Florida and most dry / sunny states having little to no solar panels is pretty damn wild.<p>I know in florida you have janky laws stopping you, but below 10kw it's still relatively easy.<p>I have a friend who installed <10kw of solar panels and they're now 97% off-grid in hot, wet florida weather with an old low-seer AC, single-pane windows and poor roof insulation which is roughly 60% of the energy usage.<p>The reason they got it is actually not to save money or anything, but to have power when grid goes down after hurricanes.
Don’t underestimate how politicized renewables have become. You’d think essentially free energy would sell itself, but any time solar comes up in a rural community there’s a whole host of bad faith “but what about x?” comments
Maybe, but the data speaks for itself. Texas, a huge oil state, is loaded with wind and solar and is leading the country in battery storage right now.
Texas looks _almost_ as underserved by solar as AZ/NM in that map, TBH.
<a href="https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/fuelmix" rel="nofollow">https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards/fuelmix</a>
AZ/NM have highly concentrated populations, so I would expect to see only a couple of hexagons over Phoenix and Albuquerque. Texas looking like that is pretty bad, but I suspect this has more to do with the data set.<p>I would expect Texans to independently go for solar, given the... complications of their power market.
Lot of people died for that pragmatism. Froze to death in the outages of winter storms or overheated in the summer ones. Sustainability was the last resort.
Idaho is as well.<p>AZ just has some of the dumbest rules in the US WRT to solar. It's a state where every home should have solar panels.
I was shocked (pun) to hear how my relatives were each reacting to solar energy. One was rural and was concerned about nearby land getting turned into a solar farm. Another was concerned about farmland being edged out in favor of solar. And a third spent some time in emergency response on a solar farm and was off-put by their vastness and the electrical danger while traversing through them.<p>Coincidentally this video emerged within a day of my conversation with the three of them. I shared it; they probably didn't watch it but it sure was pertinent.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM</a>
I do have a funny story to share for this specific case:<p>A landowner wanted to run power to their land, they got quoted 100k and possibly 250k to run less than 2 miles of powerlines.<p>The land owner fired back with the question of installing solar panels instead as it would be cheaper and free.<p>The representitive replied with: "Look around you, there's no solar panels because they don't work."<p>Less than 100k later, the landowner had full off-grid power via solar and a backup generator.<p>I guess at the end of the day they saw all the sunshine around them and said: "You're right, all that sun is mine and mine alone."
Rural conservative areas in CA are highly pro-solar. Mostly because PG&E is a company many do not like.
>> You’d think essentially free energy would sell itself<p>I think it would if it was indeed “essentially free”. Rooftop solar is unfortunately a racket though, and companies price-gouge like crazy and also collude to keep prices inflated.
American solar installer companies do seem to charge way more than European or British ones. I got 3.9kW installed almost ten years ago for just £5500, including all the paperwork for feed-in-tariffs. It has long since paid for itself just in subsidy, let alone actual consumption.
We had 18x510w panels (9.2kw), 2xZappi chargers, PW3 & Eddi (to heat hotwater) installed ~5 weeks ago. Total cost was £17k (inc. scaffolding, cert, etc), in the SE England, with a small recommended contractor. The UK solar market is full of rogues as well, charging massive sums, many for pretty questionable systems. We had 5 quotes to get there, 3 of which were crazy in one way or another.<p>We hit our first MW/h of power today. In England. In April. Total electricity bill for the last 6 weeks is about £30, and that includes our driving (previously £150 to £200 p/m) and most of our hot water. If you have the property for it and available investment, the ongoing savings are instant and obvious! My instant regret was not having done it sooner. Driving around on your own sunshine does feel magical as well!
In general, contractor overhead in America is obscene, compared to Europe. We have a lot of regularly capture working to keep it that way, too.
DIY is viable if you're a bit nutters (like me).<p>I just paid ~$35k (pre-now-expired-tax-break) to install a grid-tied 25kw ground mount system. I DIY'd everything except the connection between the array and the grid, which I paid an electrician to do, and the trenching which I paid my buddy with a mini-excavator to do.<p>It was a bit of a PITA, but mostly because I didn't finally make up my mind to do it until October and had to have it constructed by Dec 31st to take advantage of the expiring tax credit. If I'd given myself 6 months, it would have still been a big project, but way less stressful.<p>My neighbor's paid the same price to a contractor for a 11kw system.<p>Even at 46°N, and with relatively cheap electricity, my system should pay for itself in 6-8 years.
In EU it would be some $3k for inverter, $5k for panels, another $5k for cables, connectors and mounting and that's it if you DIY everything. Prices with VAT included.
Do you have a blog or a writeup about this?<p>What would have been the cost if it was not DIY'd? Is this doable only in a rural/semi-urban settings?
Being an honorary or actual redneck in an exurban American setting will be the sweet spot for this. Your neighbor's rusting Bobcat is not useless after all. You have the space for ground mounting. I toyed with a rooftop solar DIY project with an electrician handling the AC side, but in my urban context PG&E wanted a six-figure fee for a subterranean transformer upgrade. In 2024 the state regulator established rules that PG&E can't charge for that kind of service upgrade so maybe I should start considering it again.
I am counting on physical, semi technical contract work to pay once SWE opportunities shrink to the point where it’s not worth it anymore.<p>Now is the time to get handy if not already. Robotics /physical automation will lag info by a good stretch.
It all comes back to insurance- they're used to getting crazy sums of money because nobody questions the rates
We looked at trying to get some mini-split heat pumps for my mom's place & were getting quotes $30k figures for two modest units (it's a tiny well insulated house). I don't know what the frak is wrong with this nation; this is so fantastically worrying.
Home HVAC is the most obvious current regulatory caused scam in the US. Virginia just added an 'easier' license that 'only' requires two years of experience to receive (and 160 hours of formal training, but that's not the bad part obviously).<p>Something like a minisplit though can literally be DIYed in under a day. With experience, a DIYer can do it in a couple hours. They're literally designed to be easily installed as a complete system. Even in Japan you can get one installed for under a grand (including the unit). In China it's obviously even cheaper.<p>Obviously HVAC companies don't want it to be easier to get a license, they make boatloads on entire home systems and maintenace. Being able to just replace a broken unit for $600 would kill their entire business model.<p>Electrical is a similar scam, though for some reason if you get enough quotes you can usually find one that isn't charging the equivalent of $1k/hr in labor like getting a mini-split from an HVAC company tends to be.
HVAC is wildly variable, even more so than other trades in my experience. Get several quotes, there will be five digit differences between the top and bottom.
Try looking up HVAC workers on thumbtack.
> American solar installer companies do seem to charge way more than European or British ones<p>One of the reasons for this is that in many parts of the US, solar has sadly been market segmented as a luxury product, just like other high efficiency products like heat pumps or EVs.<p>This is enabled by both the prevailing cultural attitudes about efficiency and renewables as indulgences for the better off, and industries that are happy to keep captive high margin markets of those customers, i.e. the continued lack of a US produced low-cost EV.<p>The American cult of individualism is also at play, wherein collective solutions are shunned vs private ones, which is why renewables and storage are so popular among off grid libertarian types.
One of the things I like most about balcony solar is that you can DIY it (at least, in the places I know that have approved it) instead of getting scammed.
I have one of those terrible fake balconies on the front of my house.<p>I am working on replacing it with a real deck/carport combo and will probably put 600w solar over it, should be room for 4-6 of them.<p>That will be a 2-3kw solar install, not enough to replace my entire draw by a long shot, but enough to carve a pretty big dent out of it.<p>I'm already going to be spending $10k-$15k on the deck/carport install plus the french doors to replace the window looking over the fake balcony, so what's another $3k-$5k for a modest solar install?
There are so many scams in the solar industry. I feel like a ton of installers joined just to make a quick buck with no effort.
Sure it isn't up front, and there's probably something to be said about scammers seeing green with subsidy money.<p>But the very idea of not being dependent on the grid or fossil fuels, if one can afford it and costs are comparable, should sell itself.<p>But my dad watches Fox News so he brings up lies like how bad wind turbines are for the environment (coal anyone?) or how we shouldn't make ourselves dependent on China for solar (as if we aren't dependent on a lot of bad hombres for our current energy mix or as if receiving solar makes us dependent at all).<p>---<p>Edit: HN's conversation throttler childishly patronized me for "posting too fast". At least do me the honor of telling me you don't like what I'm saying, instead of telling me I'm posting too quickly when I'm making 1 message/hour.<p>---<p>In response to dataflow below:<p>It still reveals an ignorant cult-like derision for renewables that isn't explained by reality. The people who gleefully mock the issues with renewables do it because they have been trained to want renewables to fail, and to see active support for renewables as a signal for softness and liberalism.
My local town Facebook group gleefully mocks local solar each time it snows/is cloudy, as if. There’s never been anything (eg, a war in the Mideast) that could disrupting fossil fuels pricing and availability…
> My local town Facebook group gleefully mocks local solar each time it snows/is cloudy, as if. There’s never been anything (eg, a war in the Mideast) that could disrupting fossil fuels pricing and availability…<p>Your counterargument is even worse than theirs. The predictability, frequency, severity, mitigability, etc. of these are extremely different.
> predictability<p>I'm giving this one to renewables.<p>> frequency<p>I guess technically the weather is probably bad for solar or wind more often than geopolitical disturbances to the oil market but, if we go by when its bad for solar _AND_ wind, I feel like I'd need to see the data.<p>> severity<p>Tied, maybe? Depends if we're including like, the 70s and if we're looking at just from a US standpoint or if we're including Europe.<p>> mitigability<p>I feel lot more confident in my ability to add more panels than to negotiate reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
Fossil Fuel is disposable energy, like dixie cups, use once and then throw it away. Renewables are reusable energy, day after day.<p>Also oil and gas tankers move at about the same speed of someone riding a bike, across the ocean, taking nearly 2 months to cross. Its insane the amount of time and resources wasted like that.
In Florida, the irony is that hurricane is the reason for not having too many solar panels. For example, Miami-Dade county requires commercial solar panel installation to have hurricane-approved solar mounts, which can withstand up to 160mph+ winds. This means installation is very costly. Even for homes, many insurance company will not insure homes with roof solar panel because of hurricane.
I could have sworn that FL was like top five in solar production.<p>Edit : it is! It’s 3rd <a href="https://seia.org/solar-state-by-state/" rel="nofollow">https://seia.org/solar-state-by-state/</a>
Hawaii is the one I don't get. Every building there should be festooned with panels. They have the best opportunity to be a world leader in electrification.<p>Instead they import bunker fuel. The tankers dock at the power station, which then burns it, to power the island.
The vast majority of natives have very little capital.<p>The industries with more capital (mostly tourism) don’t usually have a lot of land, or would prefer to use it for tourism activities. They also tend to be seasonal, which messes up the math.<p>But yes, it is silly.
In Alabama regulatory capture is such that installing solar panels attached to the grid incurs fees higher than just buying the electricity from Alabama Power.
Why not install and not attach to the grid? My understanding is if you have them attached to batteries and not feeding back it is considered off grid in some places.
I don't know anything about Alabama but in California you generally can't create off-grid developments without permission from a local authority, because it's a recognized problem that "off-grid" systems are often under specified, leading to danger for the occupants. And nobody really wants off-grid to proliferate because it would tend to concentrate the costs of the grid upon the remaining users who will be the ones least able to afford it.<p>For a place that was two miles from a power line, I would think anyone would approve of off-grid.
I'm interested to read a source on this if you have it
I know California has reduced the incentives to purchase solar panels. You have to also have a battery backup system which increases the costs considerably. I'm guessing we may have too much solar in the day and not enough storage for the energy created.
The battery increases the upfront cost but also increases the roi very much (at least where I am living). You get way less money for feeding energy to the grid than you have to pay for withdrawing energy(as you said some utilities even limit/forbid feeding during peak hours).
In my case that means (Austria):
Sell 1 kWh - 0,04€
Buy 1 kWh - 0,25€
Oh yeah, it's just the initial cost goes up and the payoff time becomes longer. And you were one of the people who had installed solar panels, the rewards for it are reduced.
Wrong, payoff time will be shorter. Why: During the next few years energy suppliers will "force" people, who feed energy to the grid into flexible pricing, so the reward for producing will be less and less ( current flexible prices <a href="https://markt.apg.at/en/transparency/cross-border-exchange/day-ahead-prices/" rel="nofollow">https://markt.apg.at/en/transparency/cross-border-exchange/d...</a> ) and the incentive for having a battery is getting stronger. For my situation that means almost zero energy costs from March to October. Even in December and January it covers 30-50% of the total energy demand (heat pump).
Don't you have to replace the batteries every few years though? That should be factored in the equation.
Modern lithium batteries can last decades! LFP batteries can take thousands of discharges cycles, and most systems wouldn’t be designed to fully drain the batteries anyways (keeping them at more optimal levels of charge to maintain capacity).<p>solar systems don’t require that much ongoing maintenance. There just aren’t many consumable components. (And battery recycling is getting better by the year)
You have to replace everything you own on some cadence. Eventually I'll need to replace the battery on my solar system. I'll also need to replace the panels at some point and even the roof the system is installed on.<p>My solar system uses a Tesla powerwall. I'd expect its real world performance over time to be about the same as what you see in batteries for Tesla vehicles.
most batteries can last 10+ years
A partly cloudy or partly sunny day produces some insane changes in output without a battery system to smooth them out<p>There is a limit to the size of the instantaneous increases and decreases in generation that the other generators on the grid can compensate for
I have said it before in another comment - on a related post.<p>It's wild that Southern US which gets most of the sun - has relatively little solar compared to the North - which gets less sun days - but has more solar.<p>the damage politics has done to the US is crazy n sad.
Is this blog potentially suspect/misleading? Up-thread someone pointed out another source for PV production with rankings:<p><pre><code> 1 - California
2 - Texas
3 - Florida
4 - Arizona
5 - North Carolina
6 - Nevada
7 - New York
</code></pre>
<a href="https://seia.org/solar-state-by-state/" rel="nofollow">https://seia.org/solar-state-by-state/</a><p>And here's a different source for residential PV:<p><a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1419901/us-residential-generation-from-solar-by-state/" rel="nofollow">https://www.statista.com/statistics/1419901/us-residential-g...</a><p><pre><code> 1 - California
2 - Arizona
3 - Texas
4 - Florida
5 - New York
</code></pre>
Is there any chance that people are jumping to incorrect conclusions?
Sunbelt states are mostly pretty high<p><a href="https://www.chooseenergy.com/solar-energy/solar-energy-production-by-state/" rel="nofollow">https://www.chooseenergy.com/solar-energy/solar-energy-produ...</a>
Optimistically, I would expect to see more panels in raw numbers up north due to necessarily overbuilding the capacity to account for fewer sun-hours per year.
Well also the desert southwest is still relatively sparsely populated, so rooftop solar won't show up as much on a map like this. Plus their power is cheap(er) than CA.<p>But yeah, you'd expect some bigger utility-scale installations.
Many utility scale solar plants are indeed being built out in the desert. The Antelope Valley and along the 15 corridor in particular, as they have the power distribution lines already in place. However even along 80 you’ll see a few.<p>They tend to be where high voltage distribution lines leave high demand urban areas, and the land gets cheap enough.<p>A lot of other places just need some high tension power lines, and it will happen. Permitting for those is a nightmare.
We're off grid and have 7kw of panels, and 40kwh of 48v lithium batteries, with a generator for backup, which is rarely used since we are frugal with electricity and switch everything off when not in use.<p>I set it all up myself, and while it is not trivial, it's not difficult either.<p>Learning to put connectors on properly, size cables and put lugs on properly, learn about earthing and breakers...just one bit at a time.<p>I'm about to set up another system on the roof of an outbuilding to supply power for a water pump and irrigation where we grow food. This will be much easier and simpler since it will have only one 48V lithium battery, but I'll still use Victron stuff and connect it to a Cerbo so it can be monitored.<p>If I sold this place and bought somewhere on the grid, the first thing I'd do is cut the cord and set up my own system again.
What inverter hardware did you use?<p>I have an el cheapo 120 VAC 3600W import inverter with just two 100AH AGM batteries in series as it's a 24 VDC unit. Right now its all temporary and more experiment than practical.<p>Inverter mounted to a portable frame I built from bolted slotted angle with two battery shelves for a total of 4 batteries (only 2 now.) The batteries have a 200A terminal fuse and run through a 200A disconnect to the inverter using #2 AWG cable. The inverter, AC input, AC output are all grounded to a single ground bar that is bonded to the metal frame. AC Input is fed from a 12 AWG cord with 15A plug. AC output runs two 15A MCCB's, each terminated to a single socket hanging off a short whip cord. A cheap two wire digital DC volt meter is wired in series with a push button so I can see the battery voltage at a glance when I have the inverter powered down.<p>I temporarily setup the panels in my yard as an experiment but since I am in the city, I don't get good sun in my yard with all the obstructions. Honestly I ran it for two days, took the panels down before it rained, and didn't get a chance to measure anything. The panels really need to go on the roof and I have no intention of doing that any time soon.<p>The system did come in handy as a backup for my boiler when a wind storm knocked the power out for an hour and a half this past winter. I have thought about setting it up as a UPS for my little IT setup at home but 3600W is super overkill.
Victron MultiPlus-II 48/10000/140-100/100<p>All of my system, aside from batteries, is Victron and installed in a small lean-to. Batteries are 8 x Fogstar 48V 100AH, in an outdoor rack, since I have no dry space indoors for batteries.
Aren't lithium batteries cheaper than AGM these days? On top of lasting much longer and allowing full deep discharge.
do you have a blog or some links of walking through the process of getting everything setup?
I don't, but Will Prowse on YT is very good, and lots of other people are too. Victron has great documentation, and lots of system layouts as examples.<p>The most challenging part was getting and victon stuff talking to the fogstar batteries, which was hampered by not reading the manuals and trusting chatgpt, but in the end it was trivial.
Curious, how did you deal with inspections and building codes? Or is it in a county with no building codes?
»We're off grid and have 7kw of panels, and 40kwh of 48v lithium batteries, with a generator for backup, which is rarely used since we are frugal with electricity and switch everything off when not in use.«<p>Good for you, but this is neither a concept for large cities nor for the industry.
What's the big deal with having a whole liquid cooled workstation, and why is it important information for me to know what this dude's hardware is? And seriously, is there something about the rig that is necessary to chew through a dataset with a few million rows?
Liquid-cooled computers have one major benefit; usually, your computer ages over time, and there's a long period where it's still barely fast enough but you wish you had something nicer. A liquid-cooled workstation prevents you from needing to manage this grey area by catastrophically failing at unexpected intervals.
I had to re-read this three times. My sarcasm detector must be on the fritz.
Also prevents you from messing with it too much, as any substantial change requires draining and refilling your loop.
Had me in the first half.<p>I looked at using an AIO for my PC build but ultimately went with an air cooler the size of a damned rubix cube and a high airflow case.<p>My room gets <i>toasty</i> with raytracing titles, lol
I got an Aigo AIO (AC SE 240) off of AliExpress and use it as an automated reminder that my system needs an upgrade: once it stops working (with an upper bound of maybe 4-5 years), I'll know that it's time! Didn't even need to pay extra for that feature!
He just does this with all his blog posts, don't overthink it. The tech industry is full of people with unexpected quirks.
I really don't think we should be shaming computer enthusiasts for being enthusiastic about their computers on HN of all places
The 9950X is an excellent CPU at a reasonable price point and works perfectly fine with an ordinary air-cooled heat sink in an ordinary case without stupid numbers of fans. The TDP is just not that high.<p>source: my 9950X, happily running air cooled.<p>(Embarrassingly, I have an M4 Max that can almost match it in the CPU-bound workload I care about while sipping some 45W. The rest of the industry really needs to catch up with Apple on power efficiency.)
It had a very 90s/early-2000s tech blog feel to it. Only thing missing was his custom Gentoo build.
Obviously he's telling you their spec incase you wish to reproduce his results. Why don't you try it and tell us how your result compares.
If you're not familiar with his blog, he also occasionally does benchmarks of databases & extensions. He starts every post by outlining his setup.
> 96 GB of DDR5 RAM<p>Most people drive cars worth less than this.
He could have gotten it when it was still cheap.
A single stick of DDR5 RAM on Amazon in about $450 now. Three sticks would be $1350. Do most people drive old clankers with less than $1500 resale value?<p>You still need a few terabytes to enter the real cars territory.
Most people don't own or drive cars.
96gb of ddr5 ram is about $800.
Why is the top comment criticising a geek for being a geek? He gave us a wealth of information including his exact methodology and queries on how he produced his results. This is an ideal approach. You want just results and "trust me, bro"?
My initial thought was that was a weird choice in this article, but I wouldn't fault someone for being thorough.<p>Probably a better choice as an appendix, move the good stuff up to the top. But overall its NBD.
I had the exact same thought, particularly when I read there were fewer than 4M records.<p>I really have to wonder if people truly know how powerful any modern computer is. Like I just assume any modern PC with sufficient storage can handle a database with a billion rows of data. I think my phone probably could.<p>Now if you were, say, analyzing commercial satellite imagery of the entire US and trying to find rooftop solar, matching it against the database and finding data that wasn't in the dataset, that's something where your computer power would be way more relevant.<p>Come to think of it, you could probably use such imagery to construct a power generation network from power plants to transmission lines to utility poles. Of course some places have underground cables but there are other datasets for that.<p>Another interesting project is mapping the growth of solar. This would require access to commercial satellite imagery over time. I'm sure some government agency already does it. Or used to at least. Snapshots years or even months apart are less interesting.<p>Anyway, I guess the point is the author's computer is capable of way more than I suspect they think it is.
> than I suspect they think it is.<p>Because he wants to tell you about his computer it means he doesn’t know how capable it is?
I always make sure to downgrade my computer hardware before running a trivial analysis. Every dataset needs to redline the current configuration.
It's funny how I started skimming as soon as I saw "My Workstation" without ever consciously perceiving why I had started hitting Page Down, until you mentioned it and I went back to notice what it said there. My brain has really automated web page signal extraction.
Would be kinda interesting to see a histogram of the azimuths and/or tilt angles.<p>In my native Netherlands I'd guess to see that peaking at ~south at say 15-30 degrees, with some lower peaks at east/west combos.<p>Curious to see what it would be in this dataset.
I love that idea. I don't have time for anything elaborate today but I dropped two visualisations at the bottom of the post.
I love the radial one, which looks like it was laid out as a "mirror tower" installation and then maybe converted to PV?
Thanks, interesting to see!
> <i>In my native Netherlands I'd guess to see that peaking at ~south at say 15-30 degrees, with some lower peaks at east/west combos.</i><p>Folks are doing some interesting exploration of the pros and cons of different alignments, e.g.:<p>> <i>When roof area is limited, the question becomes: What layout lets you install the most space-efficient solar capacity within budget on the available area? In those scenarios, an east–west (E–W) layout can outperform a south-facing layout. The South layout may be “better positioned”, but the E-W allows the installation of more panels in the same area.</i><p>* <a href="https://ases.org/east-west-vs-south-facing-solar-when-more-panels-beats-perfect-direction/" rel="nofollow">https://ases.org/east-west-vs-south-facing-solar-when-more-p...</a><p>Basically examining 'quality versus quantity', depending on what your location and roof allows.
Yep, sounds all too familiar.<p>I installed a east/west facing set myself on our flat roof. Looking at dynamic power prices of the preceding year, multiplied by expected power output.
Even wrote a simple space optimizer for this one time. But messed up some measurements so had to change on the fly anyways. The old adagium still holds: measure once and curse twice.
I thought the thing to do these days is put them flat and as close together as practical. You lose a few points of efficiency but double the number of panels you can fit in a given area. And panels are so cheap that this trade-off makes perfect sense.
It should be roughly correlated with latitude (the exceptions being panels on sloped roofs which will match the roof slope).
Tilt should correlate to latitude for panels with an azimuth due South.<p>For panels with east/west azimuth, the tilt should correlate with where the sun is at 7-8AM and 17-18PM, at least in my area.<p>((I think you have your concept of azimuth and tilt mixed up; I know I have when I was originally typing a different parent comment)
There's a helpful chart here, which happens to match your approximate latitude:<p><a href="https://ratedpower.com/blog/solar-panel-orientation/" rel="nofollow">https://ratedpower.com/blog/solar-panel-orientation/</a>
Apprently there are a lot of innovations hitting market, perovskites left the lab, and tandem cells are above 30%
An analysis of panels per capita vs regional IQ would be an interesting signal. Panels are cash positive in less tan 5 years of their 40 year lifespan. There is hardly a better investment up until you cover your own usage.
That is pretty optimistic. The calculators I've used online estimate my payback at 18 years and my lifetime savings at about $18K, with $32K out of pocket up front for the install. But my roof is 50% through the lifespan and I was told they would not warranty it against leaks due to panel mounts unless I first replaced the roof. That's $25K.<p>My next house will be my forever home, a little farther south than where I am now in the PNW, and on a big enough piece of land to use ground mount instead of roof mount. But right now, I cannot make the numbers work. I'd love having solar but I am not spending five digits of extra money just for the fun of it.
Imagine believing in "regional IQ".
Pretty cool, although the heatmaps have a little of the "this is just a population density map" effect. <a href="https://xkcd.com/1138/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1138/</a><p>It would be cool to modify them to be per-capita, although I imagine adjusting arbitrary hexes for population density would be a real challenge.
I think the lack of concentration in some areas, particularly hubs in Texas and Florida, is actually pretty eye-opening. To me these areas should be very dense with panels from the cost/benefit alone.
Something's wrong with xkcd's data if Portland doesn't rate a red dot on the furry porn map.
To put this in perspective, China installs around 3x that every single day <a href="https://reneweconomy.com.au/just-staggering-china-installs-100-solar-panels-a-second-as-total-pv-capacity-tops-1-terawatt/" rel="nofollow">https://reneweconomy.com.au/just-staggering-china-installs-1...</a>
It's not a comprehensive dataset. The US installed 43 GW_peak in 2025, which should be around 80M new panels.<p>Still, an order of magnitude less new capacity than China - but not two orders.
There are also 4X as many people in China, little domestically available oil, and their government supports domestic manufacturing. This is an expected result.<p>It’s OK to celebrate small wins. The US doesn’t have to be #1 in everything. We also seem to have a curious diseconomy of scale on mega infrastructure projects for complex reasons, so maybe slow growth is the right approach.
With how backwards US policy is - this will be the major factor in the future.<p>Energy heavy use cases with little to no energy costs will lap western industries.
It'd be nice if it described up front what kind of information is available per panel.<p>For that matter, I'd be interested in details of how "a team of researchers including alumni from NOAA, NASA and the USGS" (from the previous article) actually collected the data.
You can read the (open access) paper here:<p><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05862-4" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05862-4</a><p>In the abstract: “We use these newly compiled and delineated solar arrays and panel-rows to harmonize and independently estimate value-added attributes to existing datasets including installation year, azimuth, mount technology, panel-row area and dimensions, inter-row spacing, ground cover ratio, tilt, and installed capacity.“
I would like to know more detail as well.
Does anyone else experience very strange styling behavior while scrolling through this article?<p>The CSS styles seem to dynamically unload and reload while I’m reading it causing the margins to jump and the fonts change, I’ve never seen anything like this before. FWIW I’m on iOS using brave.
'My systems C drive' amd Ubuntu. Os directly a turnoff
The odd looking circular example shown is not solar PV. It is the Ivanpah solar thermal generating station, and those are mirrors rather than solar panels, or modules.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility</a><p>Solar thermal can't really compete economically with photovoltaics.
I think they are shutting it down. It had the nasty habit of frying birds that ventured too close to it. And that particular valley actually is far more cloudy then what you would expect for the desert near Las Vegas.
Thanks for pointing that out. I'll update the post.
scheduled to shut down two of its three units in 2026
look how cheap now, it's crazy<p><a href="https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809986804138.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809986804138.html</a><p>I'm old enough to remember Carter putting them on WhiteHouse roof and they were thousands of dollars then (and less efficient)
That's actually only cheap because of the free shipping - in Germany 450W panels are at about 55-60€ retail right now, for example. So a balcony set (2 panels for 1kW total, plus inverter) is about 150-200€, depending on the specific parts. Both exluding shipping, though.<p>Prices fell dramatically in the last few years, if I understood things correctly the high prices in the US are mostly due to tariffs.
And Reagan taking them down.<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/22/jiimmy-carter-solar-panel/" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/22/jiimmy-ca...</a><p>>It was pretty symbolic back in 1979, too. The symbolism depended on what you thought of Carter and his policies. For some, the panels were a much-needed acknowledgment that America had to wean itself from fossil fuel, explore alternative energy sources and help save the planet. For others, they were in the same category as Carter’s virtue-signaling cardigan. Of course, critics moaned, Carter would put solar panels on the White House.<p>>The panels came down in 1986 when the White House roof was undergoing repairs. Ronald Reagan did not have them replaced. Of course, Reagan wouldn’t put solar panels on the White House.<p>What is the story behind Reagan taking down the solar panels installed by Carter? Was it symbolic of a new, less enthusiastic approach to clean energy?<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/g4w4ww/what_is_the_story_behind_reagan_taking_down_the/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/g4w4ww/what_...</a><p>Solar power at the White House<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_at_the_White_House" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_at_the_White_House</a><p>>On June 20, 1979, 32 solar water heating panels were placed on the roof of the West Wing. The panels were made by InterTechnology/Solar Corp. from Warrenton, Virginia and installed by Hector Guevara of Alternate Energy Industries Corp.[2] At the dedication ceremony for the panels, President Carter said, "In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy... A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people".[1]<p>The whole installation cost $35,000 in 1979 (about $160,000 now).<p><a href="https://books.google.nl/books?id=e9dlzwL4Ck4C&dq=solar+white+house&pg=PA5&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false" rel="nofollow">https://books.google.nl/books?id=e9dlzwL4Ck4C&dq=solar+white...</a>
The link isn't available here. Can you share the specs and price of that panel?
I'm in the US and it's showing a 100W panel for USD 37.21 (free shipping, including tariffs but not state/local taxes).<p>Also the panels Carter installed were solar water heaters - in 1979 solar photovoltaics were just starting to expand beyond satellites and cost like $40/watt.
100W 18V for $37 and change.
$37.21 for a 100 watt panel with free shipping. I'm not sure if that is before or after 50% tariffs and/or the 10% "fentanyl" extra tariff that was announced a few days after Ross Ulbricht's pardon for running the world's largest opiates-by-mail operation.
You can buy brand new in bulk in the US for roughly the same $/watt.<p>I bought 30 375w Canadian Solar panels 2 years ago and paid $0.41/watt (~$4536 for the whole package)<p>My mounting equipment actually cost more than the panels (~$4600). And the permitting process cost nearly as much as the panels (permit cost + architectural drawing + structural engineer stamp + electrician stamp).<p>It's crazy how cheap solar panels themselves are getting. They're going to win on the energy front - period. Especially now that battery tech actually seems to be moving again. I vividly remember one of my robotics professors in undergrad ranting about how frustrated he was with battery tech in ~2007, but LFP and sodium batteries are both pretty huge steps forward.
Another data point: my entire system in Switzerland cost me 1.3CHF/Watt <i>including a 20kWh battery</i> and 5000 CHF of scaffolding costs (needed because of our local OSHA equivalent laws when installing panels on a tilted roof).<p>It has become ridiculously cheap indeed.
How much does power and grid delivery cost in Canada to make this economical? You're into this for $15,000 what is your payback period? Are there other ameliorating criteria for success?
I'm actually in GA (Canadian Solar is the panel manufacturer - CSI). Power is cheap in my region, and I was in ~$30k after all costs including the battery storage (LFP).<p>It covers 95+% of the my usage, and I use a fair chunk of power. My payback period will be almost exactly 120 months (10 years) if my power costs remained the same as they did at estimation time.<p>But they won't. We're already seeing relatively large rate increases (GA power has "locked" rates but conveniently has a floating "fuel charge" which is currently more than the base rate per watt...).<p>I expect it to take 6 to 8 years to entirely recoup costs. It helps that I did the install myself, so I avoided contractor markup. Quotes from contractors for a similar install were running ~60k+ which felt (and was) insane, although <i>STILL</i> profitable over the lifespan of the install.<p>Panels should then last another 20+ years after repayment with only minor maintenance.<p>It's shocking how easily they pay for themselves right now, assuming you get decent sun on your property.
I got $7.6kw installed in BC , Canada. Fully installed for $13k. Minus $5k grant, and the $8 is on a 10 year interest free loan.<p>Power is 13c kWh, guranteed to go up min of 5% a year.<p>So now instead of paying $1000 a year in power, I put that on the loan which will be gone in 7 years. The 20 years of $1000 a year free money.<p>I’ve had the system almost two years, they’re noticeably cheaper now. System makes 7.2Mwh per calendar year in a tight valley where it snows a ton.
Heck even if that’s pre-tariff it’s cheap enough that it could be an impulse buy.
it's from a US warehouse so there are no tariffs (or they've already been paid/included)
sorry didn't think it would have geo-block<p><a href="https://images2.imgbox.com/8b/e1/R6pnQUCr_o.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://images2.imgbox.com/8b/e1/R6pnQUCr_o.jpg</a>
now do china