537
Solar becomes top source of electricity in California
(pv-magazine-usa.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
537 points (99.6% liked)
science
20195 readers
374 users here now
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
rule #1: be kind
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
It makes a lot of sense. More people should (have) gotten in while the getting was good.
If
You should have really looked into it while the 30% fed discount existed. I think it dies at the end of this year. Payoff time with a battery is something like 9-14 years, but after that it's 10-25 years of profit. And you don't have to worry about power outages anymore.
prices for solar are continuously falling. bleeding edge is expensive, as always. cheaper helps it grow. big oil wants to kill it. too late.
The real return on renewables is in the industrial facilities. Your house isn't going to have the location or the hardware to optimize sunlight collection like a multi million dollar facility.
Economies of scale can get the price of generating solar down into the low single digits. And then there's industrial batteries/transmission.
That's what is boosting utility. Not home units.
So I've heard a typical set up is still dependent on grid power (typical set up => able to push power back to the grid), and so during a power outage, you still lose power at your home. Its my understanding one of the components required for the hook up to The Grid requires continuous power (in case you need to push/pull power from the grid) and since it can't guarantee power from your panels, it gets that power from the grid (thus grid goes down, your whole home's power goes down.
Don't suppose you know more about this or can explain why this is/isn't the case? This setup seems unintuitive and undesirable to me, and so I'd love to have proof that's not the case, if it exists.
True. They don't want you feeding power back into supposedly dead lines that they might be trying to work on.
If you get a battery, you'll get a power shutoff installed with it. That power shutoff allows you to separate entirely from the grid instantly and keep your system running off grid. Imo it's half the reason to get a battery.
You can get the shutoff without the battery, but it's not much cheaper.
I did a full writeup here. https://lemmy.world/post/32326227
Very nice writeup. Don't have the time to fully read, but did a quick skim. Def saved for later reference though.
You sound like you might have the latest news on the 30% tax credit. Do you know how much longer that'll be a thing/what you'd need to do now to get it?
Just from a quick search,
Legislation passed in July 2025, known as the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," affects the Residential Clean Energy Credit.
The issue is putting power back onto the grid. If power is out otherwise, the guys who come out to fix it want to assume there's no power on it. If someone's solar panels are still putting power into the local connection, it can be dangerous for those workers.
It is possible to have an automatic disconnection so that in a grid outage, your house will still be powered, but nothing is going out to the grid. They usually don't put those in unless you also have a battery backup. You may be able to ask your contractor to put one in, anyway.
This goes for generators, too. You're supposed to use a power transfer switch with those.
This is good info and makes sense. Thanks!
Eh, I think even if you missed out on subsidies, the prices just keep going down.