https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43749571

[0]https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity-electric...

It's not declining like the UK (efficiencies mean total electricity production is down about 25% this century despite population growth) but it's growing only a tiny fraction, like maybe 2% in a decade - much less than the amount of new solar and wind.

So it's definitely shifting, the biggest shift is away from coal. Coal is awful, it's too expensive and it's incredibly polluting, some of that shift is towards gas, which is also a fossil fuel but has the advantage that it burns cleaner and is often cheaper - but as we see in this data lots of the shift is to "green" sources.

https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/20/chinas-coal-generation-...

But there's an issue with solar most people don't talk about. Yes it can be variable due to weather and day/night cycles. That's obvious. But a real issue is power lines.

Power lines are built to deliver power to businesses and homes. The cost of that is amortized over the electricity purchased by consumers. If people end up purchasing only half as much power due to more energy-efficient building standards, the use of solar, etc then the cost of the power lines is still the same except now it needs to be amortized over less electricity sold.

This I think is why municipalities tend to limit how much solar power houses are allowed to have. How do you build and maintain a grid when houses are generally self-suficient? Should you? Is it acceptable to not have a grid?

[1]: https://newatlas.com/energy/yarlung-tsangpo-hydroelectric-pr...

Seems optimistic? With 2 EVs and almost all electric utilities, I'm well past the ~26 KWH a day electricity your system might generate.

I'm also impressed how cheap your costs are. The install cost alone in the Bay Area is going to be past that. Panels getting cheaper just don't matter much.

Just the electrician's part would be a good chunk of the $5k, where we live (East coast US) before you even get into placing the panels themselves.

I keep seeing cheap panel costs with a "look, now you can afford it!" thing, but for those of us who may be handy but aren't quite willing to do high-power lines & boxes, or confident bolting steel to a roof without either killing ourselves or ruining the roof, the labor costs continue to be very high, and that part's not going down. From what I'm seeing for online "average costs for 10kw in your area" I'd hesitate to pull the trigger even if it were $5k lower than it is, which would probably be an even bigger discount than if the panels and other hardware were simply free.

What is the total cost for both scenarios?

Only if you need electricity during the day.

This is one of the best takes I've read about the fossil fuel versus clean energy dilemma. Maybe it's lucky for humanity that moving towards clean energy is becoming so cost effective, thanks to many past government initiatives (from all over the world) that added momentum, and the many green energy related businesses that are now in existence.

I just got some quotes to replace a tile roof on my very average 2400 sqft house in FL: 50-60k. Asked neighbors - seems reasonable to them.

Where exactly is this? I have a modest, single story house (1600 sq ft) and most of my estimates are ~$20k. (SW Wisconsin).

2. Roof work has always been a huge cost as it's very labor intensive (I learned some flat roof maintenance from a roofer friend.) The issue is we have not developed a roof system that works in conjunction with solar panels. Until that happens roofs and solar will be orthogonal problems no one wants.

3. My work got semi-screwed by this. They used concrete blocks, around 60,000 pounds worth, to hold down metal frames the panels were bolted to. Total bonkers fly-by night operation company disappeared after 2 years and we had to maintain it ourselves. Roof was destroyed after 7 years as it was leaking all over and several cracks formed in the blocks around beams. It was deemed unsafe and the entire 75kW system removed. Building owner spent $200k on a new roof and building repairs then banned solar from being installed again.

4. So is your fancy HVAC system. I believe that electrical generation should become part of a homes infrastructure just like HVAC. It enables authority and autonomy over energy which is something I have wanted. Though I also believe if someone wishes to surrender that autonomy then they should be allowed to do so.

My rooftop solar installation is about 10 years old, has long since broken even, and has required .. exactly one incidence of maintenance, to fit pigeon-proofing. Which could have been done at the initial install time, I just wasn't aware of how necessary it could be.

It has huge advantages against HVAC (and, by extension, all the plumbing-based systems like nuclear) in that it doesn't have any plumbing. The panel is a big photodiode. There is basically nothing to go wrong unless you have serious storm damage - and my panels have survived winds that took down nearby trees and fences.

> What happens when these solar panels need to be serviced?

To a first approximation, they don't. Maybe at the 20-25 "EOL" mark.

(even cheaper option would be balcony solar, but that requires legalization)

Three things to keep in mind: * I would definitely install after replacing your roof unless it's like just < 5yr old. * Most solar loans, PPA or leases have significantly bad financial terms so I recommend people to avoid them. * Make sure your utility has some kind of net-metering or you will have to install batteries to make it cost effective.

I'll say that one goal of the current administration, assuming they're competent enough to accomplish anything, is to dramatically increase US electricity production and I believe them. So with electric costs predicted to drop I suspect it is a bad time to invest in a solar system. China tariffs probably make this even worse as panels should rise in cost.

I would also defer a solar install until I got a new roof since replacing your roof means paying to remove and replace the solar system.

I'll admit that I am biased, generally, against residential rooftop solar for non-off-grid installs since my personal belief is those panels serve society better when they're filling commercial rooftops where economies of scale can make maintenance overhead per watt lower but I'm sure someone will contradict that belief with statistics. Just throwing it out there.

Surely that's the "rich idiot" fee. Plumbers charge more when the work is trivial and the customer is wealthy.

They're adding coal capacity quickly, but they're lowering the capacity factor of that usage even faster. Those coal plants are peakers that only run when solar & batteries are empty.

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/265491/chinese-coal-cons...

Increasingly cheap battery storage, also built in China, is also being deployed rapidly.

It all makes a lot of difference.

[0] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/02/02/chinas-new-pv-install...

Western transition away from fossil fuel usage is still a reduction in net fossil fuel usage when compared to no shift at all. In other words fossil fuel usage might still be growing, but it is growing at a slower rate. If we accept that fossil fuel usage should be minmized then it very much matters.

Aside from that; this argument reduces to an exceptionally bad moral stance which is: Someone else is doing bad things, therefore that justifies me doing that bad thing. Or as you might phrase the counter-argument to a young child: just because someone else is littering doesn't mean that it is ok for you to litter.

The US bungled its lead in photovoltaics and politics prevented us from catching up - so like most other things, China leads the way, and we benefit.

The fact that capitalistic greed has caught up with reality a decade later after most of the hard work was done and is now fighting on both sides of the issue is somewhat tragic.

Doubly so if you consider what it means about every other global problem we face that might affect a powerful incumbent's short term profits.

This is a huge strategic benefit to the US, which is yet another reason why alienating Canada through tariffs and other policies is such a laughably ignorant and terrible idea.

It's also why anyone pointing to non-zero US imports of oil and gas as damning proof of the US not being energy independent is incredibly ill-informed.

[1]: https://www.capp.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Canadian-Expo...

Thanks for sharing because it puts things in perspective much easier due to the data it sourced.

https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/unpacking-th...

You see similar use patterns for water. Per capita water use has gone down in many urban areas, especially places like California over the past few decades. You see hard restrictions on watering lawns, showers, toilet sizes, etc. But agriculture just sucks up the rest.

This is true when comparing the same class of car to previous models, but is it still true overall when we consider the shift to larger vehicles? The Toyota Camry from 1994 is still more efficient than the current 2024 top selling Ford F150.

Jevons paradox is worth considering when reading these stories of increased renewable energy generation and falling prices.

There are around three tiny "clean coal" plants in the world, all together producing only a tiny fraction of a percent of the energy on the grid.

That's exactly their motivation, yes. Resisting it requires political will, or we will continue to let the increasingly irrelevant tail wag the dog.

There is definitely a case for subsidising the existence of mostly-idle gas plants to make the costs of keeping them around profitable for the medium term (you can think of them roughly as playing the role of a battery), but indefinitely subsidising the equivalent of buggy-whip manufacturers is not a long-term solution for the economy.