[h0l0cube]

Home battery systems are getting absurdly cheap. Grid scale will follow, but before then it would be cheaper to incentivize rooftop solar and home battery installations in places where there’s plenty of sunlight (e.g., most of Australia)

[itsoktocry]

What's absurdly cheap? What sort of payback period does rooftop solar and storage have?

Last time I ventured into the Tesla subreddit, people were talking about 20 years. That's terrible.

[kragen]

you may be interested to know that the price of solar panels has dropped by half in the last year and a factor of 24 over the last 15; see my summary at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39544358

[h0l0cube]

On top of that LFP battery cells are about half the cost they were when I purchased in August

[wredue]

Holy shite. I had been putting this off cause 45k (when I initially looked) was a pretty tough pill to swallow. We’re down to 15k installed around here (which I suspect is pretty close to the floor, everything else will be profits for installation as years go on).

15k is much more reasonable.

[kragen]

it's close to the floor because the installers are structured for the economic structure they had when it was 45k. you'll see new approaches that make different tradeoffs to reflect the new, lower panel prices

for example, inverters: if your solar installation costs 2 dollars a watt all told, it makes sense to spend an extra hundred bucks on a more efficient inverter if it squeezes 300 more watts out of the panels, but not if the solar installation costs 20 cents a watt. (and maybe you can run some 24-volt dc wiring instead of stepping it up to 120—or put together a constant-current system instead of a constant-voltage one, so the voltage drop in the wires doesn't have to stay within a narrow tolerance.)

or packaging: the glass now costs significantly more than the cells do, and the frames are expensive too—could you make do by gluing the cells to thin polycarbonate, like a compact disc, instead of to glass? even if it cut into longevity

and maybe you can do a rooftop installation of a lightweight installation with a long pole with a hook on the end, or something, instead of having a guy climb up on the roof with a ladder—potentially falling off and dying, which is both a human tragedy and an insurance cost

or hang the cells vertically under the eaves on the east or west side of the house, like wind chimes: no midday sun, and a significantly diminished capacity factor when you do get sun, but also no holes drilled in the roof, no rigid frames, no rain, and no hailstones

[KptMarchewa]

Start using capital letters.

[kragen]

good to see you've got your priorities in order

[quitit]

Standard solar installs for households are designed to pay themselves off in 5 years. After that point they represent a net saving to the home owner.

Source, Australian government via: https://www.energy.gov.au/solar/switch-solar-power/solar-hou...

[aitchnyu]

My 5KW system in India will pay back way faster than 33 months (initial calculation).

[kragen]

wow, that's a 29% annual return on investment. that's unbelievably huge! not in the literal sense, i mean, i believe you, it's just astounding. are you comfortable sharing your calculation?

[more_corn]

Powerwall is expensive.

[raxxorraxor]

I think home batteries are still absurdly expensive for their capacity. The most efficient storage would be for you to buy an electric vehicle and use its battery.