What about without subsidies?

Great Sky Solar, they're a small local company and I had a great experience with them.

> one day I can rely more on well water/rain catchment system

There are some fascinating youtube videos on digging your own backyard shallow well (12-40'). This close to the surface, the water is considered non-potable, and you should have yours tested, but you can pump up what you need for backyard garden irrigation. Wells like this can be seasonal, as it is essential a rainwater catchment system using the permeable ground as your reservoir. Still, a neat concept for a relatively low cost.

If you own a home you should genuinely spend time calculating and thinking about it. It's not near as far fetched as you think. You can benefit from the same technical advancements in engineering and manufacturing that have benefited every single industrial sector. It has never been easier. The number of plug and play components out there is unreal.

These days it's very much sun-legos. You decide what you can afford and what you think you need, and then you bolt the stuff together. Anyone who is willing to put time into it is capable.

They dont talk about rebound effect. When energy gets cheap/free people produce more, consume more, waste more.

This perspective is always so myopic to me. I say this as someone who doesn't make much money who's in the middle of a massive solar install (DIY). I made some simulations and a spreadsheet to work out all of the scenarios and I figured out that with a loan I can come out at monthly financing costs nearly exactly my electrical bill every month. That's right, I can have a 12 kWh battery backed 18 kW whole-home installation at no additional monthly cost.

The way that these discussions get contorted online will never make sense to me. The same people who make comments about ROI and it not making financial sense also have new car-loans on vehicles that depreciate catastrophically and are worth nearly nothing in 10 years. After 10 years my solar install will have been paid off for three years, I will get free electricity, and I will have the following benefits along the way:

Additional home value/equity

Backup power in case of grid problems or catastrophe.

Free fuel for my used battery electric vehicle. (compared to ~$200 a month in gas)

As close to zero carbon footprint as you can have in our contemporary world

And that's all assuming electricity prices stay the same. That's not even talking about how hydrocarbons are a very finite resource. Saying there's no "ROI" is looking at the situation like the only variable is your monthly expenses. It's the best decision anyone with a home who has the climate can possibly make. If you value your independence and personal security you'd be crazy to not do it. What would you pay, if you have the kind of money most people on these forums do, to ensure your home operates independent of external inputs? Imagine a new great depression? Or other such event?

A 5 year ROI on a system that should last at least 20 years isn't an investment to feel better about yourself. It's a way to save money.

Three years ago, I was paying about $0.12/kWh, now it's about $0.22/kWh and installing a system makes sense.

It's cash up front for a savings later. My roof was due for replacement 'soon' but not immediately, and I didn't model the cost of moving that 3-5 years from the future to the present.

If you can't manage a 5 year planning horizon on a house, I'm not sure that home ownership is a great idea.

I get it if the ROI is 10+ years... too much uncertainty to put a lot of capital in.

Is a 5 year ROI really that crazy? Seems very reasonable considering lifespan of solar is more like 15-20 years (or more).

getting your money back in 5 years is pretty good, or am I missing something?

That's 15% yearly

I always post this https://www.rte-france.com/en/data-publications/eco2mix/powe...

Batteries, having a mixed grid of renewables, and new advances in nuclear solves this

Across a large enough area it's always sunny somewhere. And clouds don't interfere as much as you'd think. Add in wind, hydro, nuclear and some gas and you can handle pretty much anything just fine.

Taxing/preventing extraction of crude oil upstream would always have been the better solution.

Covid helped a lot with digitalisation and working from home.

But these things don't get momentum in a vacuum. People need to advocate for them beforehand, so that when the time is right, the decision makers will know who to turn to.

Some EU countries, at least Croatia, Hungary, Spain and Greece lowered gas prices to pre Iran war levels. I wish instead EU would lower tariffs on EVs. Xiaomi SU7 would get 45% total duty.

China might produce the most panels at volume but this isn't a hardline monopoly like being able to cut off oil pipelines. We can produce panels ourselves if we _need_ to (as a coalition of friendly countries), it will of course be more expensive, but expensive is better than not possible.

Also, the more panels we already have, the less reliant we are. Energy doesn't stop flowing because deliveries of new panels stop during a conflict. You just pause expansion. A very different scenario to fuel reserves running dry in weeks.

Unlike the oil dependency system, where there's actual scarcity of the thing you need (oil), there's nothing special about building solar panels that locks you to China. Basically any country could build it, but they need to figure out how to build stuff in general (as opposed to outsourcing like the last three decades)

Hard to call it influence when the panels, once installed, just work and slowly degrade over the course of years.

There are more immediate ways for China to influence Europe.

Meanwhile the recent oil debacle showed how fragile a system it is to have fossil fuels shipped across the planet.

You don't buy anything else from China? You're sure none of the oil drills or gas turbines in your country are from there?

Really ? One doesnt needs China to produce electricity once its installed.

Is buying the means to produce energy from China worse than buying energy directly from Russia?

This is indeed the risk.

> Pretty sure it's all tax funded.

That's too simple of a statement. Sure, govt grants are involved in subsidies for installation and the loan interest. But that thing is then generating electricity, which is what saves them the money.

So it's not "all" tax funded. Some of it is the sun's energy, and that was the whole point.

Similarly my friend swaps electric cars every couple of years (Volt -> Bolt -> Equinox) bragging about all the discounts and subsidies he's gotten. Maybe it's still beneficial through the used car market but it doesn't feel like an effective subsidy for the government to be handing out.

Where do you live? There should still be price competition on types of inverters, aesthetics, focus on highest ROI, etc.

I live in a heavily subsidized state and quotes ranged from (after subsidies/incentives) 5-6 year ROI to 20-25 year ROI.

> Pretty sure it's all tax funded

Yes. I’m very happy my taxes are spent on things that improve the lives of everyday people rather than endless wars.

Either spend it on productive things, or have zero taxes.

It ALWAYS happens.

> Partly because they still use coal, which is heavily taxed under the emissions trading scheme

... and solar is heavily subsidized, which could outweigh this effect. So this doesn't explain the high energy prices.

> partly because of the way electricity auctions work in most of Europe, namely every participant sells at the price offered by the highest bidder.

This doesn't explain why Germany has so high electricity prices.

It's hard to compete with slave wages

Where are the panels sourced from?

It's basically nothing for a entire continent, let's be real.