he runs a gener…
A key under-discussed factor therein: making it work necessitates a deep change of lifestyle. 110v always-on >50 amp service normalizes comforts and conveniences ("OMG I have nothing to wear tomorrow" laundry, smooth-top electric stoves 'cuz they look nice, no concern about peak usage, weather awareness, gratuitous A/C usage, vast non-12v product availability, etc.), and most people really don't want to give that up. I grew up on wood heat & other off-grid norms in a cold climate; much later in life I realized that what I considered normal and pleasant, most [sub]urbanites recoil from in horror.