this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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Nah. Solar as a govt project only makes sense as a solar farm. Much less expensive, easier to maintain, and doesn't piss off your voters.
Rooftop solar makes sense as a government project because it increases resilience and does something productive with all that otherwise wasted surface area. Also, as a homeowner, a government run rooftop solar program like what I suggested would piss me off a lot less than what we have now, what with the scammy private solar contractors and inscrutable "incentive" programs.
Unless the property owner is managing maintenance etc. directly themselves, it would be a herculean task to support and maintain thousands of small installations spread out across the country instead of a handful of solar farms.
Maintenace and repairs can be managed through the utility companies, which already do so for many pieces of hardware on their customers' properties just fine. The government might also offer property owners a higher payment if they accept certain responsibilities.
Maybe it's different in the US, but where I live the utility company only services the main fuse that supplies the property. Everything else is done by electricians paid for by the owner.
Where I live in New Jersey, the utility company not only owns and services the meters, it also leases, sells, and services various home appliances, like furnaces and water heaters.
Rooftop solar means managing hundreds of small installations. You need every one of them to have small inverters instead of one big one. Each of those installations will be a custom job to fit it to the roof. You will likely need to upgrade your electrical service, as well, typically from 100A to 200A. The first few people in the neighborhood can do that, but as soon as everyone does it, the power company needs to upgrade the lines coming in.
Rooftp residential solar is the worst, most expensive way to do it.
Having enough land for solar is not a problem. With the amount we use on raising beef cattle, eating a few less burgers a week would open up plenty of land. Even without that, there's plenty of dual-use ideas for covering parking lots, roads, irrigation canals, and even some types of farming.
Custom installations are good because it means more trade jobs and having to upgrade the power lines doesn't seem that bad compared to building new infrastructure, including roads, in order to support large scale remote installations. Furthermore, distributed rooftop solar better equips the public to handle grid failures.
As for the cattle, even if we ever manage to liquidate all of them, it's probably better to put their former pastures to some other type of agriculture or reforestation rather than cover it all with photovoltaics.
This. I haven't pulled the trigger on solar because I don't know which company to trust and I am not confident any of them will be around to repair or upgrade the equipment in a few years.
I've been putting off even requesting quotes for years, but this thread got me thinking about it again. I ended up finding a site called energysage.com that seemed trustworthy enough. They anonymize RFQs for solar installs and send them to contractors that they've vetted. I entered my info last night and got two quotes back today. Turns out rooftop solar probably isn't a good choice for my house. Payback would take 12.5 years, half of the equipment warranty. That's if I pay for it all upfront, much longer if I get a loan. The problem seems to be that there are two big maples in front of my neighbor's house that are shading a lot of the South facing part of my roof. Oh well!
There's some benefit to having it closer to where people live, but yes it would make more sense on a larger area in one spot (ex. Government owned school rooftop or parking lot)