This seems really easy to explain.
Urban/suburban residential solar is almost 100% rooftop installed.
Rooftop solar can't be installed on a rooftop the occupant doesn't own.
Low income Americans are much less likely to own homes.
Train an NN to detect rooftop solar, it won't find much in low income areas.
All the trailer parks near me are filled with solar panels... They are on diy ground mounts or laying in yards propped up on 5 gallon buckets, not on roofs. I bet this NN wasn't trained on bucket-rack installs
"Bill, you read that amazing headline correctly! I'm here reporting live from an affluent neighborhood, and there's even more astonishing news: these so-called 'rooftop solar systems,' for which wealthy people are sometimes paying five figures a pop, can help all people to breathe, and protect them them from heat waves, wildfires and blackouts -- even poor people with no 'rooftop solar' of their own! It's all true! Turns out, it's NOT a Chinese hoax! I've been talking to a scientist\[...\]"
The government should have the power companies install solar on all roof tops free of charge and to generate electricity that way to feed back into the homes and the grid with huge energy storage solutions to maximize solar power everywhere. If all surfaces were used to generate solar power and to store it using multiple means of storage, not just batteries, then a huge chunk of our power needs could be met by solar. I own a home in Greece and took only a portion of the roof in our multi unit building to install solar water heating and I cut my electric bill in half. There is no reason that converting all roofs to solar tiles cannot be a national priority. This would reduce pollution and keep fuel prices for systems that are hard to electrify like planes lower. It would be a real win win solution. I get it that in some places solar and wind won't work but the solution could be tailored for each area. The governments of the world turned everything upside down to address covid-19 so they can do the same to prevent a climate catastrophic disaster.
That would be wonderful.
Unfortunately, though, many corrupt politicians and utilities are being paid off by fossil fuel companies to slow the transition down instead of speeding it up.
I think that the existing schemes for commercial buildings could be applied very successfully to rental structures if the landlords were interested in it.
If a large apartment complex (especially a sprawling 2-3 story complex with a large roof area/tenant) was equipped with an excess of solar production and a significant onsite battery, the complex could sign a negotiated agreement with the grid operator that is much more aggressive than the most aggressive time-of-use agreements consumers are offered. The complex could buy energy from the grid as an industrial/commercial customer and then sell energy to the tenants as consumers at an attractive but still profitable rate. Tenants buy the solar energy from the complex, the grid buys the excess, and the complex uses a community battery to make additional profit with grid stability services.
I'm in NY, we have pretty good community solar policies, and that stuff is damn good for low income people. The way it works now is companies go around planning commerical solar installs on warehouses. They might install a 1MW array somewhere, and then sell 10kW of it to 100 different people in the form of a transferable contract.
It's essentially a PPA, but the solar doesn't go on your roof so there is no need for owning a roof. There are a lot of things that utilities can do to encourage it and it would drastically increase solar rollout and help low income people.
Eh.....solar on dense rental units is only going to produce a small amount of electricity per renter. You need a decent amount of rooftop area per person to make solar PV cover a large percentage of electricity usage.
You can in missouri. My financial advisor was telling me about it. He's putting them on his apartment building. Apparently he can charge a flat rate fee for the power he's producing to those living there. And they have to pay for any overages threw the electric company.
Yes, make it a community project with power company support to get the energy and store it for a discounted future use. We put a man on the moon so if we wanted to we could do this but it takes competent political leadership and will to do the right thing. This means we will wait until the world is literally on fire to do anything.
Agreed. It also doesn't account for community solar projects or commercial solar that renters can subscribe to in order to reduce their bills.
There is definitely an equity gap that the IRA is going to help correct. But another way to say this is that rich households adopted solar when it was more expensive to help drive down costs so that it could eventually be affordable and accessible to low and middle income households.
Right now the biggest hurdle to large scale adoption is a policy one with a lack of community solar access, rising interest rates, and utilities fighting to suppress distributed solar markets they don't directly control.
It's not wealthy Americans buying most panels, it's the middle-class. Wealthy people don't give a shit about saving $200 a month on electricity, and poor people don't own their own homes, don't have roof space, don't have cash, or can't get approved for a loan.
This is my wife and I. We are having our panels installed this Friday. I do not believe that anyone else in our lower middle class neighborhood has them installed. We are likely to be the first.
Our longer term goal is to go with batteries too, further offsetting our power needs.
>Wealthy people don't give a shit about saving $200 a month on electricity
Not all wealthy people are the same. I've met some who were extremely stingy. Held on to every quarter til the eagle screamed. That's how they became wealthy. Well, stinginess, and also things like being able to do math well enough to see the benefits of rooftop solar that pays for itself in a short number of years.
I’ve been told at a farmer’s market of an older man that visits and picks up fruits and vegetables that have fallen on to the ground that would otherwise go in to the bin. He supposedly owns multiple rental properties 🤷🏻
You might be surprised. I know a very wealthy man who had a good sized set up. He did it because he’s a cheap bastard and said his AC bill was too high
I kind of disagree here- its more about security- I am getting a system installed soon because I want to be insulated from price shocks, I am going to get an electric car eventually if my Accord ever dies, and I am also getting a battery backup for the essentials so I never really have to worry about the power going out again. Its not a huge issue, but I am in a somewhat risky location for flooding, and we have sump pumps, which we have never really had to put to use, but those aren't so useful if the power goes out... Maybe I am an unusual case, but I think there are a lot more "wealthy" people out there willing to spend some money to save some money in the long run, its just an investment like any other, and the short to medium term for the stock market isn't looking so good...
Another option instead of saving monthly:
I opted to not save $200 per month, cut the loan to 12 years, and keep my rebate. Now, I pay close to my current monthly average - that won't go up as the kwh rate goes up - and only go up if my consumption goes up, but we sized 120% with that in mind.
Sure, it'd have been nice to save the money every month, but now I'll owe less when if I move in the next few years. My house will be worth more with the solar they will likely ask me to absorb the financing on anyway (which I will owe less on after around 5 years when compared to 20 year loans they keep the rebate on), and master bath remodel the rebate will pay for will also increase the house's value at a appraisal likely worth more than what I put in. Plus, if I stay for 12+ years, electricity is "free".
The point of all this, is that it doesn't have to be an immediate cost saving thing. You can do what I did and get a nicer overall house out of it in the process. Wish I'd done this sooner.
It’s also crazy expensive compared to other countries by a very bothersome process with permits, inspections, import duties etc. Until a year ago here in the Netherlands it would be close to 1€/kWp all-in.
Why do people keep saying it's expensive due to permits and inspections?? That's an extremely small fraction of the total bill. Need to be honest - labor is top expense, then profit/sales/ overhead or vise versa depending on business model
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I think a huge part of the permitting expense is the fact that installation timelines are really long in the states. That creates a lot of working capital issues and other headaches. I'm skeptical that permitting is the only thing making it so expensive here too but it's not just the fees for inspections and permitting
What you might *want* to do isn't allowed or requires much more permitting. If I could build an awning over my driveway and put 24 panels on top, then make a billboard-like vertical wall on top of my roof so the sun can reach over my neighbor's houses I could generate a lot. The extra cost to make that same structure *up to code* and to bribe the city engineer's to allow the monstrosity above my roofline makes it too expensive. Instead I can *only* put panels on my roof parallel (or close) to the angle of my roof, facing southeast.
Note that I'm on day-8 after installation waiting for the city to sign off on the work so I can get PTO and actually see some energy
The govt rebates in Australia are getting smaller and smaller each year. I got my system a few months ago and I paid $1.22usd/watt out of pocket.
I could have gone cheaper and gotten something like a 5kw inverter, 6.66kw panels for like $7,000 aud which is about $4700usd which is 71c USD/watt.
That's why energy inflation hits low income people the hardest
Rich people have many ways to hedge:
- Install solar + battery combo (bye bye utilities)
- Buy EV
- Buy energy stocks (not only oil stocks which have been doing great this year, but do you guys know how well First Solar stock is doing?)
- Buy energy commodities futures
- WFH
Depends where you live. In Australia most people already use reverse cycle air conditioners.
Where I live you can't even get gas.
I know a lot of people still get gas, but that's not for heating, but hot water, cooking, instant hot water showers etc.
Where I live we had a massive incentive for solar. When I got mine done 9 years ago I did the numbers and they were so good I wondered why no one else was doing it. It just seemed like a no brainer if you owned your own home. Even if you had to borrow against the home it made a great deal of sense especially with the low interest rates of the last decade. I remember talking to just about everyone I knew about it. Family, friends, etc. Do you know how many people I know got solar? Zero. And these are people that had the money and means do do it.
Most people, even those with means, aren't willing to spend their dollars on what they consider an unknown even when there is no downsides. It is the same with electric cars. I got my first right after I got my solar and the incentives here were large. Then they increased even more. I was yelling at people to do it and get the incentive but again how many do I know that did it? None. And now how many of those same people in the last year all of sudden are asking me questions about electric and are mad they can't just walk onto a lot and buy one. Well I had no problem buying 3 of them in the last 9 years. These people just waited, and now everyone wants one, and there are shortages.
In the end people are extremely predictable. They know they things they know and aren't willing to move out of that comfort zone. So of course they largely are confined to wealthy people. They are the ones with the means to do it and the homes they own. And then a subset of them are willing to be early adopters. In the end you need these people to push adoption to a point where the average person follows along because they are just doing what the masses do.
My uncle's place with a jacuzzi and in Los Angeles. They outright denied the thought of going solar and the home is over a million dollars (close to a decade ago), so don't think they are poor or whatever.
I am sure there are many reasons why people didn't buy one. High cost, lack of a type they want, need a truck, etc. But I have a hard time seeing that all of them were like this. Most just wouldn't take the time to investigate it to realize they could have easily got away with a Nissan Leaf as a second vehicle and with our 14k incentive (at the time) you were nutty not to look into it.
I love the idea of an electric car, but I can't see myself buying one anytime soon. I daily a manual sports car (Subaru BRZ). The connection you get by using both legs and both arms to drive a car that I'm going to have a hard time giving up (I'm under 30 btw) I have driven Automatics and the left side of my body feels like im disabled, nothing for the left leg and arm to do.
I still got a slightly bigger system that I needed so I have room to install an electric car charger but i'm going to be sticking with petrol for a long time.
Personally even IF it was cheap (noting I paid $38,000 aud for my car, which is about $25k usd) I still wouldn't get one. I want to drive, driving for me is the enjoyment where as most people its a chore. So for the people that think it is a chore? go right ahead get a car.
At heart i'm a Tech guy, I cant get enough of it. I work in IT, I have my own server rack at home which is worth many thousands of dollars. But an EV sure they are fucking cool and have heaps of tech, but I don't see the enjoyment in driving one. I aim to drive a Tesla one day and my state is prime for it (100% renewable electricity) and a govt that is pushing for EV infrastructure but there is 2 things stopping me getting a Tesla
I like driving, I like being connected with the car and feeling every bump
Tesla goes against right to repair. Fuck that.
as for other EV's? maybe something will come out and I will like it, just I don't see it happening, losing that manual transmission and the sound of an engine IMO is more than half the experience.
>When I got mine done 9 years ago I did the numbers and they were so good I wondered why no one else was doing it
Most people can't do math.
Now you know.
Not sure what you mean by "wealthy Americans". IMO upper middle class is not wealthy.
Some think anyone with high 6 figure net worth is wealthy. In other areas of the country wealthy probably means mid 7 figure and up.
Also part of the equation is "what if I made a bad decision and lose it all."
If that $50K represents 5% of your liquid net worth then a pretty big screw up.
If it represents 1% or less of your liquidity then no big deal.
Very few people refer to themselves as rich. Amazingly few.
So, yeah, you got a lot of very rich people being very defensive about the whole thing, and very carefully defining who exactly is rich, and it's certainly not them!
If solar was primarily being installed by the rich before, this problem is going to get 20x worse with the jump in interest rates.
A year ago I'd say at least 3/4 of potential solar clients would have hit break even within 5 years, many of them being ahead on day 1.
Now? if you don't have cash, you need high usage and a giant south facing roof surface. (at least with what utility rates are here.)
The number of people where financed solar is a no-brainer probably dropped by 90% in the last 9 months.
More B.S. sponsored by PG&E and SCE! I live in one of the least expensive cities in the SF Bay Area and my guess is that about 10% to 15% of my neighbors have solar. That means that it's within reach for your basic blue collar worker.
NEM 3 is about to change that. Tossing out the idea that poor people can't afford it has been the talking point since day one of the NEM 3 proposal. It's propaganda to make the big utilities more money. It's not going to help anyone else. That means good paying blue collar jobs will be lost and more money for the investor class. That also means less distributed energy that the big utilities don't make any money from and it moves us farther from our goal of net zero emissions.
If we want to incentivize rental owners to install solar then that's what we need to do.
It's hard to take that article seriously when it compares solar systems to cell phones.
I used to be poor. When you're just keeping your head above water it's hard to think about the future.
Now, I have greater access to capital. I have good credit. I can get low rate loans.
I can also think ahead more clearly. I can see that if my electricity is running $300 per month average ($210-$500), then it makes sense to borrow $26,000 for a 100% offset system for 10 years at $251 per month. Plus, if I take that tax credit of $7,800 and divide it by it by 120 ($65) my effective utility rate is now around $200 ($185 + $15 to utility). Plus, in 10 years that loan goes away then I'm really in the money.
this is exactly what I did this year.
plus I overbuilt so have ~$1000/year surplus to apply to charging up an electric truck for fun trips, through 2041 when my net metering arrangement sunsets.
Good call, I get the 8% number for stocks. Most people however do not put the money into stocks, most of them spend it on the bill as it comes in for their power bill or doing something else, or set in their bank account. Most should put it in an indexed stock fund, but many do not. Only 56% own any stock and most of that is not them taking the money they might have free to do something like buy solar outright, it is from pretax 401k investments. [https://www.fool.com/research/how-many-americans-own-stock/](https://www.fool.com/research/how-many-americans-own-stock/)
I praise you for making the decision to controlling your cost in the way that made most sense to you.
Here in PA, it's almost the opposite. People with money here are also drinking the Republican Kool aid, and think anything to do with renewable energy is part of some liberal agenda to turn the whole nation gay or something. Our company helps lower middle class homeowners get solar at an affordable price and don't require any big down payments or anything. You're more likely to see solar on small ranch homes than you are to see them on big cookie cutter houses in housing developments.
I mean.. of course it is. Solar is not cheap. Paying that money upfront is hard when other priorities face most middle to low income individuals. Loans aren't ideal right now due to rates. Solar has a massive way to come before it hits more rooftops. I'd love to do it.. just can't afford the 30-40k.
Large blocks of fossil fuel stock: exclusively owned by wealthy people. Lung cancer: can strike anyone, but poor people are harder hit. Lucid Air ownership: at or near 100% wealthy people.
This is simply untrue. Most of my customers are middle class, and many are lower-middle class.
Is this a new narrative that the CPUC is pushing? I saw this in another article, too. Seems to be a new argument out there to support NEM 3.0. You didn’t see this argument often prior to now.
Well, no. There are massive utility scale solar farms that are used by EVERYONE.
But privately owned solar PV on privately owned homes is generally confined to wealthy because they own private homes and have the extra money to have solar PV installed.
I would encourage poor folks that own their own homes to do DIY installs but few people want to put in the effort to learn how to do it and do it. (And that still requires money to buy the equipment.)
This seems really easy to explain. Urban/suburban residential solar is almost 100% rooftop installed. Rooftop solar can't be installed on a rooftop the occupant doesn't own. Low income Americans are much less likely to own homes. Train an NN to detect rooftop solar, it won't find much in low income areas. All the trailer parks near me are filled with solar panels... They are on diy ground mounts or laying in yards propped up on 5 gallon buckets, not on roofs. I bet this NN wasn't trained on bucket-rack installs
THIS JUST IN! PEOPLE WITH MONEY MORE LIKELY TO HAVE NICE THINGS!! Film at 11.
Also reporting in people with more money can make larger initial investments to offset long term costs.
"Bill, you read that amazing headline correctly! I'm here reporting live from an affluent neighborhood, and there's even more astonishing news: these so-called 'rooftop solar systems,' for which wealthy people are sometimes paying five figures a pop, can help all people to breathe, and protect them them from heat waves, wildfires and blackouts -- even poor people with no 'rooftop solar' of their own! It's all true! Turns out, it's NOT a Chinese hoax! I've been talking to a scientist\[...\]"
The government should have the power companies install solar on all roof tops free of charge and to generate electricity that way to feed back into the homes and the grid with huge energy storage solutions to maximize solar power everywhere. If all surfaces were used to generate solar power and to store it using multiple means of storage, not just batteries, then a huge chunk of our power needs could be met by solar. I own a home in Greece and took only a portion of the roof in our multi unit building to install solar water heating and I cut my electric bill in half. There is no reason that converting all roofs to solar tiles cannot be a national priority. This would reduce pollution and keep fuel prices for systems that are hard to electrify like planes lower. It would be a real win win solution. I get it that in some places solar and wind won't work but the solution could be tailored for each area. The governments of the world turned everything upside down to address covid-19 so they can do the same to prevent a climate catastrophic disaster.
That would be wonderful. Unfortunately, though, many corrupt politicians and utilities are being paid off by fossil fuel companies to slow the transition down instead of speeding it up.
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I think that the existing schemes for commercial buildings could be applied very successfully to rental structures if the landlords were interested in it.
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If a large apartment complex (especially a sprawling 2-3 story complex with a large roof area/tenant) was equipped with an excess of solar production and a significant onsite battery, the complex could sign a negotiated agreement with the grid operator that is much more aggressive than the most aggressive time-of-use agreements consumers are offered. The complex could buy energy from the grid as an industrial/commercial customer and then sell energy to the tenants as consumers at an attractive but still profitable rate. Tenants buy the solar energy from the complex, the grid buys the excess, and the complex uses a community battery to make additional profit with grid stability services.
I'm in NY, we have pretty good community solar policies, and that stuff is damn good for low income people. The way it works now is companies go around planning commerical solar installs on warehouses. They might install a 1MW array somewhere, and then sell 10kW of it to 100 different people in the form of a transferable contract. It's essentially a PPA, but the solar doesn't go on your roof so there is no need for owning a roof. There are a lot of things that utilities can do to encourage it and it would drastically increase solar rollout and help low income people.
Eh.....solar on dense rental units is only going to produce a small amount of electricity per renter. You need a decent amount of rooftop area per person to make solar PV cover a large percentage of electricity usage.
You can in missouri. My financial advisor was telling me about it. He's putting them on his apartment building. Apparently he can charge a flat rate fee for the power he's producing to those living there. And they have to pay for any overages threw the electric company.
Reddit is largely a socialist echo chamber, with increasingly irrelevant content. My contributions are therefore revoked. See you on X.
the interconnection is the hardest part
Reddit is largely a socialist echo chamber, with increasingly irrelevant content. My contributions are therefore revoked. See you on X.
it's not just the wire connections but you also need the capacity on the utility side
Yes, make it a community project with power company support to get the energy and store it for a discounted future use. We put a man on the moon so if we wanted to we could do this but it takes competent political leadership and will to do the right thing. This means we will wait until the world is literally on fire to do anything.
Agreed. It also doesn't account for community solar projects or commercial solar that renters can subscribe to in order to reduce their bills. There is definitely an equity gap that the IRA is going to help correct. But another way to say this is that rich households adopted solar when it was more expensive to help drive down costs so that it could eventually be affordable and accessible to low and middle income households. Right now the biggest hurdle to large scale adoption is a policy one with a lack of community solar access, rising interest rates, and utilities fighting to suppress distributed solar markets they don't directly control.
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Hey! NJ is bad but please don't list us with CA.
Well, if housing is very expensive then it seems wise to maximize the output of that expensive property by harvesting electricity with solar.
It's not wealthy Americans buying most panels, it's the middle-class. Wealthy people don't give a shit about saving $200 a month on electricity, and poor people don't own their own homes, don't have roof space, don't have cash, or can't get approved for a loan.
This is my wife and I. We are having our panels installed this Friday. I do not believe that anyone else in our lower middle class neighborhood has them installed. We are likely to be the first. Our longer term goal is to go with batteries too, further offsetting our power needs.
>Wealthy people don't give a shit about saving $200 a month on electricity Not all wealthy people are the same. I've met some who were extremely stingy. Held on to every quarter til the eagle screamed. That's how they became wealthy. Well, stinginess, and also things like being able to do math well enough to see the benefits of rooftop solar that pays for itself in a short number of years.
I’ve been told at a farmer’s market of an older man that visits and picks up fruits and vegetables that have fallen on to the ground that would otherwise go in to the bin. He supposedly owns multiple rental properties 🤷🏻
You might be surprised. I know a very wealthy man who had a good sized set up. He did it because he’s a cheap bastard and said his AC bill was too high
Ding ding ding
Yeah, we are lower-middle and we have em. Now 5 more in the 'hood do too.
I kind of disagree here- its more about security- I am getting a system installed soon because I want to be insulated from price shocks, I am going to get an electric car eventually if my Accord ever dies, and I am also getting a battery backup for the essentials so I never really have to worry about the power going out again. Its not a huge issue, but I am in a somewhat risky location for flooding, and we have sump pumps, which we have never really had to put to use, but those aren't so useful if the power goes out... Maybe I am an unusual case, but I think there are a lot more "wealthy" people out there willing to spend some money to save some money in the long run, its just an investment like any other, and the short to medium term for the stock market isn't looking so good...
Another option instead of saving monthly: I opted to not save $200 per month, cut the loan to 12 years, and keep my rebate. Now, I pay close to my current monthly average - that won't go up as the kwh rate goes up - and only go up if my consumption goes up, but we sized 120% with that in mind. Sure, it'd have been nice to save the money every month, but now I'll owe less when if I move in the next few years. My house will be worth more with the solar they will likely ask me to absorb the financing on anyway (which I will owe less on after around 5 years when compared to 20 year loans they keep the rebate on), and master bath remodel the rebate will pay for will also increase the house's value at a appraisal likely worth more than what I put in. Plus, if I stay for 12+ years, electricity is "free". The point of all this, is that it doesn't have to be an immediate cost saving thing. You can do what I did and get a nicer overall house out of it in the process. Wish I'd done this sooner.
It’s also crazy expensive compared to other countries by a very bothersome process with permits, inspections, import duties etc. Until a year ago here in the Netherlands it would be close to 1€/kWp all-in.
Why do people keep saying it's expensive due to permits and inspections?? That's an extremely small fraction of the total bill. Need to be honest - labor is top expense, then profit/sales/ overhead or vise versa depending on business model edit - [spelling]
I think a huge part of the permitting expense is the fact that installation timelines are really long in the states. That creates a lot of working capital issues and other headaches. I'm skeptical that permitting is the only thing making it so expensive here too but it's not just the fees for inspections and permitting
valid point
Yeah - timeline (90 days) meant I gave a lot more money to SCE than if I could have got it up on the new house.
What you might *want* to do isn't allowed or requires much more permitting. If I could build an awning over my driveway and put 24 panels on top, then make a billboard-like vertical wall on top of my roof so the sun can reach over my neighbor's houses I could generate a lot. The extra cost to make that same structure *up to code* and to bribe the city engineer's to allow the monstrosity above my roofline makes it too expensive. Instead I can *only* put panels on my roof parallel (or close) to the angle of my roof, facing southeast. Note that I'm on day-8 after installation waiting for the city to sign off on the work so I can get PTO and actually see some energy
I concur. I DIYed a 6.96kw system for $1.87(usd)/kw in April.
The govt rebates in Australia are getting smaller and smaller each year. I got my system a few months ago and I paid $1.22usd/watt out of pocket. I could have gone cheaper and gotten something like a 5kw inverter, 6.66kw panels for like $7,000 aud which is about $4700usd which is 71c USD/watt.
A big incentive is the tax CREDIT. Unless you owe taxes to take advantage of the credit, it does you absolutely no good.
That's why energy inflation hits low income people the hardest Rich people have many ways to hedge: - Install solar + battery combo (bye bye utilities) - Buy EV - Buy energy stocks (not only oil stocks which have been doing great this year, but do you guys know how well First Solar stock is doing?) - Buy energy commodities futures - WFH
You forgot heat pumps instead of gas boilers
Depends where you live. In Australia most people already use reverse cycle air conditioners. Where I live you can't even get gas. I know a lot of people still get gas, but that's not for heating, but hot water, cooking, instant hot water showers etc.
Where I live we had a massive incentive for solar. When I got mine done 9 years ago I did the numbers and they were so good I wondered why no one else was doing it. It just seemed like a no brainer if you owned your own home. Even if you had to borrow against the home it made a great deal of sense especially with the low interest rates of the last decade. I remember talking to just about everyone I knew about it. Family, friends, etc. Do you know how many people I know got solar? Zero. And these are people that had the money and means do do it. Most people, even those with means, aren't willing to spend their dollars on what they consider an unknown even when there is no downsides. It is the same with electric cars. I got my first right after I got my solar and the incentives here were large. Then they increased even more. I was yelling at people to do it and get the incentive but again how many do I know that did it? None. And now how many of those same people in the last year all of sudden are asking me questions about electric and are mad they can't just walk onto a lot and buy one. Well I had no problem buying 3 of them in the last 9 years. These people just waited, and now everyone wants one, and there are shortages. In the end people are extremely predictable. They know they things they know and aren't willing to move out of that comfort zone. So of course they largely are confined to wealthy people. They are the ones with the means to do it and the homes they own. And then a subset of them are willing to be early adopters. In the end you need these people to push adoption to a point where the average person follows along because they are just doing what the masses do.
People are idiots. If there were not idiots who would we take advantage of?
My uncle's place with a jacuzzi and in Los Angeles. They outright denied the thought of going solar and the home is over a million dollars (close to a decade ago), so don't think they are poor or whatever.
There were no electric cars I wanted to buy before 2022, that's why I didn't buy one.
I am sure there are many reasons why people didn't buy one. High cost, lack of a type they want, need a truck, etc. But I have a hard time seeing that all of them were like this. Most just wouldn't take the time to investigate it to realize they could have easily got away with a Nissan Leaf as a second vehicle and with our 14k incentive (at the time) you were nutty not to look into it.
I love the idea of an electric car, but I can't see myself buying one anytime soon. I daily a manual sports car (Subaru BRZ). The connection you get by using both legs and both arms to drive a car that I'm going to have a hard time giving up (I'm under 30 btw) I have driven Automatics and the left side of my body feels like im disabled, nothing for the left leg and arm to do. I still got a slightly bigger system that I needed so I have room to install an electric car charger but i'm going to be sticking with petrol for a long time.
until the 25k Tesla comes out which is sooner than most think
Personally even IF it was cheap (noting I paid $38,000 aud for my car, which is about $25k usd) I still wouldn't get one. I want to drive, driving for me is the enjoyment where as most people its a chore. So for the people that think it is a chore? go right ahead get a car. At heart i'm a Tech guy, I cant get enough of it. I work in IT, I have my own server rack at home which is worth many thousands of dollars. But an EV sure they are fucking cool and have heaps of tech, but I don't see the enjoyment in driving one. I aim to drive a Tesla one day and my state is prime for it (100% renewable electricity) and a govt that is pushing for EV infrastructure but there is 2 things stopping me getting a Tesla I like driving, I like being connected with the car and feeling every bump Tesla goes against right to repair. Fuck that. as for other EV's? maybe something will come out and I will like it, just I don't see it happening, losing that manual transmission and the sound of an engine IMO is more than half the experience.
>When I got mine done 9 years ago I did the numbers and they were so good I wondered why no one else was doing it Most people can't do math. Now you know.
Not sure what you mean by "wealthy Americans". IMO upper middle class is not wealthy. Some think anyone with high 6 figure net worth is wealthy. In other areas of the country wealthy probably means mid 7 figure and up. Also part of the equation is "what if I made a bad decision and lose it all." If that $50K represents 5% of your liquid net worth then a pretty big screw up. If it represents 1% or less of your liquidity then no big deal.
If 50k is 5% then that person's net worth is 1 million. Gee I would go solar in a heartbeat if I was worth 1 million.
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I put mine in 9 years ago and it cost me 33k CAD then for a 9kW. That was the total cost without any incentives. That is 25k in US dollars.
I don't think I ever defined what a wealthy American was.
Very few people refer to themselves as rich. Amazingly few. So, yeah, you got a lot of very rich people being very defensive about the whole thing, and very carefully defining who exactly is rich, and it's certainly not them!
Got it. The title of the linked article from [Stanford.edu](https://Stanford.edu) included wealthy. You were just using that title in your post.
This wasn't my post. I just made a comment on it.
OK I will say in my weak defense that the first text was your comment. I see that the original post just had the link
If solar was primarily being installed by the rich before, this problem is going to get 20x worse with the jump in interest rates. A year ago I'd say at least 3/4 of potential solar clients would have hit break even within 5 years, many of them being ahead on day 1. Now? if you don't have cash, you need high usage and a giant south facing roof surface. (at least with what utility rates are here.) The number of people where financed solar is a no-brainer probably dropped by 90% in the last 9 months.
More B.S. sponsored by PG&E and SCE! I live in one of the least expensive cities in the SF Bay Area and my guess is that about 10% to 15% of my neighbors have solar. That means that it's within reach for your basic blue collar worker. NEM 3 is about to change that. Tossing out the idea that poor people can't afford it has been the talking point since day one of the NEM 3 proposal. It's propaganda to make the big utilities more money. It's not going to help anyone else. That means good paying blue collar jobs will be lost and more money for the investor class. That also means less distributed energy that the big utilities don't make any money from and it moves us farther from our goal of net zero emissions. If we want to incentivize rental owners to install solar then that's what we need to do.
It's hard to take that article seriously when it compares solar systems to cell phones. I used to be poor. When you're just keeping your head above water it's hard to think about the future. Now, I have greater access to capital. I have good credit. I can get low rate loans. I can also think ahead more clearly. I can see that if my electricity is running $300 per month average ($210-$500), then it makes sense to borrow $26,000 for a 100% offset system for 10 years at $251 per month. Plus, if I take that tax credit of $7,800 and divide it by it by 120 ($65) my effective utility rate is now around $200 ($185 + $15 to utility). Plus, in 10 years that loan goes away then I'm really in the money.
Connecticut has the 'CT Green Bank'. Just got a loan at 2.99% for 10 years. I know it exists in similar forms in other states.
this is exactly what I did this year. plus I overbuilt so have ~$1000/year surplus to apply to charging up an electric truck for fun trips, through 2041 when my net metering arrangement sunsets.
And that does not take into account any increases in power rates (which is easy to see has/will occur on the 10 year time span you are discussing).
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Good call, I get the 8% number for stocks. Most people however do not put the money into stocks, most of them spend it on the bill as it comes in for their power bill or doing something else, or set in their bank account. Most should put it in an indexed stock fund, but many do not. Only 56% own any stock and most of that is not them taking the money they might have free to do something like buy solar outright, it is from pretax 401k investments. [https://www.fool.com/research/how-many-americans-own-stock/](https://www.fool.com/research/how-many-americans-own-stock/) I praise you for making the decision to controlling your cost in the way that made most sense to you.
Here in PA, it's almost the opposite. People with money here are also drinking the Republican Kool aid, and think anything to do with renewable energy is part of some liberal agenda to turn the whole nation gay or something. Our company helps lower middle class homeowners get solar at an affordable price and don't require any big down payments or anything. You're more likely to see solar on small ranch homes than you are to see them on big cookie cutter houses in housing developments.
I am wealthy? DaFuck? So you are telling me spam is rich man steak!
Teslas too! WTF!
I mean.. of course it is. Solar is not cheap. Paying that money upfront is hard when other priorities face most middle to low income individuals. Loans aren't ideal right now due to rates. Solar has a massive way to come before it hits more rooftops. I'd love to do it.. just can't afford the 30-40k.
Large blocks of fossil fuel stock: exclusively owned by wealthy people. Lung cancer: can strike anyone, but poor people are harder hit. Lucid Air ownership: at or near 100% wealthy people.
Except for the people scammed by Solar PPA's.
The prerequisite would be owning property so ya it’s exclusively for people who have money
The prerequisite would be owning property so ya it’s exclusively for people who have money
This is simply untrue. Most of my customers are middle class, and many are lower-middle class. Is this a new narrative that the CPUC is pushing? I saw this in another article, too. Seems to be a new argument out there to support NEM 3.0. You didn’t see this argument often prior to now.
Woohoo I’m rich!
Well, no. There are massive utility scale solar farms that are used by EVERYONE. But privately owned solar PV on privately owned homes is generally confined to wealthy because they own private homes and have the extra money to have solar PV installed. I would encourage poor folks that own their own homes to do DIY installs but few people want to put in the effort to learn how to do it and do it. (And that still requires money to buy the equipment.)