Not that this news is great. We should promote green energy.
I will just get the panels and do it myself.
But some states have had to push regulations because door to door marketing teams have misrepresented who they are, used pressure, and tried their best to imply without saying that a "switch" to renewable energy was non-optional or was like some technical correction with a billing problem.
I was told I would get "FREE SOLAR".
At least in the midwest, when I hear solar, I hear scam. I would much rather purchase equipment myself and do the install myself.
All of it is a scam. I head these people off early if I see them walking around my neighborhood.
Although this was probably 10 years ago, so maybe it's changed now.
I still think everyone should believe in it as a value proposition, and as as a way to balance risk from grid instability, but I would like better information about who is reliable and who the bad actors are.
Solar is so expensive and cost-inefficient per-household. Data centers need their own large, uninterrupted power supplies.
I'm not even talking about the fact that panels MAY act like a pool for resale. Some people DO want them--again depending on your locale--most, at this point, do NOT where I live.
I was looking primarily for cost reduction and a very small percentage of saving the environment or whatever you want to call it. But; depending on your locale, home structure, etc, solar may not at all be that. If you're leaning more on the side of energy independence and eco-friendliness, maybe it's a better fit for you.
A roof mounted solar array easily adds $20,000 - 25,000 to reroofing a house just in labor (assuming two electricians for one week on either side of the reroofing with labor priced at $150/hr)
If I was buying a house with a solar array on the roof I would consider it to be a liability that is going to add to the TCO of the home and ask for a discount to cover the future costs of removal. The labor to remove and replace the solar array when reroofing is never going to be paid for by the solar array, it’s just an added expense to the TCO of a home.
There are plenty of people who are not aware of the added costs of a roof mounted solar array, I just happen to be aware since I sell and run electrical work for a living.
Why do you need two electricians for a week? My rooftop solar array went up in an afternoon. They had three labourers. The (singular) electrician came in separately and worked for under and hour.
> "[solar] adds $20,000 - 25,000 to reroofing a house"
Since all of the scaffolding or whatever is already up for the roof work, if anything the solar ought to be cheaper, in that scenario.
We've got one, cost €350 including delivery and a balcony railing mounting kit, could've been €250 if we'd collected and not had the stands. Whole thing is trivial DIY, no skill or training needed: you literally just assemble the kit and plug it into a power socket, register it online as a small power station, and you're done.
Sure, the legal limit of 800 W output sure isn't a huge supply, but at that cost it's also a no-brainer — at €350, it will pay for itself in 1y8m.
In other words you have lawn flamingos because you have bad taste not because the government impoverished you.
I have balkonkraftwerk because they're a 60% return on investment, per year for 35 years, tax free and self-adjusting for inflation. By far the best (reliable) investment one can make.
That €350 is currently economically worth €7350 over their lifetime in reduced energy bills, tax free. The economics are so strong that it would be worth doing even if energy was 1/3rd the current price.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/rooftop-solar-three-times-cheape...
The study from Compare the Market finds the average residential solar installation cost in the US is $A4/W, while Canada’s national average was $A3.65/W. By contrast, Australia’s national average was $A0.89/W, more than $A2/W cheaper.
It's also significantly higher than in Germany:
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/10/24/residential-pv-prices...
The cheapest offers for a PV system with 10 kW of power without storage are just over €1 per watt, the most expensive are around €2 euros per watt.
All these countries have access to the same solar panels. The national minimum wage is lower in America than in the other countries. So why do American rooftop systems cost so much more? Mostly because of high "soft costs" in America:
Soft costs are the non-hardware costs associated with going solar. These costs include permitting, financing, and installing solar, as well as the expenses solar companies incur to acquire new customers, pay suppliers, and cover their bottom line. These soft costs become a portion of the overall price a customer pays for a solar energy system. While solar hardware costs have fallen in recent years, soft costs represent a growing share of total solar system costs.
Arizona - 3,800 hours of sunlight hours per year
Minnesota - 2,500 hours of sunlight hours per year
Ergo, I can't generate as much energy as someone who lives in a state that gets significantly more sunlight.
I would also add that setup and installation of even a small solar array has an ROI of around 10 years because I can't generate as much energy, therefore it takes longer for me to break even.
Right now in Minnesota:
The average cost of installing a 5 kW solar panel system in Minnesota is approximately $14,900 before applying the 30% federal tax credit, which can significantly reduce the overall expense. After incentives, the out-of-pocket cost can be around $13,860
Sorry, I'm not going to lay out 15K and then have to wait ten years before I break even. If you want to know why people aren't adopting solar, this is the reason. Its cost prohibitive for many, many people.
Does it make sense for people in those Southern states? 100%. For everybody else? Not so much.
Every single year I talk to companies and the cost has gone down, barely. I've been told every year for the last 20 years that technology is getting so much better. The panels are so much more efficient, cost less, the state and federal govt have tax breaks, blah blah, blah. The Chinese have found a way to produce them this way and that way, "Oh you just wait, its really going to be affordable in the next few years!"
No, its still not affordable. If it were, like OP said you would see them on every house in your neighborhood.
I've wanted to put solar on my house for very long time and every year its the same thing. "Finance a $15,000 loan and in ten years you'll have free electricity!!"
I would say anybody who's rational, informed and interested looking at that would 100% of the time its not worth it.
Yeah and then you pay interest on the loan. Which then makes it EVEN MORE expensive AND lengthens your ROI just to break even.
FYI you're not "saving" anything until A) Your loan is paid off and B) Your array is generating enough energy to compensate for your existing energy use.
Your numbers just don't add up:
$15,000 for a 5Kw array.
$15,000 loan with a VERY generous 5% interest rate on an also very generous 6 year term.
Interest paid over six years: $4,500
Total paid after six years: $19,500
Monthly payments would be around $240.00
The average monthly cost of electricity for Minneapolis is about $190.00 which is about 1,097kWh
The monthly average your 5kWh array can generate in a month (assuming optimal conditions) is around 700kWh. Leaving you with a deficit of 397kWh you still need to pay for.
So no, I'm not seeing how the cost savings will exceed your finance payments. It will eventually pay for itself once you get outside of that ROI period. And then what? You get 15 years of free electricity which amounts to:
$190.00 * 12 = $2,280
$2,280 * 15 = $34,200
So then, over 25 years, your net gain is about: $14,000? Which is about $560/year?
Not worth it at all.
Having an alternative source for your house is a wise idea.
Then there is still the safety issues and environmental concerns regarding the waste. Some people say they are safe now and you can just bury the waste deep underground. Putting it deep underground seems a bit like just pumping the carbon into the air: someone else's problem further down the line in time.
Do you want to live next to a Nuclear Power Plant?
Yes! I think that would be great!
Will they actually get spent on something sensible, including but not limited to free school lunches? Probably not.
Think of it as a stopped-clock-right-twice-a-day kind of thing.
When discussing solar subsidies one should keep several things in mind:
- Federal solar subsidies are expiring at the end of this year thanks to Trumps tax law with a name so ridiculous I shall not repeat it.
- This news item is talking about money that has already been granted. This is especially screwed up because these are situation where the government has already promised to pay and people have been making investments and putting in work in expectation of payment.
- Solar is actually much less subsidized than nuclear. In many cases solar subsidies will help the taxpayer avoid costs as they avoid much more expensive nuclear subsidies.
https://www.irena.org/News/pressreleases/2025/Jul/91-Percent...
My previous comment said:
> to reduce the fuel consumed running an existing plants
As in: no storage or new transmission needed, put it right by the existing gas plant and wire it together, *burn less while the sun is shining*.
Batteries… well, I hope they keep getting cheaper, but IIRC them+PV currently beat nuclear. Not sure about other stuff though.
Personally, I believe even Biden-era efforts were insufficient; but all the common arguments to do less against climate change that I encounter regularly fall into the following 3 categories:
1) Selfishness/Freedom at someone elses cost ("why should I suffer from restrictions just to mitigate negative externalities")
2) Poorly informed skepticism toward solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, frequently involving extremely implausible assumptions about production costs.
3) (Misinformed) dismissal of climate-change consequences ("a few degrees warmer won't hurt too much")
Currently I can't help but think that people will look back on this in a few decades and regard the whole position as obvious idiocy (similarly to the US waging war in Vietnam).
Solar, wind, and battery, even without the grants, is already quite cheap. You'd have to fine the industries to really slow down deployment at this point.
That means the 7B is mostly saved money with not too much negative impacts.
(I still think it's a bad idea, don't get me wrong, but it's probably not the worst thing in the world).
Hence the other part of this Evil Sinister Traitor plan, denying & rescinding permits for green energy blanketly:
> The Interior Department released a new secretarial order Friday saying it may no longer issue any permits to a solar or wind project on federal lands unless the agency believes it will generate as much energy per acre as a coal, gas, or nuclear power plant.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/interior-department-wind-solar-l...
Renewables aren't dense power! But America has land, and if we switch to renewables, maybe maybe the oceans won't rise & we won't lose a ton of land.
God these people are literally the worst Captain Planet supervillain shitheels. Literally the worst hive of scum and villainy.
A lot of very smart, capable people gave the US such a comfortable position on this planet that it allows absolute garbage like Trump to float (not going to sugarcoat it for the many Trumpists on here -- the guy is a garbage human being, and encapsulates the absolute worst traits of humanity. His takes on almost everything are impossibly stupid and ill-informed nonsense, but he has captured his party so thoroughly that the clucking chickens all start repeating buffoonery verbatim), and so many in US politics, to ply unbelievably clownery and get away with it for a while. But the collapse is coming much faster than many people realize.
...the dissolution of the union. Already representatives from one state -- one that is actively destroying democracy to serve the agenda of rapist Trump -- are sheltering in the opposition camp's state, under the protection of its governor.
How long do people think this nonsense is going to continue? How long will better states endure having this human trash lording over them with their grievance and grift (remember that "free for the taxpayer" jet? Actually will cost taxpayers a billion dollars to be transferred to that criminal thief)?
Soon enough tax withholding will happen, there will be a struggle, and the divisions will arise.
Even when programs are helpful initially, long-term they're unlikely to be repealed and are likely to overstay their use, eventually harming the climate.
I don't mean to get personal but this is a really ill-informed opinion. Texas has to deal with hurricanes and legitimate weather events, CA has invented problems that cause blackouts at the expense of CA taxpayers; meanwhile CA pays 2-3x for the same power. It's really not a good comparison, CA has a famously mismanaged electric grid
How many people died in the last major California outage? Didn't Texas have people freezing to death? I know what I'd rather deal with.
In 2024, there were no deaths due to power outages in CA or in TX.
That said, comparing natural disaster deaths is a stupid way to measure the success or failure of a power grid. Success should be determined by factors like uptime or cost.
Why don't you look up the uptime and cost of the Texas grid vs the CA grid in 2024?
Texas surpassed California in terms of utility-scale solar because California both uses less electricity and has been so successful with distributed (customer premises) solar between the old incentives (now phased out) and its newer construction mandates that there is basically no energy demand for new utility solar to fill, because solar generation already peaks at above 100% of demand much of time, the utility demand is for storage and/or generation that is not on the same cycle as solar.
Texas has less total solar generation capacity than California, and gets much less of its total electricity from solar.
how?
Solar tax credits are subsides for the well off. The poorest folks can't afford the cash cost of panels and don't have enough taxable income to use the offsets.
The workaround to the high cost has been to lock less diligent people into 30 year power purchase agreements in return for no upfront costs. The lessor takes the subsidies and credits and it just creates another lien on the house.
Sounds like a good thing to me! Subsidizing things that benefit the whole of society are 100% a good thing, even when rich people take advantage of them
Basically, fossil fuels have been a machine for lifting people out of poverty and creating economic growth. If you overlay charts of growth on top of charts of energy use, they're almost one and the same. Now, a bunch of head-in -the-sky liberals come along and decide we can't use these fuels anymore, and instead should use... Windmills? And their reasons are obviously fake. The climate has always changed, and isn't changing so much now, maybe even cooling recently. Their dire predictions keep failing to come true, and all their evidence comes from more liberal SJW University snowflakes.
Worse-- all the stuff they want to deploy comes from communist China, while we have tons of oil and gas right here at home.
Rational arguments have nothing to do with marketing labels like left, and any other binary belief traps. The things you mentioned are nothing more than echos of nonsensical political marketing that is deliberately NOT targeting the ratio. Instead, they aim the underbelly, the non-rational core we all have. It speaks to the peoples need to belong to a group, it speaks to deeply held beliefs, it speaks to identity.
I understand it is incredible hard while drowning in a sea of identity politics, but do not conflate reason with political memes.
Couldn’t the same be said for policies that subsidize solar and wind?
Not only that Solar changes the local climate because they absorbed and radiate heat as well as taking vast amounts of land that is stripped of life. Wind drives whales insane on the coast and kills massive amounts of birds.
If we can crack fusion then the only fuels used are helium and such. Much cleaner and they work at night and whin the air is still.
Fusion is great but it's still years away at least from a single viable commercial reactor. We need solutions to be deployed ten years ago. Waiting for Godot isn't an option.
You’re quite far out of your depth here.
The science has concluded that renewables decrease electricity costs. But comparing regions the ones that went straight into renewables were the ones with nearly 100% fossil fuel usage which were desperate for alternatives.
They started with expensive electricity and fossil fuels still often are the marginal producer in their systems.
And don’t get me started on investing in nuclear power taking 20 years to build and delivering $170-250/MWh electricity today. That is pure lunacy to propose.
I find this laughable. It is truly mental somersaults attempting to justify an insane policy.
On one hand we have an extremely complicated machine that does not exist yet with an unknown pathway to create electricity. With steam being too expensive.
On the other hand we outsource the complicated machine to the sun and passively collect the results with solar and wind power.
Good enough tends to beat imaginary perfect solutions.
The problem I had with the Biden subsidies (as far as I'm aware) was that it didn't really foster hyper competition in the solar manufacturing industry.
Furthermore, the best solution here is to create giant solar farms in the American SouthWest, then funnel energy across the country, is it not? Energy loss is minor, even along thousands of KM in distance.
My dream here is Trump comes out with some new subsidies, focusing on manufacturing, which would drive the price down substantially and hopefully negate the need for consumer subsidies.
We need the new tech-right guys in his admin to speak up on this!
Microsoft backed Fusion (Yes FUSION) power plant.
"The company said, with site work now underway, Helion remains on track to meet the goal of doing so by 2028."
Locally manufactured panels will never be substantially cheaper than imported panels + tariffs. It does not make sense economically to be substantially cheaper.
The problem is that getting political support for storage and transmission is much more difficult because everyone knows what a solar panel is. They don't always understand the intricacies of a net-zero electrical system.
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
That's exactly what someone participating in the conspiracy would say.
At this point it's an open secret that oil and gas have used their money to lobby against all alternative sources of energy, including HN's golden boy: nuclear. Exhibit A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Club#Budget_and_funding
Environmentalists didn't kill nuclear energy. They are a patsy for Big Oil.
- Solar power has been growing exponentially for years and will continue for a while allowing carbon usage to be phased out and maybe carbon capture done.
- The climate has changed naturally more than most people realise and life goes on. The sea is forecast to rise 60cm or so over this century but has risen ~120m over the last 20k years which was hardly noticed. (graph from wikipedia https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Post-Gla...)
Also, why do you think the impact of past changes on a tiny group of humans living as hunter gatherers is of any relevance to 8 billion people living in the modern world (including, for example, in massive coastal cities?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Christy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_(meteorologist)
Spencer's view is that there is a natural climate change going on that just happens to coincide exactly with increasing greenhouse gases. Christy believes that climate change is real and partly anthropogenic but that it's just not going to be all that bad.
If your friends think that it's not happening, you can point them at the data that these two gather:
https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/climate/
They'd disagree with your friends that humans are not involved at all. But your friends could switch to the position that climate change just doesn't matter and it'll all be fine.
Will take DECADES to rebuild this country back
Medicine, Science, Weather, Academia, etc. etc.
Certainly not my lifetime, maybe not even anyone on HN right now
Sure makes one wonder if he is legitimately this stupid or if he has been legitimately compromised.
> The Interior Department released a new secretarial order Friday saying it may no longer issue any permits to a solar or wind project on federal lands unless the agency believes it will generate as much energy per acre as a coal, gas, or nuclear power plant.
https://heatmap.news/sparks/interior-department-wind-solar-l...
Yeah, like, there's zero chance a solar plant is going to be as power dense as a natural gas plant.
America has been taken over by traitors trying to destroy this nation.
That's amazing! America is famously known for lacking land.
https://www.uaex.uada.edu/media-resources/news/2025/july/07-...
https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2025/07/farm-bankruptcie...
(soybean exports to China from the US are already down 96% this year; also, while most federal lands are west of the midwest great plains, there should be sufficient non federal land to meet the energy needs of West Coast load centers: https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/pad-us-14-map-federal-land...)
myotheraccount2•6mo ago
guywithahat•6mo ago
pavel_lishin•6mo ago
sofixa•6mo ago
But you would definitely bribe so your competitors don't get money and your services are required for longer. Existing coal and various other fossil fuel power generating and supply chain companies would be very happy to have less competition from solar.
See Boeing managing to get the KC-45 tanker contract awarded to Airbus cancelled (for a plane that mostly existed and needed some US specific updates), to get a new one they won, that not only have they still not managed to deliver on, but they're also losing money.
pixelatedindex•6mo ago
guywithahat•6mo ago
Fair market competition =/= corruption
dyauspitr•6mo ago
plandis•6mo ago
Adding energy capacity reduces the prices at which firms can sell energy since there would be more supply. Removing the grants means that existing energy generation firms need to worry less about how increased supply would harm their prices.
fnordpiglet•6mo ago
ninininino•6mo ago
Cancel tax rebates, subsidies, grants, etc. for one of your competing industries and your own benefits because your costs and supply is relative to the others. Your own price is never evaluated in a vacuum where those other energy options are not relevant.
pahkah•6mo ago
guywithahat•6mo ago
It feels like your argument is they will have to compete in the free market instead of just being given free money, which isn't corruption. Corruption would be giving companies 7B in grants through the EPA or 6.6B dollar loans through the DOE. Letting people plan on a fair playing field isn't corruption
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/biden-throws-struggling-ri...
insane_dreamer•6mo ago
exe34•6mo ago
normalaccess•6mo ago
Microsoft is breaking ground in WA state building a new fusion reactor.
EDIT: Adding description to video linkVideo from Real Engineering showing Helion's Pulsed Compression Fusion reactor prototype (2022). The same kind of reactor Helion is building in WA state for Microsoft.
pavlov•6mo ago
normalaccess•6mo ago
normalaccess•6mo ago
QuantumGood•6mo ago