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Comment by tialaramex | Hacker News Reader

I asked before about rooftop solar because it seems so well suited to the US, especially the Southern US. Loads of large single family dwellings => each roof is owned by a single electricity bill payer, even if they're not owned outright because there's a mortgage, surely a lender can be prevailed upon to lend for Solar PV too?

Most of the EU has higher household electricity bills so rooftop solar makes faster economic sense. So that's probably part of it. A capital expenditure now which pays back in 5-10 years is quite different from one which pays back over 20 years.

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I am still baffled that no electric car dealership worked out selling a garage covered in solar panels as a financing add-one for a new vehicle purchase --- even as a publicity stunt it seems the sort of thing one could have gotten a good bit of coverage with.

Thanks. I will try to talk to dealerships. Sounds like a good sales channel.

If nothing else, you could maybe get some sales leads (I'm assuming you run a building contractor/solar panel install business?) --- fall-back position buy the new car purchase information for the relevant zip codes? (this must be pretty inexpensive to purchase judging by the junk mail caused by my wife's new car purchase)

I have wondered about this actually - it would be amazing to have a single product which is a carport with preinstalled panels, non-grid-tied-inverter and charger. Then there's no electrical component of the installation on site, you just assemble. Most of the complications of installation would go away, you just concrete in four posts.

Solar’s payback time is poor, and comes close to lifetimes, leaving not much time for pure profit. Plus grid rules are bad and often hostile to individual solar, further breaking the economic model. And few have the extra income to spend on such long term returns.

Nonsense. I've just installed PV in the north of England and my payback is in the order of five years, even with the gloom of our seasons.

Large swathes of the US have hours of uninterrupted sunshine all year round. With a battery, a residential owner may never need to pay an electricity bill for the lifetime of the system.

As GP said, "grid rules are bad and often hostile to individual solar". That's the whole story, in my part of the USA.

You'll have to be a bit more specific - is it export restrictions, or connection limits or what?

Even if you go for something that isn't grid tied then you're still breaking even within years if you spec it right.

Obviously if you've got grid electricity that's almost too cheap to meter than I wouldn't bother but for most of the western world the economics to not install solar simply aren't there.

Can you share some numbers? In Belgium I paid it back in 6 years. In South Africa where I live now, it'll take about 8 years. And as a big bonus it solved load shedding when that happened in 2023-2024.

33 months in this corner of India, disregarding tariff rises and increased consumption.

I’m in Canada, payback on my 7.3kw system will be 7 years.

I got an interest free loan for the full cost, so nothing out of pocket, just putting the money I would have spent on electricity onto the loan for 7 years, the will profit $1000 a year for 20 years.

Worlds biggest no brainer.

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