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Comment by uptown | Hacker News Reader

For those interested in exploring solar, Google has a tool which provides some specific metrics around your home's roof based on satellite photos:

https://www.google.com/get/sunroof

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Thanks for this link. I didn't know. After putting in my address, I was afraid to click "See providers". Thankfully, Google just redirects you to a local search instead of feeding my address to some list of shady partners. Thank you Google, for being sensible.

Very cool. Despite all the sun I get (we live on a corner) it still seems like it would take literal decades to see any savings, and very little at that ($3K after 20 years? No thanks!) The issue seems to be how slanted my roof is.

Genuine question: why should we put solar panels on our roofs versus investing in a solar coop or buying solar power directly? I would think the latter options would be more cost-effective/efficient (it's more efficient to service one solar farm than the equivalent number of panels on roofs scattered across a community, etc).

At least in California, PG&E charges a disproportionate amount as "delivery cost" even if the energy comes from a cheaper and greener alternative coop. For me more than half my total cost is PG&E fees and I am subscribed to a CC Coop.

With your own solar (I don't have yet), the idea is that you can transition more of your usage to electric (say change water heater from gas to electric) without paying a cut to someone else.

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