If so, please ask your representatives to copy Germany's "Balkonkraftwerk" rules.
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.
With the notable difference that lawn flamingos are not necessary because of the terrible energy policies of the government, whilst balkonkartoffel are.
In other words you have lawn flamingos because you have bad taste not because the government impoverished you.
"Eyesore" is in your own opinion. What I've seen on balconies around here, anything covering them is a 50% chance of being an improvement — and unlike some acquaintances, I've not encountered balkon-FKK. And IMO they're a big improvement over, e.g. the AC units on the skyscraper walls of Manhatten.
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.
I had it priced out by 5 different vendors. Only one of those 5 was in any way truthful about the reality for my particular home: "you will likely only get 15% of what others with panels might due to the shape of your roof and tree cover now and especially in 10 years." That said, WITH grid-kickbacks (all of which are not at all guaranteed), according to 4 of them, I would be looking at a net zero cost in 30-36 years.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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)
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.
the cost to remove isn't 2 electricians for a week, it's 2 people with arms for a day. This is like saying that you would consider light fixtures a considerable TCO increase because whenever the lightbulb goes out, you'll need to pay an electrician for a day of work to change it.
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.
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.
First of all your post is off topic. Second of all, the reason why solar panel installations in both Australia and Germany are cheaper than the US is solar panel tariffs. Neither Australia nor the EU has solar panel tariffs. The US does. The cheapest solar panels come from China, where there is significant overproduction of panels. If you do not have tariffs you get a lot of cheap Chinese panels.
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.