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Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’, confirms IEA (International Energy Agency) (from 2020)
(www.carbonbrief.org)
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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Technology
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Coming from someone who owns them-
Nah, it's not worth it.... at least, if you strictly look at "saving money" overall.
ROI is on average 10-25 years, depending on your current cost of energy. The components/inverters/etc, are usually rated for 20-25 years.
At least- this applies if you have a properly licensed contractor install everything. If you do everything yourself, its extremely worth it, and would achieve ROI in a decade or less.
What part wasn't worth it? You said it's not worth it, then made it sound worth it.
The ROI is 10-25 years based on the electricity prices you locked in at the start.
With regular inflation, and general increases in the electricity rates, over the long run you're going to save money. The return might not be investment market level returns, but if you can justify the up front costs it's unlikely to not come out ahead.
If the ROI => 25 years, then it's not worth it- because the hardware and equipment is considered deprecated at that point.
If it lasts 30 years, sure, its making good use of itself. But- everything is rated between 15-25 years. As such, after that period, it's considered end of life, and no longer supported.
Now- I will note, it is not worth it for the "Rate I currently pay", which is 0.08c/kwh. If next year, my electricity rates tripled, it would vastly reduce the amount of time until this solution reached ROI. And- I am betting that electricity does not get cheaper in the future, otherwise I would have not have pulled the trigger on a 50,000$ project, where the math told me it wasn't the best idea.
Also, if you really want to see everything quantified- I plan on publishing all of the math, and numbers at the one year mark... which will be around march. -> https://static.xtremeownage.com/pages/Projects/Solar-Project/
How did you get that rate? We pay 33 cents, and it was 24 cents just a few months ago... wouldn't be surprised if it goes up again next year and the year after since even 33 cents is government subsidised (so - there's no cheaper option available).
Ooof. Why'd you do that? We simply put (a bit over) 5kW of panels on the roof, and a good 5kW inverter. One day of sun generates about as much power as we use in a week, and even if it's overcast we still come out ahead.
We're basically only paying for overnight power and pretty easy to keep that to a minimum (with good insulation, efficient overnight appliances, avoiding unnecessary overnight power consumption - such as putting the beer fridge and hot water heater on a timer).
All about location. There are supposedly many in my area on a different coop utility, who are only paying 0.03c/kwh.
I had a few other goals I wanted to accomplish-
Reliability. The grid here isn't the most stable, and blinks a few times per week. And, a time or two per year, we have an outage. This solution has handled this fantastically well, so well, that I don't even notice when the grid has dropped unless I specifically go for it.
Apart of this, was bringing some of my wiring/electrical up to code. This accounted for 10k of the price-tag... I relocated/replaced the mains panel across the house to a location more suitable then my daughter's closet. Also- the panel itself, was pretty old, and needed to be modernized.
One more issue- my PV is undersized a bit. Adding another 3kw, would yield much better returns for me.
Its undersized, because if I oversized it, and sent more energy than I consumed, my lovely utility slaps on a 42$ fee.... which is no-bueno.
It’s worth noting that grid scale tends towards far better ROIs of 7 to 10 years. Home systems are a lot more expensive seeing as about half the cost of them tends to be in labor and markup as compared to the economies of scale larger projects. Still often worth it, but significantly more than a properly managed power company in a favorable regulatory environment can do.
Solar power is really cheap. If we only needed it for low wattage DC, like lights and electronics, it could be built fairly cheap even with storage. But most home energy use is high wattage AC. That gets expensive pretty quickly, unless you do your own electrical work.
From our perspective it's been worth the investment. We did a new water heater while the electrician was wiring everything up, and that's saved us an additional grand (at least) every year not using heating oil. Last time we talked energy prices with the neighbors they were averaging over $500 per month, but we generate enough to bank credits to last us through the winter at the hookup fees.
Granted, our winter heat is primarily the wood stove and a low consumption floor fan to circulate the air and not space heaters, but our overall ROI is below 10 years given heating and electricity costs in our area.
those parts (panels, inverter) are easy to replace since all the installation has been made, and they will be cheaper than they were when you bought them. Im my case panels + inverter were about 40% of the total cost. I imagine a similar powered panel will be way cheaper in 20 years
I'm gonna wait a few years, until prices go waaay down.... and I plan on doubling/tripling the PV capacity, which will make everything much more effective, as well.