What are your guys' (who didn't DIY your system for whatever reason... oh I don't know, because you didn't want to fall off the roof from 20-30' off the ground perhaps? hahahaha) long-term outlook on the 'viability' of solar in states like CA where we're feeling a HUGE amount of pushback from the utilities via NEMs (well, I guess this is any state where solar is catching on).
Why would DIY or not impact that? You can drive the costs down and have a more cost effective system with DIY, but it's not a fundamentally different system from what's built by most installers. Just more attention to detail, cheaper, better... ;) The inspectors all commented on how clean my system was, install-wise - I took the time to do things like making sure the wire routing arcs were smooth and cut to length, instead of just leaving the tangled result of what comes out of the pulls.
However, as you observe, there are reasons roof mount is "radically more expensive" than ground mount if you're not doing your own work, and it's the roof work insurance. For reference, large ground mount "industrial/commercial solar" (the big solar farms you see every now and then) have been below $1/W for a long while now. I'm not sure what new solar of that scope is running, but it's cheaper than even DIY ground mount, because you can literally have the shipping containers start showing up at the site filled with endless panels, the trackers, etc. And you're working at low levels, so you don't have the roof concerns. Also, with trackers, they tend to be a bit more production-per-panel than fixed angle panels. They also do a better job of flattening the production curve throughout the day - you get good power morning to evening without the mid-day peak that is more and more an actual problem on the power grid. My system stretches production power out, but it's still a bit peaky at solar noon. Of course, that's 2PM out here in the summer because we're in the wrong timezone.
I sense a lot of fear from local solar companies, with many of them speculating that the utilities will eventually just buy out and 'own' the solar. The thought is that, eventually, solar is going to become a standard part of the grid that you will be charged for.
I would hope so. In terms of "energy generated per dollar," a larger scale system on trackers will be a 4-6x improvement over a typical residential install. That drops if you're comparing to my sort of install, but even then, the big local solar farms are almost certainly more effective per dollar (if they don't pull a factor of 2-2.5 over my install, I've no idea what they're doing wrong). The downside is that they're further out, so make more use of grid resources to transmit their power in, but even if you factor that in, they're going to generate quite a bit more MWh per dollar spent. Plus, they're a good place to stick batteries, eventually. You've already got the inverters, so a high side battery on the DC rails doesn't require much additional hardware beyond the batteries to interconnect. If you've got 50MW nameplate, being able to hold 30MW on a partly cloudy day, and ramp down later in the evening, is more useful to the grid than being a 15-40MW randomly varying source, which is what solar will do on a lot of days. You can, on a typical day, produce early, charge mid-day (even if you're not pulling from the grid, just reduce your inverter output as the batteries fill), and then help with evening peak as the sun goes down (or, just having your panels pointed west in the evening). South facing fixed panels tend to be dropping off as demand picks up, which makes the problems worse.
But fundamentally, the grid has to be paid for,
somehow. Electricity from a wide range of sources typically costs in the $0.02-$0.04/kWh range, with the rest of the rate going to pay for the transmission systems, the crews to work on them after storms, etc. You can get a good sense of the actual kWh vs transmission/distribution system costs in your area by finding a commercial demand based rate schedule, in which you pay separate for kWh and "grid resources required to get them to you." Residential and light commercial rates are a compromise with the useful property that your bill will be roughly the same if you use roughly the same amount of power, as opposed to measuring peak demand and billing you that way - you could have a bad month if your water heater, oven, and air conditioner were all running at the same time and you're paying for peak power (kW) as well as for each kWh. You see a bit of the "as you have higher average draw, your cost per kWh goes up" pricing in most of them to price in the increased grid use of a high power demand site, but that $0.14/kWh or so is still mostly the grid costs, not the generation costs.
No more of the ability for you to choose for your home to be "off the grid".
Please define "off the grid" here, because if you have a power connection, even if you're net exporting over a period of time, you're still very much "on the grid" and using it for things like handling surge current, frequency stability, etc.
My office is "off the grid." I have solar, batteries, inverters, and quite staggeringly expensive power compared to grid power (even after six years). I'm around 13MWh on the main array, plus a few from the morning panels, and I'm pretty sure I'm below $0.75/W delivered now, but I've only got a couple years left before I have to replace the batteries. I'll probably toss another inverter on at that point to do more EV charging, since I've got a small house system out here...
My home is very much not "off the grid," although I'm currently a net producer of energy on an annual basis with my solar. I still very much rely on the power grid, even though I'm now paying ~nothing for my use of it. A system capable of running my house indefinitely without grid power would cost quite a bit more than what I installed - probably in the $60-$80k range, just for materials. Or I'd have to shift thermal loads to propane.
And also, not so much of a choice as far as who you are going to have going up on your roof and potentially ruining it while installing a bunch of solar panels if it ever becomes 'mandated.' Kind of a scary thought.
Doesn't California require it on new construction now? But I don't see the utilities ever having the slightest interest in installing rooftop solar on people's homes, because it's quite silly. They'd get far better cost effectiveness, and far more useful systems, by going with ground mount systems. The same is true for homeowners if you have some land, and a lot of the installs I've been seeing out here are ground mount (including the ones I'm helping with).
At some point, if you just wait, won't we all be in the same boat? So what's the point of paying for it up front?
I guess the big question is what that timeframe is between now and *then* - it does seem like it would make sense just to get a bunch of panels installed if your ROI/breakeven is anywhere from 8-12 years (depending on the size of the system)... this is of course assuming that NEM 12 is out by then, with you paying monthly premiums to have a solar array on your roof lol.
I'm able to take advantage of some rather biased subsidies in the meantime to put money in my pocket and reduce my long term power expense quite nicely. Additionally, it provides long term low carbon energy for the local grid segment. But I don't pretend it's sustainable if everyone has this.
then I would explore isolating my solar / powerwalls from the grid and send a big FU to the electric provider. I don’t think they could ever truly prevent/block this.
Probably not. Cutting your nose off to spite the face generally doesn't bother other people very much. But I don't think you've got any actual experience with off grid systems if you think that's reasonable to do for large parts of the year.
They should not be able to charge for solar generation if the panels are not connected to the grid. Even as things are installed now, I think I could simply flip a breaker and self isolate. Tesla has been tremendously pro consumer along the way. We now have the ability to not only charge the home batteries from the grid (normally disallowed) but we can also now export stored energy into the grid during peak. TOU arbitrage ! The app is already perfectly tuned to maximize the cost benefit of TOU billing. There is a ML model that also learns your daily usage and decided when to start discharging the batteries to optimize cost benefit. I suspect they can very easily innovate faster than the bureaucratic system can pass law.
The problem here is that it's really not
your power grid, unless you've not disclosed a major ownership share in your local utility or something. If your utility has said that you're not permitted, on their system, to be charging/discharging batteries from the grid, and you are, you're in violation of the various contracts with them, and at least out here, a non-permitted backfeeding system that they can't easily shut off if the come out to poke at things (which they have permission to do in the rate schedules) simply leads to them taking the meter with them and waiting for you to fix the problem before they come back.
And "Disconnecting a breaker" doesn't count as "disconnecting from the grid," as far as they're concerned. Because you can flip it right back on after they leave. If the panels are wired such that they can be connected to the grid easily (via switches/disconnects/etc), they're connected to the power grid, per NEC/your local power company/etc. And, fundamentally, it's their power grid to maintain and keep safe, so what they say goes.
So my faith is in “papa elon” that he will do things right if the electric provider tries to pass absurd regulation.
Ignore your local utility provider's requirements at the risk of your connection to their grid. *shrug*
I thought the ability to export/sell energy back to the grid was universal...?
In a lot of areas, behind the meter batteries are prohibited from backfeeding by policy. There's no technical reason they can't, just the power grid is designed for mostly one way flows.
Or is that specifically a Powerwall thing that no other batteries out there can do?
If it's capable of inverting to AC and matching frequency, it's capable, at least technically, of backfeeding the grid. Most installs will have current transformers on the main feed to monitor net power in/out such that they don't, though.
The other factor right now is that solar pricing has gone up significantly since when you purchased I'm pretty sure (as with everything else I suppose). It's a sucky catch-22 situation to be in where now the ROI/break-even is going to be longer to hit - it's not so much that the difference between say 5 to 8 years ROI is a big deal; it's knowing that I have to put up that much more cash when we already have a ton of other home expenses/upgrades/repairs that we're dealing with. Right now solar doesn't feel like a priority in comparison to the other stuff we need to get taken care of (replacing HVAC system and then upgrading our panel, which is required to even go solar in the first place). By the time we take care of those things, if we do solar we'll be pretty strapped for cash...
Look into the requirements for energy efficiency tax credits. If you're doing a HVAC system upgrade, and upgrading your panel, it may be advantageous to claim them all as part of residential energy efficiency improvements, and pull the tax credits. If you have to upgrade your panel as part of installing solar, it's absolutely in scope for the 26% credit, though I think this becomes harder if you start claiming the changes are related in different tax years. But if you're having a lot of work done, check the tax side of it too.
On a related note: does anyone have a good solar ROI/breakeven calculator or resource to run the numbers?
There exist plenty, but it's hard to make strong claims about what the future pricing environment will look like. You can play with them, but I wouldn't expect them to be particularly accurate. They also don't generally price in the risk of changes to the rate schedules - though as long as you're a behind the meter interconnect, I'd argue for a longer solar day over maximum peak production.
I estimate my system at around $0.04/kWh generated for 30 years, which is enough below my power rates that it makes sense, but I'm also (as part of the system) offsetting a lot of gas use with solar miles on the car, and I've got a pretty sweet grandfathered kWh for kWh net metering deal until 2045.
