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Comment by vbezhenar | Hacker News Reader

From my perspective those costs are massive. I'm considering building a whole house from bricks which will cost $30-$40k. I probably won't spend $15k for electricity for all of my life. I don't understand western economy. You've got extremely costly electricity and you're claiming that solar power is good. It might be true for you, but it won't ever come to me at those prices. I'm paying $0.03 for kW⋅h. I'm spending around 200 kW⋅h per month, so that's $6 per month. I would need to live 208 years to save $15k.

Solar panels might be fine in some distant places where you're forced to use diesel generators. Diesel is not cheap. But where electrical grid is already in place, I just don't see it working.

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The installation cost is probably cheaper in your country so I will ignore it.

Assuming a 16% capacity factor that system will generate $328 worth of electricity a year at $0.03 per kWh. It would break even after 22 years. That's incredibly far away from the 208 years you have quoted.

The flaw in your thinking is that this setup wasn't chosen for you. It wasn't build in your country nor was it built by you so why would you compare it to your own needs? If you had to build your own solar system you would get a smaller one (which would decrease the breakeven duration according to your weird criteria despite not meaningfully changing the system) and you would probably install it yourself.

The reality is that wherever that solar system was built electricity costs more than $0.03 and the person needs more energy or feeds the the energy into the grid.

It's like complaining about a family of five getting a Volkswagen Sharan when you are just fine in your Citroen Ami. It's not about you.

I live in India where equation is similar. Power is cheap.

But when I factor in power outage which happens a lot, the solar is much better deal.

I've had 24/7 power sine we moved to solar.

> I probably won't spend $15k for electricity for all of my life

Living in a two bedroom unit in Sydney my last quarterly electricity bill was over $500.00 which comes to over $2000.00 a year.

Basically here in Sydney we have high electricity prices and my washer, drier and air conditioner love to chew up electricity.

Where does the heat of you drier go? Into the room to be moved again by the air conditioner, or directly to the outside?

I'm not the person you replied to, but dryers are typically vented outside.

But you have to factor in that the majority of the cost is installation. I’m going to bet that labor cost in your country isn’t nowhere the cost of that. If the labor cost in your country was the same as the US then your current power cost would be that low either.

You seems to have very cheap energy, here in Poland it's ~0.1$ but coupled with ability to store excess to grid it's quite practical and there's big rush with people installing solar panels. As you can use this extra elecricity for heating in winter which typically is 500$ to $1K per year (coal vs gas) + 500$ for elecricity per year, this means it pays for itself quite fast (not installed it yet for myself, want to be proven on durability of panels). If you don't have heating/AC need then it's probably less economical yet.

Building house here also starts around $50K (not counting land price). BTW land prices rose from 500$ to $500K on nice terrain when asphalt roads where build (in like 15 years span). I am happy that solar panels + storage are getting cheaper as building house anywhere will become possibile. Probably will contribute to faster development of poorer countries/regions with bad infrastructure.

The average cost of residential electricity in the US is just under $0.12/kWh. A $6/mo electricity bill is pretty much unheard of around here. My electricity bill is around $50/mo and we only have 2 people living in the house. It would still take me ~25 years at my current rates and usages to break even, but the economics might work out better if you have a higher occupancy residence.

I think energy companies factor in distribution costs and a bunch of other costs beyond pure energy cost per kWh, hence the hefty price.

As more people move to electric vehicles putting in solar panels will become more feasible. The price of solar is falling so fast that if it is unfeasible today it might not be the same 2-4-6 years from now. 5-6 years ago a lot of people that are installing solar now calculated that it was not worth it for them then but it is now as the prices have fallen 50-60%.

It's impossible to charge electric vehicles on solar panels. You charge at night when the panels don't produce and the panels don't have enough capacity to charge the vehicle completely. So you need huge batteries that will be even more expensive.

Battery prices are also falling 18-20% every 2 years a tesla powerwall costs around $7k now $11k with installation. You dont need to top up your electric vehicle 100Kwh every night looking at avg car use most people would need to top up 7-8Kwh only so the battery cost wont be extremely expensive no need to install 100Kwh battries just 12-15Kwh would be enough.

7 to 8 Kwh is already more than half the production of an average standalone house. Which means that the rest of the house has to somehow do without half it's production.

Also, outside of cost, batteries and solar panels have a huge environment cost during production and are still terribly difficult to recycle.

Windmill blades are often buried underground for example.

Where do you live that you pay $0.03/kWh?

A lot of bitcoin miners would love that rate!

Kazakhstan.

Interesting. I looked it up and that sounds about right for domestic users.

The cost of solar in the US is highly dependent on labor costs and the regulatory process. So OPs system would cost less in Kazakhstan based on lower labor costs.

Residential solar is also an expensive way to produce solar. In the US we have industrial scale plants that produce at $0.018-0.024/kWh.

According to:

https://www.iea.org/reports/kazakhstan-energy-profile

Coal fuels around 70% of electricity generation (in 2018), followed by natural gas (20% in 2018).

(rest seems to be hydro)

I assume cheap because no carbon tax.

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