Berlin-based climate research institute Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) has released a new study indicating that, in the last decade, the cost of solar power has dropped by 87 percent, and the cost of battery storage by 85 percent.
I heard the prices dropped a lot around 2012 too. Why are solar installations still rare?
In america the installation costs as much as or more than the panels. Until the install costs come down no one is going to do it.
About a third of the houses in my neighborhood have gone solar. My household was one of the first to do it about five years ago and every time I go for a walk I notice a new one that popped up. Our solar system payment is about half what our electric bill used to be and we make more electricity than we use every month of the year, even with charging a plug-in hybrid car. Far from “no one is going to do it.” I frankly don’t understand why more people don’t do it.
This is why I pay extra for my co-op to source it. Cheaper to build/maintain solar/wind farms
Keyword coop. People hate sharing here. It’s like a “socialist threat” to their autonomy.
Weird, here we got 11kW solar panels with inverter and 7½ kW battery for USD $12900,-. Installation (starting monday next week) is USD $ 4300,- complete with panels, wiring, inverter and battery including authorized electrician to connect it.
Meaning installation is only a fourth the total price. So clearly the panels are way more expensive, and that is in Denmark, where skilled workers are among the highest paid in Europe. AND on a ceramic tiled roof, which is the most demanding and expensive to have it installed on.
This is a completely new solar panel installation, which should begin next week. so prices are as they are now here.
PS:
For the above prices the hardware needed for installation is included with the panels.But I think that’s standard.
Insurance companies have a lot of bullshit rules in certain states about the roof(Florida) which drives up the costs to install.
That sucks, seems like an opening for an Insurance company to capture some market share. Unless of course it’s all one big cartel.
Where I live, power companies successfully lobbied to charge a minimum fee to people using a grid-tied system (as opposed to off-grid). So now a bill that might have been lowered to $9.00 will cost the minimum fee of $30.00 (actual example). You might say, that $30.00 is still a very low power bill but how long will it take before that starts going up? They are also lobbying to buy power from homeowners for less than they charge homeowners. This was a huge turn-off for me considering the high cost of installation. When I asked the solar installer about off-grid installations, he said they weren’t allowed to offer those. Not sure why but got the impression it was a government thing and not a company thing. Not sure.
It’s a company thing. Government can’t force you to pay for electricity if you don’t want it.
However off grid setups are more complicated and require a different design philosophy, so most solar companies don’t do them. You have to shop for companies that specialize in off-grid setups.
Prices for the batteries and panels themselves have dropped. Just not the cost to install them.
What a shame. Is there no competition among contractors or is it inherently expensive?
It’s mostly just time consuming. It took 5 days to get the solar installed on our roof.
Seems like a huge project. Or a challenging roof layout.
21 panels and very simple layout. The longest part was building the frame to hold the panels. Installing the inverters etc. took a little time and our town is a little strict when it cones to construction. This is a very good installer which doesn’t rush things just to move on to the next job.
They are not rare. It is the fastest growing energy production mode and is growing faster every year.
Residential installations lag behind the commercial due to installation costs, but they are blowing up as well. I can walk around my neighborhood and see a couple dozen homes with it.
It’s also highly regional. The further south in the northern hemisphere the more common.
UK its partly roof size/shape limiting the amount of panels you can get in the optimum location, partly the weather, and partly install costs.
If its going to take me 8 years at least to pay back vs. not having it I am not going to bother. Some people got lucky with lifetime buy back rates for the panels to the grid so they made bank of theirs with 50p a kwh ( and electric was around 24p a kwh to buy from the grid) but those rates got cut to like 4p a kwh, when even a cheap EV tarrif is like 9p a kwh
There are some finance deals available from the likes of Eon but its hardly high end gear, which I think is needed to make the most of the UK roofs and UK sun. Time you start paying interest on it, it becomes an even worse deal.
I would save more money by just having a battery installed and charging it on my EV tarrif overnight.