561–570 of 571 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve tried. For it to be at all viable on my property, I’d need to cut down a bunch of trees. I’d rather keep the trees and pay someone else with solar panels.
That makes sense. Is that legal?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like home solar makes no sense without subsidies, even now with economies of scale. Commercial solar may be a different story.
I just got 10 new 585w panels and inverter for under $5k. A battery is gonna cost me $1500 but at $350 month for electricity, not sure how you can claim it not worth it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, but you have to compare it to the opportunity cost of the money. A solar panel is an annuity. There is a one time sunk cost for a relatively consistent, long-term payout. If I put $100 into the stock market in approximately seven years I will have $200. If I put $100 into solar panels, in 10 or 15 years, I will have $100 worth of savings. Financially, it is not much better than just putting it under a mattress…
> I can’t imagine the math is any better in Canada. I don't have to imagine, I've actually installed it and I can see the impact on my bills. By most estimates it has a 12-15 year ROI that matches the stock market, and will continue to generate electricity for another 10-15 years after that. The 'math' is a function of many things: orientation, roof angle, occlusion, installation costs, electricity cost, latitude, gr…
I’m guessing you’re not counting the fact that if you buy a stock for $100 you still have the $100 (you can sell the stock) but that’s not true of solar because it’s an asset whose value quickly goes to near $0 as the cost of uninstalling the panels is more than they are worth or nearly so. You’d have to be getting near 20% ROI annually for it to match the stock market in that time frame. A quick google shows that even the Canadians selling solar don’t claim that. You don’t even get that in California, where the panels produce a multiple of what yours will and all of the other factors (incentives, latitude, high energy prices and net metering, etc.) lean toward solar so I’m guessing you’re erring.
Easy to verify though: what was your install cost and how much is it saving you on energy bills?
My mini-split was installed sometime between fall 2017 or spring 2018 when my house was built. It failed when it was 6 years old, and the lineset had to be replaced because there was too much acid in the insulation and it corroded the copper. The problem was that the lineset was in my walls, so replacing it would require ugly lineset in a highly-visible place on my house. All the quotes to fix / replace it were absur…
Quality control by the contractor is soooo important. Formicary corrosion like you described can happen if a contractor doesn't pull a proper vacuum on the system to evacuate moisture before releasing refrigerant. I saw an anecdote where Bill Spohn, who literally owns an HVAC tools company, had this happen with the contractor installing a system in his own house! ( https://www.heatpumped.org/p/are-heat-pumps-a-commod…
https://minisplit-services.com/blog/f/why-is-white-line-set-...
> The white insulation material, typically made of polyethylene or similar compounds, was found to degrade prematurely when exposed to UV radiation.
According to my contractor, this was a problem with lineset manufactured in 2016 and a little after. All of the HVAC companies that I called understood the "white lineset" problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remember: The season that you need heat is the season with the least sunshine. Solar is only cheap as you claim due to net metering; without pairing it with batteries or some other form of storage, you're pushing your heating cost on others by flooding the grid with electricity when it isn't needed. Now, I will gladly point out that I have a roof of solar panels, and benefit from subsidies: It's important to understa…
No, I'm not talking about net metering, which has nothing to do with the cost per peak watt. You're right that you do need energy storage, though. Even sensible-heat thermal energy storage is completely adequate for this purpose, and it's very cheap, on the order of US$2–3/kWh. See the sand-battery outline I wrote yesterday in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45690085 . Electric night storage heaters are widely a…
This looks like something that needs to be done before the house is built, under the foundation / slab? Or did I read it incorrectly? Either way, I had to really push on my contractor just to do a heat pump. (And there are two large areas of sand under my house, one under my garage and the other under my sunroom.) I don't know how I could get someone to build that where I live.
I also couldn't tell if this is something that warms up throughout the year, or if this is something that warms up during the day and cools at night? Where I live, the days are very short in December / January, so I'm not sure if would work if it's day-to-day instead of seasonal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure if you're going to get downvoted here for the advertisement (not by me because I find it useful and interesting), but can you be specific about what "streamline direct labor" means? Also, with the virtual site visit, are you guaranteeing the customer that the estimate you give virtually will be the ultimate price? Any chance you can you take on solar next because if we could get a solar system for half t…
Yeah, really trying not to advertise. But add disclaimer. Thanks for letting me know it's a bit much. I tried to tone it down. Let me know if it's better or i should delete. streamline labor: Aligning pay incentives with installers, ensure right parts and materials, make sure customer are not indecisive on the first day, mimic the 15% of installs that are side jobs as much as possible. Virtual site visits aren't 100%…
When I read "aligning pay incentives with installers" I remember this story.
A friend who worked in sales said the union laborers would always insist the job takes more days than it actually took. If he budgeted them for one day because it takes one day, they'd drag ass so they would have to come back the next day to finish, which upset the customer since it was an unexpected delay.
But if he wrote two days into the contract they'd finish in one day and just drag the second day out.
I did the math this past year with excel and chat GPT. Go to the side of your heat pump, look at the model number, go to the manufacturer website and pull the COP specs at every given temperature. Where I live in Chattanooga, TN, it can get down to 5-10 degrees for weeks at a time during December and January.
If you look up the cost of gas per therm, convert it to BTUs, and then the cost of electricity per kilowatt hour, and then compare the cost of running a heat pump vs the cost of gas at any given temperature based on the coefficient of performance of the heat pump, you will very quickly realize that depending on your local utility, there is no break even point. As in, for me, even if it was 68 degrees outside it is cheaper for me to run my gas furnace than it would be to run my heat pump, even if the COP was 4.
I did the math for Seattle (I don’t live there, I just looked at the local utility prices and went on their website and pulled some numbers) and based on current natural gas prices and electric prices in Seattle, it’s cheaper to use gas below 24 degrees Fahrenheit. Above that temperature, based on the gradually increasing COP with temperature, then the heat pump is cheaper. But only cheaper by about 10 dollars per month. The 30-40 bucks a year you save running your heat pump during the winter months you will NEVER make back if you are shelling out an extra 10k for an install versus a gas furnace. And that gas furnace produces hot toasty air instead of lukewarm air.
The price of electricity weighs heavily on if a heat pump is CHEAPER (cheaper, not EFFICIENT) to run than gas. For all but the most advanced heat pumps, if you run the numbers, in most areas of the United States, with the exception of some parts of California, under an average temperature of 15-20 degrees Fahrenheit it is cheaper to use gas to heat. And in many, many parts of the east coast, Midwest, and south, gas is always cheaper to use to heat no matter what temperature, even if you have the most ridiculously advanced heat pumps with a high COP, and even if it’s damn near 70 degrees outside. Gas is that cheap, and packs in that energy.
I want everyone to note how this article only notes that heat pumps are more EFFICIENT. Not CHEAPER. Just because something is efficient doesn’t mean it’s CHEAPER. I want to stress that point.
I also want to note that as someone who has a heat pump, I would pay an extra 10-20 dollars a month for some warm dry heat, instead of lukewarm air. And I would pay that very willingly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope we can agree that fossil fuel consumption is something to be avoided. Subsidies are an effective means of incentivizing people to avoid fossil fuels. If you believe the externalities of solar are a problem, what do you propose to do instead? Should we subsidize some other alternative? Redirect resources from oil to nuclear? Other?
>avoided [entirely?] You're making different/absolutist arguments. Even the most ardent electrification proponents agree that you can't replace downstream chemicals/materials. As for subsidies, you're thinking too narrow if you feel it necessary to only spend limited government budget on energy to improve lives.
> you're thinking too narrow if you feel it necessary to only spend limited government budget on energy to improve lives.
I also did not use the word “only”. Governments are quite capable of doing more than one thing at once. Should governments not consider spending money on energy to improve lives?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, really trying not to advertise. But add disclaimer. Thanks for letting me know it's a bit much. I tried to tone it down. Let me know if it's better or i should delete. streamline labor: Aligning pay incentives with installers, ensure right parts and materials, make sure customer are not indecisive on the first day, mimic the 15% of installs that are side jobs as much as possible. Virtual site visits aren't 100%…
> streamline labor: Aligning pay incentives with installers, ensure right parts and materials, make sure customer are not indecisive on the first day, mimic the 15% of installs that are side jobs as much as possible. When I read "aligning pay incentives with installers" I remember this story. A friend who worked in sales said the union laborers would always insist the job takes more days than it actually took. If he…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can’t imagine the math is any better in Canada. I don't have to imagine, I've actually installed it and I can see the impact on my bills. By most estimates it has a 12-15 year ROI that matches the stock market, and will continue to generate electricity for another 10-15 years after that. The 'math' is a function of many things: orientation, roof angle, occlusion, installation costs, electricity cost, latitude, gr…
It does not match the stock market in any locale in the US. Artificial externalities may make it do so (government incentives, exorbitant energy rates) in Canada, in which case ok great. But I think you’re probably doing your math wrong. I’m guessing you’re not counting the fact that if you buy a stock for $100 you still have the $100 (you can sell the stock) but that’s not true of solar because it’s an asset whose v…
Your guess is wrong. A better term for what I calculated is the IRR of a series of cash flows. You're correct that stock is a liquid asset, I'm obviously aware that I can't liquidate the panels attached to my roof.
This whole thread got out of hand, I was just giving the anecdote that I saw a much better return on a heatpump than a solar installation. I don't care who believes or doesn't believe my calculations.
> Easy to verify though: what was your install cost and how much is it saving you on energy bills?
A rough estimate is given on my original comment in this thread.