We're off grid and have 7kw of panels, and 40kwh of 48v lithium batteries, with a generator for backup, which is rarely used since we are frugal with electricity and switch everything off when not in use.
I set it all up myself, and while it is not trivial, it's not difficult either.
Learning to put connectors on properly, size cables and put lugs on properly, learn about earthing and breakers...just one bit at a time.
I'm about to set up another system on the roof of an outbuilding to supply power for a water pump and irrigation where we grow food. This will be much easier and simpler since it will have only one 48V lithium battery, but I'll still use Victron stuff and connect it to a Cerbo so it can be monitored.
If I sold this place and bought somewhere on the grid, the first thing I'd do is cut the cord and set up my own system again.
I have an el cheapo 120 VAC 3600W import inverter with just two 100AH AGM batteries in series as it's a 24 VDC unit. Right now its all temporary and more experiment than practical.
Inverter mounted to a portable frame I built from bolted slotted angle with two battery shelves for a total of 4 batteries (only 2 now.) The batteries have a 200A terminal fuse and run through a 200A disconnect to the inverter using #2 AWG cable. The inverter, AC input, AC output are all grounded to a single ground bar that is bonded to the metal frame. AC Input is fed from a 12 AWG cord with 15A plug. AC output runs two 15A MCCB's, each terminated to a single socket hanging off a short whip cord. A cheap two wire digital DC volt meter is wired in series with a push button so I can see the battery voltage at a glance when I have the inverter powered down.
I temporarily setup the panels in my yard as an experiment but since I am in the city, I don't get good sun in my yard with all the obstructions. Honestly I ran it for two days, took the panels down before it rained, and didn't get a chance to measure anything. The panels really need to go on the roof and I have no intention of doing that any time soon.
The system did come in handy as a backup for my boiler when a wind storm knocked the power out for an hour and a half this past winter. I have thought about setting it up as a UPS for my little IT setup at home but 3600W is super overkill.
Florida and most dry / sunny states having little to no solar panels is pretty damn wild.
I know in florida you have janky laws stopping you, but below 10kw it's still relatively easy.
I have a friend who installed <10kw of solar panels and they're now 97% off-grid in hot, wet florida weather with an old low-seer AC, single-pane windows and poor roof insulation which is roughly 60% of the energy usage.
The reason they got it is actually not to save money or anything, but to have power when grid goes down after hurricanes.
Don’t underestimate how politicized renewables have become. You’d think essentially free energy would sell itself, but any time solar comes up in a rural community there’s a whole host of bad faith “but what about x?” comments
>> You’d think essentially free energy would sell itself
I think it would if it was indeed “essentially free”. Rooftop solar is unfortunately a racket though, and companies price-gouge like crazy and also collude to keep prices inflated.
American solar installer companies do seem to charge way more than European or British ones. I got 3.9kW installed almost ten years ago for just £5500, including all the paperwork for feed-in-tariffs. It has long since paid for itself just in subsidy, let alone actual consumption.
I just paid ~$35k (pre-now-expired-tax-break) to install a grid-tied 25kw ground mount system. I DIY'd everything except the connection between the array and the grid, which I paid an electrician to do, and the trenching which I paid my buddy with a mini-excavator to do.
It was a bit of a PITA, but mostly because I didn't finally make up my mind to do it until October and had to have it constructed by Dec 31st to take advantage of the expiring tax credit. If I'd given myself 6 months, it would have still been a big project, but way less stressful.
My neighbor's paid the same price to a contractor for a 11kw system.
Even at 46°N, and with relatively cheap electricity, my system should pay for itself in 6-8 years.
Being an honorary or actual redneck in an exurban American setting will be the sweet spot for this. Your neighbor's rusting Bobcat is not useless after all. You have the space for ground mounting. I toyed with a rooftop solar DIY project with an electrician handling the AC side, but in my urban context PG&E wanted a six-figure fee for a subterranean transformer upgrade. In 2024 the state regulator established rules that PG&E can't charge for that kind of service upgrade so maybe I should start considering it again.
We looked at trying to get some mini-split heat pumps for my mom's place & were getting quotes $30k figures for two modest units (it's a tiny well insulated house). I don't know what the frak is wrong with this nation; this is so fantastically worrying.
> American solar installer companies do seem to charge way more than European or British ones
One of the reasons for this is that in many parts of the US, solar has sadly been market segmented as a luxury product, just like other high efficiency products like heat pumps or EVs.
This is enabled by both the prevailing cultural attitudes about efficiency and renewables as indulgences for the better off, and industries that are happy to keep captive high margin markets of those customers, i.e. the continued lack of a US produced low-cost EV.
The American cult of individualism is also at play, wherein collective solutions are shunned vs private ones, which is why renewables and storage are so popular among off grid libertarian types.
One of the things I like most about balcony solar is that you can DIY it (at least, in the places I know that have approved it) instead of getting scammed.
Sure it isn't up front, and there's probably something to be said about scammers seeing green with subsidy money.
But the very idea of not being dependent on the grid or fossil fuels, if one can afford it and costs are comparable, should sell itself.
But my dad watches Fox News so he brings up lies like how bad wind turbines are for the environment (coal anyone?) or how we shouldn't make ourselves dependent on China for solar (as if we aren't dependent on a lot of bad hombres for our current energy mix or as if receiving solar makes us dependent at all).
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Edit: HN's conversation throttler childishly patronized me for "posting too fast". At least do me the honor of telling me you don't like what I'm saying, instead of telling me I'm posting too quickly when I'm making 1 message/hour.
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In response to dataflow below:
It still reveals an ignorant cult-like derision for renewables that isn't explained by reality. The people who gleefully mock the issues with renewables do it because they have been trained to want renewables to fail, and to see active support for renewables as a signal for softness and liberalism.
My local town Facebook group gleefully mocks local solar each time it snows/is cloudy, as if. There’s never been anything (eg, a war in the Mideast) that could disrupting fossil fuels pricing and availability…
> My local town Facebook group gleefully mocks local solar each time it snows/is cloudy, as if. There’s never been anything (eg, a war in the Mideast) that could disrupting fossil fuels pricing and availability…
Your counterargument is even worse than theirs. The predictability, frequency, severity, mitigability, etc. of these are extremely different.
I guess technically the weather is probably bad for solar or wind more often than geopolitical disturbances to the oil market but, if we go by when its bad for solar _AND_ wind, I feel like I'd need to see the data.
> severity
Tied, maybe? Depends if we're including like, the 70s and if we're looking at just from a US standpoint or if we're including Europe.
> mitigability
I feel lot more confident in my ability to add more panels than to negotiate reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
In Florida, the irony is that hurricane is the reason for not having too many solar panels. For example, Miami-Dade county requires commercial solar panel installation to have hurricane-approved solar mounts, which can withstand up to 160mph+ winds. This means installation is very costly. Even for homes, many insurance company will not insure homes with roof solar panel because of hurricane.
That's a requirement for everything, not just solar panels. The price premium for it is not that big since that's the only type of mounts you can get in florida. All modern housing is mostly category 5 rated due to the fact that hurricane damage grows exponentially as it picks up mass.
In Alabama regulatory capture is such that installing solar panels attached to the grid incurs fees higher than just buying the electricity from Alabama Power.
Why not install and not attach to the grid? My understanding is if you have them attached to batteries and not feeding back it is considered off grid in some places.
I don't know anything about Alabama but in California you generally can't create off-grid developments without permission from a local authority, because it's a recognized problem that "off-grid" systems are often under specified, leading to danger for the occupants. And nobody really wants off-grid to proliferate because it would tend to concentrate the costs of the grid upon the remaining users who will be the ones least able to afford it.
For a place that was two miles from a power line, I would think anyone would approve of off-grid.
I know California has reduced the incentives to purchase solar panels. You have to also have a battery backup system which increases the costs considerably. I'm guessing we may have too much solar in the day and not enough storage for the energy created.
The battery increases the upfront cost but also increases the roi very much (at least where I am living). You get way less money for feeding energy to the grid than you have to pay for withdrawing energy(as you said some utilities even limit/forbid feeding during peak hours).
In my case that means (Austria):
Sell 1 kWh - 0,04€
Buy 1 kWh - 0,25€
Modern lithium batteries can last decades! LFP batteries can take thousands of discharges cycles, and most systems wouldn’t be designed to fully drain the batteries anyways (keeping them at more optimal levels of charge to maintain capacity).
solar systems don’t require that much ongoing maintenance. There just aren’t many consumable components. (And battery recycling is getting better by the year)
You have to replace everything you own on some cadence. Eventually I'll need to replace the battery on my solar system. I'll also need to replace the panels at some point and even the roof the system is installed on.
My solar system uses a Tesla powerwall. I'd expect its real world performance over time to be about the same as what you see in batteries for Tesla vehicles.
I have said it before in another comment - on a related post.
It's wild that Southern US which gets most of the sun - has relatively little solar compared to the North - which gets less sun days - but has more solar.
the damage politics has done to the US is crazy n sad.
What's the big deal with having a whole liquid cooled workstation, and why is it important information for me to know what this dude's hardware is? And seriously, is there something about the rig that is necessary to chew through a dataset with a few million rows?
Liquid-cooled computers have one major benefit; usually, your computer ages over time, and there's a long period where it's still barely fast enough but you wish you had something nicer. A liquid-cooled workstation prevents you from needing to manage this grey area by catastrophically failing at unexpected intervals.
Wouldn't your room get equally/more toasty with liquid cooling? That heat has to get dumped somewhere, and liquid would theoretically be more effective at dumping it into your room.
I got an Aigo AIO (AC SE 240) off of AliExpress and use it as an automated reminder that my system needs an upgrade: once it stops working (with an upper bound of maybe 4-5 years), I'll know that it's time! Didn't even need to pay extra for that feature!
I think it feels a little bit of an Ad for the hardware, especially the way he describes the case, telling you the exact model and how spacious it is. Bit sus but perhaps he is being OVERLY detailed and just likes telling you he has a bunch of CPU's that are well cooled in a case with two big ugly fans on the front (not into that look at all.)
Though I can totally understand, geeky people love details. I have a habit of getting way too detailed in my writings here. So I then spend most of the time editing it down to be as clear and brief as possible. I refuse to use an LLM for my own thoughts.
The 9950X is an excellent CPU at a reasonable price point and works perfectly fine with an ordinary air-cooled heat sink in an ordinary case without stupid numbers of fans. The TDP is just not that high.
source: my 9950X, happily running air cooled.
(Embarrassingly, I have an M4 Max that can almost match it in the CPU-bound workload I care about while sipping some 45W. The rest of the industry really needs to catch up with Apple on power efficiency.)
It's funny how I started skimming as soon as I saw "My Workstation" without ever consciously perceiving why I had started hitting Page Down, until you mentioned it and I went back to notice what it said there. My brain has really automated web page signal extraction.
A single stick of DDR5 RAM on Amazon in about $450 now. Three sticks would be $1350. Do most people drive old clankers with less than $1500 resale value?
You still need a few terabytes to enter the real cars territory.
Why is the top comment criticising a geek for being a geek? He gave us a wealth of information including his exact methodology and queries on how he produced his results. This is an ideal approach. You want just results and "trust me, bro"?
I had the exact same thought, particularly when I read there were fewer than 4M records.
I really have to wonder if people truly know how powerful any modern computer is. Like I just assume any modern PC with sufficient storage can handle a database with a billion rows of data. I think my phone probably could.
Now if you were, say, analyzing commercial satellite imagery of the entire US and trying to find rooftop solar, matching it against the database and finding data that wasn't in the dataset, that's something where your computer power would be way more relevant.
Come to think of it, you could probably use such imagery to construct a power generation network from power plants to transmission lines to utility poles. Of course some places have underground cables but there are other datasets for that.
Another interesting project is mapping the growth of solar. This would require access to commercial satellite imagery over time. I'm sure some government agency already does it. Or used to at least. Snapshots years or even months apart are less interesting.
Anyway, I guess the point is the author's computer is capable of way more than I suspect they think it is.
> In my native Netherlands I'd guess to see that peaking at ~south at say 15-30 degrees, with some lower peaks at east/west combos.
Folks are doing some interesting exploration of the pros and cons of different alignments, e.g.:
> When roof area is limited, the question becomes: What layout lets you install the most space-efficient solar capacity within budget on the available area? In those scenarios, an east–west (E–W) layout can outperform a south-facing layout. The South layout may be “better positioned”, but the E-W allows the installation of more panels in the same area.
I installed a east/west facing set myself on our flat roof. Looking at dynamic power prices of the preceding year, multiplied by expected power output.
Even wrote a simple space optimizer for this one time. But messed up some measurements so had to change on the fly anyways. The old adagium still holds: measure once and curse twice.
Seems to match my experience as well, I got a set of 12 south facing panels and a set of 12 split over east and west on my flat roof. The E/W start and end a bit before/after the south facing set.
I think the lack of concentration in some areas, particularly hubs in Texas and Florida, is actually pretty eye-opening. To me these areas should be very dense with panels from the cost/benefit alone.
Does anyone else experience very strange styling behavior while scrolling through this article?
The CSS styles seem to dynamically unload and reload while I’m reading it causing the margins to jump and the fonts change, I’ve never seen anything like this before. FWIW I’m on iOS using brave.
There are also 4X as many people in China, little domestically available oil, and their government supports domestic manufacturing. This is an expected result.
It’s OK to celebrate small wins. The US doesn’t have to be #1 in everything. We also seem to have a curious diseconomy of scale on mega infrastructure projects for complex reasons, so maybe slow growth is the right approach.
Yep, actively suppressing renewable efforts all the way down to shaming on a cultural level. It should be a net positive for Americans to adopt renewables - cheaper energy, more independence, good for the environment - but instead its viewed as silly or too unreliable when it isn't.
True, though I think it's a little more nuanced. There's still capacity, but the AI boom is unearthing all the "cheap" power places in the grid and buying them up.
In order to keep growing, the US power grid is going to need big, coordinated projects. Solar, wind, transmission lines, and batteries.
I think with political interest from Dems who like renewables, and big business who need energy, there's will in the US to do it, but of course it's the US, so we'll do the right thing after every possible alternative has been exhausted.
Even as it stands things are kinda grim. There's around 30% spare capacity, but you also need that for spikes like increased usage during events like heatwaves. You never want to saturate energy capacity completely.
I agree that eventually there's going to be no choice but to start investing in renewables. That's going to be the only way to meet the demand, and renewables are already becoming cheaper than fossil fuels. But it is going to take time. Building stuff in the physical world takes years, and that requires sustained commitment at the political level.
America basically did not add any net generating capacity in the first two decades of this century, instead treading water with repowering and efficiency. This was a mistake and now that we could use the energy everyone is acting like it's impossible to expand the grid at the same rate we expanded it in the 1980s.
In many ways this mirrors the way America walked into the housing crisis with its eyes closed.
It'd be nice if it described up front what kind of information is available per panel.
For that matter, I'd be interested in details of how "a team of researchers including alumni from NOAA, NASA and the USGS" (from the previous article) actually collected the data.
In the abstract: “We use these newly compiled and delineated solar arrays and panel-rows to harmonize and independently estimate value-added attributes to existing datasets including installation year, azimuth, mount technology, panel-row area and dimensions, inter-row spacing, ground cover ratio, tilt, and installed capacity.“
An analysis of panels per capita vs regional IQ would be an interesting signal. Panels are cash positive in less tan 5 years of their 40 year lifespan. There is hardly a better investment up until you cover your own usage.
The odd looking circular example shown is not solar PV. It is the Ivanpah solar thermal generating station, and those are mirrors rather than solar panels, or modules.
I think they are shutting it down. It had the nasty habit of frying birds that ventured too close to it. And that particular valley actually is far more cloudy then what you would expect for the desert near Las Vegas.
That's actually only cheap because of the free shipping - in Germany 450W panels are at about 55-60€ retail right now, for example. So a balcony set (2 panels for 1kW total, plus inverter) is about 150-200€, depending on the specific parts. Both exluding shipping, though.
Prices fell dramatically in the last few years, if I understood things correctly the high prices in the US are mostly due to tariffs.
That’s right. The current US president just reversed some of the previous administration’s Infrastructure Act which provided about 30% tax credit for installing solar.
>It was pretty symbolic back in 1979, too. The symbolism depended on what you thought of Carter and his policies. For some, the panels were a much-needed acknowledgment that America had to wean itself from fossil fuel, explore alternative energy sources and help save the planet. For others, they were in the same category as Carter’s virtue-signaling cardigan. Of course, critics moaned, Carter would put solar panels on the White House.
>The panels came down in 1986 when the White House roof was undergoing repairs. Ronald Reagan did not have them replaced. Of course, Reagan wouldn’t put solar panels on the White House.
What is the story behind Reagan taking down the solar panels installed by Carter? Was it symbolic of a new, less enthusiastic approach to clean energy?
>On June 20, 1979, 32 solar water heating panels were placed on the roof of the West Wing. The panels were made by InterTechnology/Solar Corp. from Warrenton, Virginia and installed by Hector Guevara of Alternate Energy Industries Corp.[2] At the dedication ceremony for the panels, President Carter said, "In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy... A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people".[1]
The whole installation cost $35,000 in 1979 (about $160,000 now).
I'm in the US and it's showing a 100W panel for USD 37.21 (free shipping, including tariffs but not state/local taxes).
Also the panels Carter installed were solar water heaters - in 1979 solar photovoltaics were just starting to expand beyond satellites and cost like $40/watt.
Subtropical latitudes in continental US markets, you're looking at like $2/yr/sq ft of value for the power output.
I'd want solar panels for like $5/sq ft installed, expecting 10 years of life.
It's going to cost $1000 minimum to install, so the panels need to cost $2/sq ft x 300 sq ft to make this worth it. $1000 to install 300 sq ft + inverter and electrical panel upgrades seems light but might be reasonable we'll go with it.
Larger than a balcony, but maybe in the realm of possibility for a roof.
Right now solar panels cost what? $10 per square foot? Have they reached the physical limit of economic production/storage/transportation at $10 per sq ft or can it go lower?
(Let's not get into battery micro-storage economics).
$37.21 for a 100 watt panel with free shipping. I'm not sure if that is before or after 50% tariffs and/or the 10% "fentanyl" extra tariff that was announced a few days after Ross Ulbricht's pardon for running the world's largest opiates-by-mail operation.
You can buy brand new in bulk in the US for roughly the same $/watt.
I bought 30 375w Canadian Solar panels 2 years ago and paid $0.41/watt (~$4536 for the whole package)
My mounting equipment actually cost more than the panels (~$4600). And the permitting process cost nearly as much as the panels (permit cost + architectural drawing + structural engineer stamp + electrician stamp).
It's crazy how cheap solar panels themselves are getting. They're going to win on the energy front - period. Especially now that battery tech actually seems to be moving again. I vividly remember one of my robotics professors in undergrad ranting about how frustrated he was with battery tech in ~2007, but LFP and sodium batteries are both pretty huge steps forward.
Another data point: my entire system in Switzerland cost me 1.3CHF/Watt including a 20kWh battery and 5000 CHF of scaffolding costs (needed because of our local OSHA equivalent laws when installing panels on a tilted roof).
How much does power and grid delivery cost in Canada to make this economical? You're into this for $15,000 what is your payback period? Are there other ameliorating criteria for success?
I'm actually in GA (Canadian Solar is the panel manufacturer - CSI). Power is cheap in my region, and I was in ~$30k after all costs including the battery storage (LFP).
It covers 95+% of the my usage, and I use a fair chunk of power. My payback period will be almost exactly 120 months (10 years) if my power costs remained the same as they did at estimation time.
But they won't. We're already seeing relatively large rate increases (GA power has "locked" rates but conveniently has a floating "fuel charge" which is currently more than the base rate per watt...).
I expect it to take 6 to 8 years to entirely recoup costs. It helps that I did the install myself, so I avoided contractor markup. Quotes from contractors for a similar install were running ~60k+ which felt (and was) insane, although STILL profitable over the lifespan of the install.
Panels should then last another 20+ years after repayment with only minor maintenance.
It's shocking how easily they pay for themselves right now, assuming you get decent sun on your property.
We're off grid and have 7kw of panels, and 40kwh of 48v lithium batteries, with a generator for backup, which is rarely used since we are frugal with electricity and switch everything off when not in use.
I set it all up myself, and while it is not trivial, it's not difficult either.
Learning to put connectors on properly, size cables and put lugs on properly, learn about earthing and breakers...just one bit at a time.
I'm about to set up another system on the roof of an outbuilding to supply power for a water pump and irrigation where we grow food. This will be much easier and simpler since it will have only one 48V lithium battery, but I'll still use Victron stuff and connect it to a Cerbo so it can be monitored.
If I sold this place and bought somewhere on the grid, the first thing I'd do is cut the cord and set up my own system again.
What inverter hardware did you use?
I have an el cheapo 120 VAC 3600W import inverter with just two 100AH AGM batteries in series as it's a 24 VDC unit. Right now its all temporary and more experiment than practical.
Inverter mounted to a portable frame I built from bolted slotted angle with two battery shelves for a total of 4 batteries (only 2 now.) The batteries have a 200A terminal fuse and run through a 200A disconnect to the inverter using #2 AWG cable. The inverter, AC input, AC output are all grounded to a single ground bar that is bonded to the metal frame. AC Input is fed from a 12 AWG cord with 15A plug. AC output runs two 15A MCCB's, each terminated to a single socket hanging off a short whip cord. A cheap two wire digital DC volt meter is wired in series with a push button so I can see the battery voltage at a glance when I have the inverter powered down.
I temporarily setup the panels in my yard as an experiment but since I am in the city, I don't get good sun in my yard with all the obstructions. Honestly I ran it for two days, took the panels down before it rained, and didn't get a chance to measure anything. The panels really need to go on the roof and I have no intention of doing that any time soon.
The system did come in handy as a backup for my boiler when a wind storm knocked the power out for an hour and a half this past winter. I have thought about setting it up as a UPS for my little IT setup at home but 3600W is super overkill.
do you have a blog or some links of walking through the process of getting everything setup?
Florida and most dry / sunny states having little to no solar panels is pretty damn wild.
I know in florida you have janky laws stopping you, but below 10kw it's still relatively easy.
I have a friend who installed <10kw of solar panels and they're now 97% off-grid in hot, wet florida weather with an old low-seer AC, single-pane windows and poor roof insulation which is roughly 60% of the energy usage.
The reason they got it is actually not to save money or anything, but to have power when grid goes down after hurricanes.
Don’t underestimate how politicized renewables have become. You’d think essentially free energy would sell itself, but any time solar comes up in a rural community there’s a whole host of bad faith “but what about x?” comments
Maybe, but the data speaks for itself. Texas, a huge oil state, is loaded with wind and solar and is leading the country in battery storage right now.
Idaho is as well.
AZ just has some of the dumbest rules in the US WRT to solar. It's a state where every home should have solar panels.
I do have a funny story to share for this specific case:
A landowner wanted to run power to their land, they got quoted 100k and possibly 250k to run less than 2 miles of powerlines.
The land owner fired back with the question of installing solar panels instead as it would be cheaper and free.
The representitive replied with: "Look around you, there's no solar panels because they don't work."
Less than 100k later, the landowner had full off-grid power via solar and a backup generator.
I guess at the end of the day they saw all the sunshine around them and said: "You're right, all that sun is mine and mine alone."
>> You’d think essentially free energy would sell itself
I think it would if it was indeed “essentially free”. Rooftop solar is unfortunately a racket though, and companies price-gouge like crazy and also collude to keep prices inflated.
American solar installer companies do seem to charge way more than European or British ones. I got 3.9kW installed almost ten years ago for just £5500, including all the paperwork for feed-in-tariffs. It has long since paid for itself just in subsidy, let alone actual consumption.
In general, contractor overhead in America is obscene, compared to Europe. We have a lot of regularly capture working to keep it that way, too.
DIY is viable if you're a bit nutters (like me).
I just paid ~$35k (pre-now-expired-tax-break) to install a grid-tied 25kw ground mount system. I DIY'd everything except the connection between the array and the grid, which I paid an electrician to do, and the trenching which I paid my buddy with a mini-excavator to do.
It was a bit of a PITA, but mostly because I didn't finally make up my mind to do it until October and had to have it constructed by Dec 31st to take advantage of the expiring tax credit. If I'd given myself 6 months, it would have still been a big project, but way less stressful.
My neighbor's paid the same price to a contractor for a 11kw system.
Even at 46°N, and with relatively cheap electricity, my system should pay for itself in 6-8 years.
Being an honorary or actual redneck in an exurban American setting will be the sweet spot for this. Your neighbor's rusting Bobcat is not useless after all. You have the space for ground mounting. I toyed with a rooftop solar DIY project with an electrician handling the AC side, but in my urban context PG&E wanted a six-figure fee for a subterranean transformer upgrade. In 2024 the state regulator established rules that PG&E can't charge for that kind of service upgrade so maybe I should start considering it again.
It all comes back to insurance- they're used to getting crazy sums of money because nobody questions the rates
We looked at trying to get some mini-split heat pumps for my mom's place & were getting quotes $30k figures for two modest units (it's a tiny well insulated house). I don't know what the frak is wrong with this nation; this is so fantastically worrying.
Try looking up HVAC workers on thumbtack.
> American solar installer companies do seem to charge way more than European or British ones
One of the reasons for this is that in many parts of the US, solar has sadly been market segmented as a luxury product, just like other high efficiency products like heat pumps or EVs.
This is enabled by both the prevailing cultural attitudes about efficiency and renewables as indulgences for the better off, and industries that are happy to keep captive high margin markets of those customers, i.e. the continued lack of a US produced low-cost EV.
The American cult of individualism is also at play, wherein collective solutions are shunned vs private ones, which is why renewables and storage are so popular among off grid libertarian types.
One of the things I like most about balcony solar is that you can DIY it (at least, in the places I know that have approved it) instead of getting scammed.
There are so many scams in the solar industry. I feel like a ton of installers joined just to make a quick buck with no effort.
This tends to happen when a lot of government “free money” is on the table.
See also: War profiteering.
Sure it isn't up front, and there's probably something to be said about scammers seeing green with subsidy money.
But the very idea of not being dependent on the grid or fossil fuels, if one can afford it and costs are comparable, should sell itself.
But my dad watches Fox News so he brings up lies like how bad wind turbines are for the environment (coal anyone?) or how we shouldn't make ourselves dependent on China for solar (as if we aren't dependent on a lot of bad hombres for our current energy mix or as if receiving solar makes us dependent at all).
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Edit: HN's conversation throttler childishly patronized me for "posting too fast". At least do me the honor of telling me you don't like what I'm saying, instead of telling me I'm posting too quickly when I'm making 1 message/hour.
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In response to dataflow below:
It still reveals an ignorant cult-like derision for renewables that isn't explained by reality. The people who gleefully mock the issues with renewables do it because they have been trained to want renewables to fail, and to see active support for renewables as a signal for softness and liberalism.
My local town Facebook group gleefully mocks local solar each time it snows/is cloudy, as if. There’s never been anything (eg, a war in the Mideast) that could disrupting fossil fuels pricing and availability…
> My local town Facebook group gleefully mocks local solar each time it snows/is cloudy, as if. There’s never been anything (eg, a war in the Mideast) that could disrupting fossil fuels pricing and availability…
Your counterargument is even worse than theirs. The predictability, frequency, severity, mitigability, etc. of these are extremely different.
> predictability
I'm giving this one to renewables.
> frequency
I guess technically the weather is probably bad for solar or wind more often than geopolitical disturbances to the oil market but, if we go by when its bad for solar _AND_ wind, I feel like I'd need to see the data.
> severity
Tied, maybe? Depends if we're including like, the 70s and if we're looking at just from a US standpoint or if we're including Europe.
> mitigability
I feel lot more confident in my ability to add more panels than to negotiate reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
In Florida, the irony is that hurricane is the reason for not having too many solar panels. For example, Miami-Dade county requires commercial solar panel installation to have hurricane-approved solar mounts, which can withstand up to 160mph+ winds. This means installation is very costly. Even for homes, many insurance company will not insure homes with roof solar panel because of hurricane.
That's a requirement for everything, not just solar panels. The price premium for it is not that big since that's the only type of mounts you can get in florida. All modern housing is mostly category 5 rated due to the fact that hurricane damage grows exponentially as it picks up mass.
I could have sworn that FL was like top five in solar production.
Edit : it is! It’s 3rd https://seia.org/solar-state-by-state/
In Alabama regulatory capture is such that installing solar panels attached to the grid incurs fees higher than just buying the electricity from Alabama Power.
Why not install and not attach to the grid? My understanding is if you have them attached to batteries and not feeding back it is considered off grid in some places.
I don't know anything about Alabama but in California you generally can't create off-grid developments without permission from a local authority, because it's a recognized problem that "off-grid" systems are often under specified, leading to danger for the occupants. And nobody really wants off-grid to proliferate because it would tend to concentrate the costs of the grid upon the remaining users who will be the ones least able to afford it.
For a place that was two miles from a power line, I would think anyone would approve of off-grid.
I'm interested to read a source on this if you have it
I know California has reduced the incentives to purchase solar panels. You have to also have a battery backup system which increases the costs considerably. I'm guessing we may have too much solar in the day and not enough storage for the energy created.
The battery increases the upfront cost but also increases the roi very much (at least where I am living). You get way less money for feeding energy to the grid than you have to pay for withdrawing energy(as you said some utilities even limit/forbid feeding during peak hours). In my case that means (Austria): Sell 1 kWh - 0,04€ Buy 1 kWh - 0,25€
Don't you have to replace the batteries every few years though? That should be factored in the equation.
Modern lithium batteries can last decades! LFP batteries can take thousands of discharges cycles, and most systems wouldn’t be designed to fully drain the batteries anyways (keeping them at more optimal levels of charge to maintain capacity).
solar systems don’t require that much ongoing maintenance. There just aren’t many consumable components. (And battery recycling is getting better by the year)
You have to replace everything you own on some cadence. Eventually I'll need to replace the battery on my solar system. I'll also need to replace the panels at some point and even the roof the system is installed on.
My solar system uses a Tesla powerwall. I'd expect its real world performance over time to be about the same as what you see in batteries for Tesla vehicles.
most batteries can last 10+ years
A partly cloudy or partly sunny day produces some insane changes in output without a battery system to smooth them out
There is a limit to the size of the instantaneous increases and decreases in generation that the other generators on the grid can compensate for
I have said it before in another comment - on a related post.
It's wild that Southern US which gets most of the sun - has relatively little solar compared to the North - which gets less sun days - but has more solar.
the damage politics has done to the US is crazy n sad.
What's the big deal with having a whole liquid cooled workstation, and why is it important information for me to know what this dude's hardware is? And seriously, is there something about the rig that is necessary to chew through a dataset with a few million rows?
Liquid-cooled computers have one major benefit; usually, your computer ages over time, and there's a long period where it's still barely fast enough but you wish you had something nicer. A liquid-cooled workstation prevents you from needing to manage this grey area by catastrophically failing at unexpected intervals.
I had to re-read this three times. My sarcasm detector must be on the fritz.
Had me in the first half.
I looked at using an AIO for my PC build but ultimately went with an air cooler the size of a damned rubix cube and a high airflow case.
My room gets toasty with raytracing titles, lol
Wouldn't your room get equally/more toasty with liquid cooling? That heat has to get dumped somewhere, and liquid would theoretically be more effective at dumping it into your room.
Also prevents you from messing with it too much, as any substantial change requires draining and refilling your loop.
I got an Aigo AIO (AC SE 240) off of AliExpress and use it as an automated reminder that my system needs an upgrade: once it stops working (with an upper bound of maybe 4-5 years), I'll know that it's time! Didn't even need to pay extra for that feature!
He just does this with all his blog posts, don't overthink it. The tech industry is full of people with unexpected quirks.
We need more of this, not less. This is Hacker News. He gave us exactly what we need to know to exactly replicate his results.
I think it feels a little bit of an Ad for the hardware, especially the way he describes the case, telling you the exact model and how spacious it is. Bit sus but perhaps he is being OVERLY detailed and just likes telling you he has a bunch of CPU's that are well cooled in a case with two big ugly fans on the front (not into that look at all.)
Though I can totally understand, geeky people love details. I have a habit of getting way too detailed in my writings here. So I then spend most of the time editing it down to be as clear and brief as possible. I refuse to use an LLM for my own thoughts.
That's how I took it too. You always provide hardware information when publishing any data set that takes a long time to compile.
I really don't think we should be shaming computer enthusiasts for being enthusiastic about their computers on HN of all places
The 9950X is an excellent CPU at a reasonable price point and works perfectly fine with an ordinary air-cooled heat sink in an ordinary case without stupid numbers of fans. The TDP is just not that high.
source: my 9950X, happily running air cooled.
(Embarrassingly, I have an M4 Max that can almost match it in the CPU-bound workload I care about while sipping some 45W. The rest of the industry really needs to catch up with Apple on power efficiency.)
Obviously he's telling you their spec incase you wish to reproduce his results. Why don't you try it and tell us how your result compares.
It had a very 90s/early-2000s tech blog feel to it. Only thing missing was his custom Gentoo build.
I found it delightful. It added character and created a sense of relatability from the outset.
you are visitor 18813!
If you're not familiar with his blog, he also occasionally does benchmarks of databases & extensions. He starts every post by outlining his setup.
It's funny how I started skimming as soon as I saw "My Workstation" without ever consciously perceiving why I had started hitting Page Down, until you mentioned it and I went back to notice what it said there. My brain has really automated web page signal extraction.
> 96 GB of DDR5 RAM
Most people drive cars worth less than this.
A single stick of DDR5 RAM on Amazon in about $450 now. Three sticks would be $1350. Do most people drive old clankers with less than $1500 resale value?
You still need a few terabytes to enter the real cars territory.
He could have gotten it when it was still cheap.
It’s no less valuable because he got it cheap.
Most people don't own or drive cars.
96gb of ddr5 ram is about $800.
My initial thought was that was a weird choice in this article, but I wouldn't fault someone for being thorough.
Probably a better choice as an appendix, move the good stuff up to the top. But overall its NBD.
Why is the top comment criticising a geek for being a geek? He gave us a wealth of information including his exact methodology and queries on how he produced his results. This is an ideal approach. You want just results and "trust me, bro"?
I had the exact same thought, particularly when I read there were fewer than 4M records.
I really have to wonder if people truly know how powerful any modern computer is. Like I just assume any modern PC with sufficient storage can handle a database with a billion rows of data. I think my phone probably could.
Now if you were, say, analyzing commercial satellite imagery of the entire US and trying to find rooftop solar, matching it against the database and finding data that wasn't in the dataset, that's something where your computer power would be way more relevant.
Come to think of it, you could probably use such imagery to construct a power generation network from power plants to transmission lines to utility poles. Of course some places have underground cables but there are other datasets for that.
Another interesting project is mapping the growth of solar. This would require access to commercial satellite imagery over time. I'm sure some government agency already does it. Or used to at least. Snapshots years or even months apart are less interesting.
Anyway, I guess the point is the author's computer is capable of way more than I suspect they think it is.
I always make sure to downgrade my computer hardware before running a trivial analysis. Every dataset needs to redline the current configuration.
> than I suspect they think it is.
Because he wants to tell you about his computer it means he doesn’t know how capable it is?
Would be kinda interesting to see a histogram of the azimuths and/or tilt angles.
In my native Netherlands I'd guess to see that peaking at ~south at say 15-30 degrees, with some lower peaks at east/west combos.
Curious to see what it would be in this dataset.
I love that idea. I don't have time for anything elaborate today but I dropped two visualisations at the bottom of the post.
I love the radial one, which looks like it was laid out as a "mirror tower" installation and then maybe converted to PV?
Thanks, interesting to see!
> In my native Netherlands I'd guess to see that peaking at ~south at say 15-30 degrees, with some lower peaks at east/west combos.
Folks are doing some interesting exploration of the pros and cons of different alignments, e.g.:
> When roof area is limited, the question becomes: What layout lets you install the most space-efficient solar capacity within budget on the available area? In those scenarios, an east–west (E–W) layout can outperform a south-facing layout. The South layout may be “better positioned”, but the E-W allows the installation of more panels in the same area.
* https://ases.org/east-west-vs-south-facing-solar-when-more-p...
Basically examining 'quality versus quantity', depending on what your location and roof allows.
Yep, sounds all too familiar.
I installed a east/west facing set myself on our flat roof. Looking at dynamic power prices of the preceding year, multiplied by expected power output. Even wrote a simple space optimizer for this one time. But messed up some measurements so had to change on the fly anyways. The old adagium still holds: measure once and curse twice.
There's a helpful chart here, which happens to match your approximate latitude:
https://ratedpower.com/blog/solar-panel-orientation/
Thnx!
Seems to match my experience as well, I got a set of 12 south facing panels and a set of 12 split over east and west on my flat roof. The E/W start and end a bit before/after the south facing set.
It should be roughly correlated with latitude (the exceptions being panels on sloped roofs which will match the roof slope).
Tilt should correlate to latitude for panels with an azimuth due South.
For panels with east/west azimuth, the tilt should correlate with where the sun is at 7-8AM and 17-18PM, at least in my area.
((I think you have your concept of azimuth and tilt mixed up; I know I have when I was originally typing a different parent comment)
Pretty cool, although the heatmaps have a little of the "this is just a population density map" effect. https://xkcd.com/1138/
It would be cool to modify them to be per-capita, although I imagine adjusting arbitrary hexes for population density would be a real challenge.
I think the lack of concentration in some areas, particularly hubs in Texas and Florida, is actually pretty eye-opening. To me these areas should be very dense with panels from the cost/benefit alone.
Something's wrong with xkcd's data if Portland doesn't rate a red dot on the furry porn map.
Apprently there are a lot of innovations hitting market, perovskites left the lab, and tandem cells are above 30%
Does anyone else experience very strange styling behavior while scrolling through this article?
The CSS styles seem to dynamically unload and reload while I’m reading it causing the margins to jump and the fonts change, I’ve never seen anything like this before. FWIW I’m on iOS using brave.
To put this in perspective, China installs around 3x that every single day https://reneweconomy.com.au/just-staggering-china-installs-1...
It's not a comprehensive dataset. The US installed 43 GW_peak in 2025, which should be around 80M new panels.
Still, an order of magnitude less new capacity than China - but not two orders.
There are also 4X as many people in China, little domestically available oil, and their government supports domestic manufacturing. This is an expected result.
It’s OK to celebrate small wins. The US doesn’t have to be #1 in everything. We also seem to have a curious diseconomy of scale on mega infrastructure projects for complex reasons, so maybe slow growth is the right approach.
People aren't sad about the US not winning the race, they are despairing about the US actively trying to lose.
Yep, actively suppressing renewable efforts all the way down to shaming on a cultural level. It should be a net positive for Americans to adopt renewables - cheaper energy, more independence, good for the environment - but instead its viewed as silly or too unreliable when it isn't.
With how backwards US policy is - this will be the major factor in the future.
Energy heavy use cases with little to no energy costs will lap western industries.
Indeed, data centres for AI is a prime example of this where American grid is already starting to hit capacity.
True, though I think it's a little more nuanced. There's still capacity, but the AI boom is unearthing all the "cheap" power places in the grid and buying them up.
In order to keep growing, the US power grid is going to need big, coordinated projects. Solar, wind, transmission lines, and batteries.
I think with political interest from Dems who like renewables, and big business who need energy, there's will in the US to do it, but of course it's the US, so we'll do the right thing after every possible alternative has been exhausted.
Even as it stands things are kinda grim. There's around 30% spare capacity, but you also need that for spikes like increased usage during events like heatwaves. You never want to saturate energy capacity completely.
I agree that eventually there's going to be no choice but to start investing in renewables. That's going to be the only way to meet the demand, and renewables are already becoming cheaper than fossil fuels. But it is going to take time. Building stuff in the physical world takes years, and that requires sustained commitment at the political level.
America basically did not add any net generating capacity in the first two decades of this century, instead treading water with repowering and efficiency. This was a mistake and now that we could use the energy everyone is acting like it's impossible to expand the grid at the same rate we expanded it in the 1980s.
In many ways this mirrors the way America walked into the housing crisis with its eyes closed.
It'd be nice if it described up front what kind of information is available per panel.
For that matter, I'd be interested in details of how "a team of researchers including alumni from NOAA, NASA and the USGS" (from the previous article) actually collected the data.
You can read the (open access) paper here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05862-4
In the abstract: “We use these newly compiled and delineated solar arrays and panel-rows to harmonize and independently estimate value-added attributes to existing datasets including installation year, azimuth, mount technology, panel-row area and dimensions, inter-row spacing, ground cover ratio, tilt, and installed capacity.“
I would like to know more detail as well.
An analysis of panels per capita vs regional IQ would be an interesting signal. Panels are cash positive in less tan 5 years of their 40 year lifespan. There is hardly a better investment up until you cover your own usage.
Imagine believing in "regional IQ".
The odd looking circular example shown is not solar PV. It is the Ivanpah solar thermal generating station, and those are mirrors rather than solar panels, or modules.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility
Solar thermal can't really compete economically with photovoltaics.
I think they are shutting it down. It had the nasty habit of frying birds that ventured too close to it. And that particular valley actually is far more cloudy then what you would expect for the desert near Las Vegas.
Thanks for pointing that out. I'll update the post.
look how cheap now, it's crazy
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809986804138.html
I'm old enough to remember Carter putting them on WhiteHouse roof and they were thousands of dollars then (and less efficient)
That's actually only cheap because of the free shipping - in Germany 450W panels are at about 55-60€ retail right now, for example. So a balcony set (2 panels for 1kW total, plus inverter) is about 150-200€, depending on the specific parts. Both exluding shipping, though.
Prices fell dramatically in the last few years, if I understood things correctly the high prices in the US are mostly due to tariffs.
That’s right. The current US president just reversed some of the previous administration’s Infrastructure Act which provided about 30% tax credit for installing solar.
And Reagan taking them down.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/22/jiimmy-ca...
>It was pretty symbolic back in 1979, too. The symbolism depended on what you thought of Carter and his policies. For some, the panels were a much-needed acknowledgment that America had to wean itself from fossil fuel, explore alternative energy sources and help save the planet. For others, they were in the same category as Carter’s virtue-signaling cardigan. Of course, critics moaned, Carter would put solar panels on the White House.
>The panels came down in 1986 when the White House roof was undergoing repairs. Ronald Reagan did not have them replaced. Of course, Reagan wouldn’t put solar panels on the White House.
What is the story behind Reagan taking down the solar panels installed by Carter? Was it symbolic of a new, less enthusiastic approach to clean energy?
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/g4w4ww/what_...
Solar power at the White House
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_at_the_White_House
>On June 20, 1979, 32 solar water heating panels were placed on the roof of the West Wing. The panels were made by InterTechnology/Solar Corp. from Warrenton, Virginia and installed by Hector Guevara of Alternate Energy Industries Corp.[2] At the dedication ceremony for the panels, President Carter said, "In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy... A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people".[1]
The whole installation cost $35,000 in 1979 (about $160,000 now).
https://books.google.nl/books?id=e9dlzwL4Ck4C&dq=solar+white...
The link isn't available here. Can you share the specs and price of that panel?
I'm in the US and it's showing a 100W panel for USD 37.21 (free shipping, including tariffs but not state/local taxes).
Also the panels Carter installed were solar water heaters - in 1979 solar photovoltaics were just starting to expand beyond satellites and cost like $40/watt.
it's actually $33 because there's a $4 coupon available to everyone on the page
and if you buy 2 at a time there are multiple 10% codes available
so it's $67 USD for 200watts
100watt 18volt 5amp panels that can be put in series or parallel
for $33 each, it's crazy
100W 18V for $37 and change.
If we can get balcony solar in the US that will be a huge game changer.
Unless it's not allowed in your lease nothing is stopping you, go for it.
It's legal in a few states already including Colorado and Utah - with more coming.
Subtropical latitudes in continental US markets, you're looking at like $2/yr/sq ft of value for the power output.
I'd want solar panels for like $5/sq ft installed, expecting 10 years of life.
It's going to cost $1000 minimum to install, so the panels need to cost $2/sq ft x 300 sq ft to make this worth it. $1000 to install 300 sq ft + inverter and electrical panel upgrades seems light but might be reasonable we'll go with it.
Larger than a balcony, but maybe in the realm of possibility for a roof.
Right now solar panels cost what? $10 per square foot? Have they reached the physical limit of economic production/storage/transportation at $10 per sq ft or can it go lower?
(Let's not get into battery micro-storage economics).
$37.21 for a 100 watt panel with free shipping. I'm not sure if that is before or after 50% tariffs and/or the 10% "fentanyl" extra tariff that was announced a few days after Ross Ulbricht's pardon for running the world's largest opiates-by-mail operation.
You can buy brand new in bulk in the US for roughly the same $/watt.
I bought 30 375w Canadian Solar panels 2 years ago and paid $0.41/watt (~$4536 for the whole package)
My mounting equipment actually cost more than the panels (~$4600). And the permitting process cost nearly as much as the panels (permit cost + architectural drawing + structural engineer stamp + electrician stamp).
It's crazy how cheap solar panels themselves are getting. They're going to win on the energy front - period. Especially now that battery tech actually seems to be moving again. I vividly remember one of my robotics professors in undergrad ranting about how frustrated he was with battery tech in ~2007, but LFP and sodium batteries are both pretty huge steps forward.
Another data point: my entire system in Switzerland cost me 1.3CHF/Watt including a 20kWh battery and 5000 CHF of scaffolding costs (needed because of our local OSHA equivalent laws when installing panels on a tilted roof).
It has become ridiculously cheap indeed.
What's the cost of power in Confoederatio Helvetica?
Around 30 centiCHFs per KWh at the peak tariff: https://www.ewz.ch/en/private-customers/electricity/tariffs/...
How much does power and grid delivery cost in Canada to make this economical? You're into this for $15,000 what is your payback period? Are there other ameliorating criteria for success?
I'm actually in GA (Canadian Solar is the panel manufacturer - CSI). Power is cheap in my region, and I was in ~$30k after all costs including the battery storage (LFP).
It covers 95+% of the my usage, and I use a fair chunk of power. My payback period will be almost exactly 120 months (10 years) if my power costs remained the same as they did at estimation time.
But they won't. We're already seeing relatively large rate increases (GA power has "locked" rates but conveniently has a floating "fuel charge" which is currently more than the base rate per watt...).
I expect it to take 6 to 8 years to entirely recoup costs. It helps that I did the install myself, so I avoided contractor markup. Quotes from contractors for a similar install were running ~60k+ which felt (and was) insane, although STILL profitable over the lifespan of the install.
Panels should then last another 20+ years after repayment with only minor maintenance.
It's shocking how easily they pay for themselves right now, assuming you get decent sun on your property.
I got $7.6kw installed in BC , Canada. Fully installed for $13k. Minus $5k grant, and the $8 is on a 10 year interest free loan.
Power is 13c kWh, guranteed to go up min of 5% a year.
So now instead of paying $1000 a year in power, I put that on the loan which will be gone in 7 years. The 20 years of $1000 a year free money.
I’ve had the system almost two years, they’re noticeably cheaper now. System makes 7.2Mwh per calendar year in a tight valley where it snows a ton.
Heck even if that’s pre-tariff it’s cheap enough that it could be an impulse buy.
it's from a US warehouse so there are no tariffs (or they've already been paid/included)
sorry didn't think it would have geo-block
https://images2.imgbox.com/8b/e1/R6pnQUCr_o.jpg