The equipment company I rep won't even bother bringing solar panels to the US. We get the rest of their gear, but they say 'just source them in your market, it's too expensive and too much hassle to bring ours to you because of the tariffs'. These are tariffs started under Trump V1, and extended by Biden. Solar panels have gotten incredibly cheap for the power they provide. I did our system in Mexico for about 30% less than we could have in the states (panels only). The rest of the world is installing solar and wind all over the place and reaping the rewards. We are actively thwarting implementation.
The combined states of Baja California (roughly the size of our California) have over 100MW of wind and solar. In 2024, they exceeded their goal of 33% of their energy from clean sources. They sell power to California.
Anti-China sentiment and tariffs aren't going help the US' laggard status. Also wind power gives you cancer...
It's bound to be uneven across states in the US, but there's some progress.
The equipment company I rep won't even bother bringing solar panels to the US. We get the rest of their gear, but they say 'just source them in your market, it's too expensive and too much hassle to bring ours to you because of the tariffs'. These are tariffs started under Trump V1, and extended by Biden. Solar panels have gotten incredibly cheap for the power they provide. I did our system in Mexico for about 30% less than we could have in the states (panels only). The rest of the world is installing solar and wind all over the place and reaping the rewards. We are actively thwarting implementation.
The combined states of Baja California (roughly the size of our California) have over 100MW of wind and solar. In 2024, they exceeded their goal of 33% of their energy from clean sources. They sell power to California.
New wind and solar farms already undercut the production costs of new coal and gas plants in nearly every market worldwide. Cheaper renewable energy enables countries to move away from fossil fuels in the fight against climate change. (...)
The rest of the world is going to win this race while the USA is tying their runners shoe laces together.
New wind and solar farms already undercut the production costs of new coal and gas plants in nearly every market worldwide. Cheaper renewable energy enables countries to move away from fossil fuels in the fight against climate change. (...)
a good podcast on the whole idea, seems logical but hard to get communities on board. Worth a listen as is all Volts podcasts if you are a fan of green energy
This would really make sense on a neighborhood scale if you had like minded neighbors. If you could scale for a system with ~50-100KW you could really make a nice system. It would take a little to manage it, but the tools are all there. You could also make it work well on the lower end if you had provisions for load shedding non-critical loads (water heating, pool pumps, things like that). I've considered it for our neighborhood down south, but there are some logistics problems and most people are already built out. In the states I'm sure you would have regulatory hurdles that would make it harder. In the PNW it is really tricky to sell power, you have to do a lot of utility compliance stuff. You can however do a service fee based on usage, so there are ways around it. A co-op is a natural structure that is well supported legally for it.
Curious which one you are looking at. I've seen a couple co-op ones that made sense, but I've seen a lot more that were investment vehicles and had a planed/built in profit for the investors. How attractive it is depends a lot on your local utility rates, but most places in the US get plenty of sun to make them economically feasible if done right. The base equipment should have less than a 10 year ROI and a 15-20 year life cycle. The batteries should have their own schedule and be flexible for alternative technologies. Most of the good ones will use something like 1500-2000 cycles - so something in the 5 year range, and a buffer for unit attrition. Lots of the investment ones skip the batteries and just go for grid sell back. Then you are just using credits for your nights/cloudy days, or just using credits all around (these tend to be much better for the investor and worse for the member/customer). Usually these aren't done a a scale where you really get the advantages of scale. You can do your own system for your house by putting a little more in up front, and get a better return over the life of the system.
I received a mailing from my energy provider Xcel, encouraging me to join one of these groups, which have solar farms that consumers can use to offset their energy bills, like this company: https://platform.pivotenergy.n...
the idea is, you get billed by both the energy company and the solar farm group, and net the savings, which works out to be somewhere between 5%-15% off your bill.
Not huge savings but apparently no upfront costs and you are supporting cleaner energy.
Anyone ever join a community solar program, where a group of energy customers share from a single solar farm?
Pros/cons?
a good podcast on the whole idea, seems logical but hard to get communities on board. Worth a listen as is all Volts podcasts if you are a fan of green energy
Anyone ever join a community solar program, where a group of energy customers share from a single solar farm?
Pros/cons?
Curious which one you are looking at. I've seen a couple co-op ones that made sense, but I've seen a lot more that were investment vehicles and had a planed/built in profit for the investors. How attractive it is depends a lot on your local utility rates, but most places in the US get plenty of sun to make them economically feasible if done right. The base equipment should have less than a 10 year ROI and a 15-20 year life cycle. The batteries should have their own schedule and be flexible for alternative technologies. Most of the good ones will use something like 1500-2000 cycles - so something in the 5 year range, and a buffer for unit attrition. Lots of the investment ones skip the batteries and just go for grid sell back. Then you are just using credits for your nights/cloudy days, or just using credits all around (these tend to be much better for the investor and worse for the member/customer). Usually these aren't done a a scale where you really get the advantages of scale. You can do your own system for your house by putting a little more in up front, and get a better return over the life of the system.
I've been meaning to post an update on my system. We are still tuning and have a minor technical problem that will require another trip to fix. But with everything going as normal and renters in the house (with no concept of power saving or conservation), everything is working normally and we are right at 11% of our previous usage from the grid. April 16 (+/-) will be the end of the first full bill cycle. That will let me see how close my metering is to their metering. I also expect a visit from them to see why the usage is down 90%!. I still need to add some battery and am trying to figure out the best path for that project. There is also some operational tuning still to do, that I think I can easily get another 5% or so wrung out of the system. If I get more battery there would basically be no need for the grid connection except for a backup if something failed. There is a monthly connection fee, so that will eventually factor in.
A week ago, they took most of the town offline for a transformer upgrade to fix some summer time load issues they have been having. Our place didn't even notice. Ice, cold beer and streaming music - all critical services were 100%.
Another update, almost 1 year into operation. We have now made it to the 2nd least expensive tier of the tariff program here. Much more reasonable. We were paying 6 pesos a KWH ($0.20-0.30 depending on exchange rates), we are now down to 1.055 Pesos/KWH (about $0.05 at current rates). The tariff is based on a rolling 12 month average, so we should continue to progress down the scale. Renters are still a problem and drive usage up when they are here. They can cause ~2000 pesos ($100) a month in additional power use and muck with the tariff math too. Especially problematic in summer season when they try to run the AC overnight. I'm installing some more battery as an experiment for myself, but it will help that as well.
Our average power use even with renters is less than 10% of the previous demand. And when we are here, we are less than 3%, and trending downward. If we were here full time I think we would be nearly zero power from the grid. We also get the benefit of backup power. When the lights go out in the neighborhood - common in August/September, we are fine. The fridge keeps running and we don't really notice. One of my lingering projects is to put a grid meter on. Right now I can tell when we switch to grid power (rare), but I can't tell if the grid is up until we try to fail over. Even with the renters and other '1st year' problems, our energy cost will be down 90% and our power consumption from the grid is down about 70% - both numbers year over year from the previous year. If I cut out the renters, the consumption would have been down 97% and the cost down 98%.
I looked for a :thumbsup:
