Missing from your calculus is the cost of creating, cleaning, maintaining and eventually replacing the hardware. None of that is "free" - it is merely externalized to a vulnerable population or to your future self.
Missing from your calculus are the healthcare costs of every person in a country breathing in fumes from electricity plants that burn coal and fumes from cars that burn gasoline.
Not supporting OP because I think hes backwards on the matter. However in Canada the electricity that is being burned isn't coal based - so you need to compare the actual grid not some hypothetical grid.
Canada's alternative energy source is very rarely coal (no where near me at least) but a lot of the grid capacity is coming from LNG outside of ON/QC. BC has a bunch of rivers and other water features but has been highly reluctant to build out hydro supply, as an example.
Unlike the UK (which mothballed and eventually tore down its coal power stations) there is still a whole bunch of coal power online in Canada.
Lingan Generating Station would be a typical example. Big thermal power station, built to burn local coal, realistically the transition for them is to non-coal thermal power, burning LNG or Oil, or trees or whatever else can be set on fire. If they burned trash (which isn't really a practical conversion, but it's a hypothetical) we could argue that's renewable because it's not like there won't be trash, but otherwise this is just never going to be a renewable power source.
Canada is a huge place, so I don't doubt that none those coal stations are near you (unless, I suppose, you literally live next to Lingan or a similar plant but just aren't very observant) but most of us aren't self-sufficient and so we do need to pay attention to the consequences far from us.
>there is still a whole bunch of coal power online in Canada.
Ontario, Quebec, BC and Alberta, the four largest provinces by population and a heady percentage of the land area, have zero coal power generation facilities.
Ontario is mostly nuclear supported by hydro, with an absolute fallback of natural gas. Quebec is overwhelmingly hydro + wind. BC is mostly hydro. Alberta is mostly non-renewables like natural gas, but phased out its last coal plants.
If someone is in Canada, odds are extremely high that there is no coal plant anywhere in their jurisdiction. I also wouldn't say that there is a whole bunch of coal power online -- they're an extreme exception now.
To me "a bunch" is when it'd be tedious to list them. For a few years the UK had few enough that you could list their names, then gradually four, three, two, one, none. Canada as a whole isn't in that place yet, though it doesn't have plans to build more of these plants and they will gradually reach end of life or transition to burning something else.
Coal isn't one of the "convenient" fossil fuels where you might choose to run electrical generation off this fuel rather than figure out how to deliver electricity to a remote site, coal is bulky and annoying. Amundsen Scott (the permanent base at the South Pole, IMO definition of remote) runs on JP-8 (ie basically kerosene, jet fuel), some places use gasoline or LNG. I don't expect hold outs in terms of practicality for coal, it's just about political will.
That's a fair point, though I think OP's recommendation to switch to solar is also to people outside Canada and most of the world is still burning fossil fuels to generate electricity.
Roof maintenance is a need in Canada regardless of the presence of solar. Solar roofs do demand additional maintenance but the benefits over relying on natural gas for power (which is the alternative in Canada outside ON/QC) is worth it.
I will stand by your statement from the philosophical point of view that nothing in life is free and everything has its trade offs - but this is a pretty clear positive. In addition, Canada has pretty decent workplace safety enforcement for the sort of workers that'd be doing the maintenance - it certainly isn't perfect but it is something that Canadians seem to find important.
Panels have warranties of over twenty years now. They pay for themselves much earlier. You probably have to replace the inverter earlier, but that’s not a huge expense. I don’t know anybody who lives in a place where it rains who cleans the panels on their roof.
Oh, okay. Does a warranty cover sweeping snow off your panels and washing them many times throughout the years? I guess if one does not value time, then solar panels could be considered "free" - but this is a bizarre sacrifice.
Lies. I'm using solar panels since 2022, still producing same peak energy and not cleaned them once. Some companies/electricians will try to sell you a cleaning and maintenance service for ~80-100EUR/year here but it's basically throwing money.
I live in a fairly arid place (Bay Area) where it rains in winter but gets quite dry and dusty in the summer. I've had rooftop solar since 2016 and have noticed that generation decreases by as much as 8-10% when the panels are covered in summer dust.
I wonder if it's worth setting up a sort of sprinkler system so you can easily clean it by opening a valve. Maybe add a pipe with some holes in it to the top of the panel, and some flexible hose to hook it up to the next one.
Just spraying dust with water will not remove it. Detergent helps, but most of the cleaning effect is done by mechanical agitation, eg. wiping the glass.
Here it's not so dusty, but in spring there can be a ton of flying pollen and yet, our not so abundant rains (generally speaking, there are more and more stormy episodes lately once a year) are enough to clean it up.
You’re being extremely argumentative all over the comments to this story. Do you yourself own any solar panels? Your ceaseless naysaying constantly contradicts people’s lived experience (including mine) as owners.
Focus on solutions, not trying to be right. It’s aggravating.
> Your ceaseless naysaying constantly contradicts people’s lived experience (including mine) as owners.
Also, like, every study on this matter. The efficiency drop from being dirty for vaguely modern solar panels is _tiny_; below 5% and potentially below 1%.
I got solar panels installed two years ago and I've washed them once. I'm still getting great production. Are you trying to convince yourself that maintaining solar panels is difficult? Because it isn't.
So let me get this straight, I save hundreds of dollars a month, I drive my cars "for free", I get paid at the end of my net-metering year, and somehow this is a bad deal because I've wanted (not needed) to wash my panels once? It sounds like you optimize your life around not maintaining the things around you which is fine, but I'd much rather save thousands of dollars.
You don't bother with the snow. Winter is low production energy due to the suns positioning - it melts in the spring and your back to producing. Most solar power is between march - september anyways.
Washing solar panels _at all_ would be fairly unusual, and arguably pretty pointless, particularly given they're so cheap now; you're looking at, optimistically, a 5% efficiency improvement, but many studies say more like 1% in practice.
If you're in a place that gets significant snowfall such that they're often covered then production during winter is likely to be fairly marginal anyway, so may not be worth your while.
I've had my system for 10 years and maintenance has literally been 0. Rain and snow clean the panels. Panels themselves warrantied for 30 years but will likely last longer.
Roof-based panels also take on some roof wear, increasing longevity of roofing as well.
Solar panels last practically forever. Despite the official lifetimes of 25-30 years, that was a conservative estimate for budgeting purposes, and they're still working after that time, with moderately reduced efficiency (around 70-80%).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266675922...
(And a gazillion other studies.)