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Climate change

I installed a 708 kWp solar panel last year and with the huge subsidies (40%) on top of the huge cost of electricity it pays for itself in 1,8 years.
I have never made a better investment in my life,.
As I use on average 60% of its anual yield myself, I don’t depend on high prices on payback for feeding it to the grid, but the current rates are a nice bonus of course.

I still think that as a society we are burning money on this as we are not in a good geography for solar panels in central europe.
Any technology that has been around for so many years (without improving much over the last 10 years) and still needs subsidies has a problem.
I fear that all this hype on a technology that won’t be a huge part of solution (due to geography, so nothing to improve) takes away capital to develop better technologies. If prices weren’t so absurdly high we wouldn’t build so many solar panels. This should tell us something about the quality of a technology for the region we are in.

Austria

Do you have a recommendation for an installer or did you do it yourself?

always learning
LO__, Austria

Installation for 5.600 m2 of panels and the main electrical Installation took roughly two weeks with two crews (12 people) so I used a company in my vicinity which does industrially sized solar installations (I have no expertise to do this myself).

We are negotiating two more projects with them, but they are booked for many months. Maybe some of their customers would have done projects on credit and want to back out now due to liquidity reasons so I can get a spot in the next 6-8 months.
There is a massive number of companies doing those installations now, so I would just hire somebody in my area if I was you.

As I see no realistic way for energy to become cheaper in the near future this still should be a financially sound investment for the next 3-4 years before the government stops the massive subsidies and uses that money on fracking and geothermal energy (both perfectly viable in northern Austria) to solve the energy crisis.

Last Edited by ASW22 at 30 Sep 04:13
Austria

aart wrote:

Cost estimate 12-15k€ including mounting structure and installation work.

Wow. I can see how we are being fleeced here.

I looked at a 50 m2 installation with back up batteries (after all, what is the point if you are still dependent on the grid if there are outages) and got quoted between 35 and 50k CHF. That is without the legal fees to force acceptance out of the neighbours, who can, with malicious intent, delay such an installation for up to 5 years.

Peter wrote:

The payback time – $30k to save $200/m is how long, given that the aircon isn’t needed all year? If the aircon was running all year then it is 12.5 years but in reality… 30 years?

With the current prices, payback may be much faster.

But is payback really the issue? With the current situation, many people will simply make the clear decision that they need to get more independence of the grid. And many fall into the trap of putting solar systems which feed the grid but don’t actually provide that independence.

skydriller wrote:

how come every supermarket, office block and factory doesn’t have the roof covered with the things…

Lots of new such buildings do have them indeed. And with the currrent price development of electricity, roof spaces will become very interesting real estate for many people and for lots of industrial buildings. Apart, those who just now woke up to this may need to wait 2-3 years until there is capacity to install their panels.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

A neighbour is rebuilding their house (with a new house) and will be covering both roofs of the main building (one roof faces west and one roof faces east) with PV panels

They are using panels which form a joined-up surface. Apparently they are made by Tesla and cost a lot more than normal ones, but this approach avoids the bodges of retrofit panels, with birds nesting between them, etc.

They can do it because they don’t have the “English vernacular architecture” which the busybody old farts who control the building regs usually insist on, but in this case the “green” angle (which nobody has the power to argue with) gets the job through

This sort of house can’t be done neatly:

A heat pump of course (air to water).

There is an interesting debate whether to run a heat pump in the day or at night. The cheaper night tariff means a more expensive day tariff, and the OAT is ~10C lower at night so the heat pump COP is much lower at night. Of course if you use a heat pump for underfloor heating (about the only way they work) then daytime operation is needed.

Can anyone competent in thermodynamics post anything on how the COP can be far better in Norway/Sweden (as claimed) than say in the UK, for air to water heat pumps? You have to pump the heat up the thermodynamic “hill” no matter what.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

This unwashed lot was at it again today in London. Four bridges were temporarily closed to traffic by protestors today, Westminster, Waterloo, Lambeth and Vauxhall. Through positive interactions by (Met Police) officers working on the demonstrations, all are now open. The protest moved to Parliament Square.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63102669

The traffic was horrific and there was lots of poluttion.

Qualified PPL with IR SP/SE PBN
EGSG, United Kingdom

From here

aart wrote:

why not?

Essentially because neither wind nor solar is producing energy in the correct sense of the word when talking about the electric grid. They are both random producers of power, and they may go toward zero at any time. It’s like a random stream of unrefined raw oil in a sense. It needs to be refined before it can be used, preferably also stored.

The method to refine it is either by taking up the slack by hydropower typically, and/or pumped storage plants. Hydropower is in the unique position to produce power in exact amounts at the precise time needed with high efficiency. The problem is that it’s not nearly enough of it, and all the resources have already been used. The other alternative is storage. It’s the same problem there. There is today no thinkable way to store the amount of energy needed, not even close.

Wind and solar are nothing but hot air balloons waiting to pop. Plain and simple. Solar less so, because it can effectively be scaled down to each household (where it do make sense today, but not necessary when the hot air balloons pop, and the only viable energy solution is clearly seen by everyone).

Billions of € is used in researching energy storage in some form. It’s one of the hottest topics ever. A google search will give you tons of papers and other info. It will also give you the video from Sabine Hossenfelder She explains this rather excellently, but only the storage problem.



The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

On the topic of using electric car batteries for storage:

I have a 3.5kW generator which has a small petrol tank which runs for, supposedly, 16hrs. So that will make 56kWh.

A Tesla battery, depending on model, is in a similar ballpark, which is interesting. So an EV would form a usable “backup generator” for power cuts. I wonder how many EV owners actually have this.

Of course the difference is that I also have two 20 litre jerrycans of petrol which I can pour in as needed

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

LeSving wrote:

Essentially because neither wind nor solar is producing energy in the correct sense of the word when talking about the electric grid. They are both random producers of power,

I thought that energy – in the correct sense of the word – is power over time.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

I am looking quite seriously into solar energy, primarily because I don’t trust the grid anymore.

The main problem is, that 99% of solar energy produced on private homes is still grid dependent unless you have a battery to store substantial amounts of energy and you do have a switch to actually cut off the grid in case of failure! Those two latter elements are the most expensive ones.

With the current panic, solare panels are sold out until fall 2023, solar installation engineers booked out until spring and batteries are hard to get as well.

I am starting to think about a fuel generator and a Jackery power bank (2000W) with solar panels as a backup.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland
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