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)
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.
It has become ridiculously cheap indeed.
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.
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'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).
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.
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
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...
Prices fell dramatically in the last few years, if I understood things correctly the high prices in the US are mostly due to tariffs.
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.
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)
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.
Energy heavy use cases with little to no energy costs will lap western industries.
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 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.
Most people drive cars worth less than this.
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.
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 free you have a good point."
zahlman•1h ago
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.
testrun•1h ago
throwaway219450•1h ago
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.“