[tallowen]

A person who drives 12k miles per year in an small vehicle will need about 4000 kWh of electricity or about 600 gallons of gas. Australians are able to buy solar panels that will generate that amount of electricity for a generation for the price of gas for one or two years. Of course there are more costs associated (Installation, batteries, etc) but the cost equation is shifting very quickly.

If anything I'm surprised that this is happening in an area that hasn't benefited as much from dramatic reductions in electricity costs (places with Wind + Solar without large tariff regimes) rather than Australia or the southern latitudes of the US.

[epolanski]

Yeah, the problem isn't panels, but installing them indeed.

Costs for installation and certification in Italy is around 8 times the cost of the panels.

Panels costs are irrelevant nowadays.

The best scenario would be to focus on technology that makes it trivial to connect to your home grid so people would be able to do it on their own safely.

[xattt]

While the panels and inverters will wear out over the course of a couple of decades, the wiring will not. This is a similar bootstrap-type of situation when urban and rural electrification first took place.

Arguments were (likely) made that the cost of wiring a house could buy 20 hand-cranked washing machines or some other phooey that came from an old paradigm.

[littlestymaar]

I keep hearing about the low price of panels but where do you find the panels that cheap?

I'm asking because my uncle has a business of selling and installing swimming pools, he has the electrician working for him and it contemplated the possibility of installing solar panels for his customers (the more sun, the higher electricity consumption in the swimming pool because you need to filter out algaes before they bloom, so it's a perfect match and he has to do the wiring anyway) and the main reason why he abandoned the idea was the cost of the panels themselves.

I feel there's a huge disconnect between the talk about technology and real life. It's like when people keep talking about how battery cost have plummeted in recent years and how they now dirt cheap, yet when you want to buy one, electric cars are not cheaper than 4 years ago.

[margor]

I don't know what part of the world are you from, but here in Poland, ordinary 400W Bi-Facial panel costs around $80/pc, when buying from wholesaler which are plenty and accessible even to non-companies (as a proof, I did buy 4pcs myself). And if you buy in bulk, it can even be $50/pc.

But boy how much the mounting system costs - it's at least 3 times the cost of the panes if you buy them in 2xN or 4xN bulk and I'm excluding labor here.

[sigio]

Don't know where you are, (US probably?), but here in the Netherlands I can find many suppliers offering decent panels at about $90-110 each. I'm guessing wholesale pricing (or importing yourself) would be cheaper.

Though in the US there's probably a 100%+ tariff on non-US panels...

[WarmWash]

The prices you see in articles are usually for utility scale solar, where thousands of panels are purchased in bulk from the manufacturer.

For the lowly homeowner looking to get a few panels, you're buying something that has 4 middlemen's hands on it already.

[adrianN]

I recently ordered two 500w panels from Amazon for 200€.

[mekdoonggi]

Norway has abundant hydropower. But like you've mentioned, this transition will happen in Australia and US, it might just take longer due to incentives.

Particularly for the Southern US, I feel that the costs will continue to drop until the transition will be very sudden, and there will be a rude awakening of sorts.

[wil421]

What are the returns for a landowner leasing a solar farm vs passively growing pines? My state has a lot of land to use and a good portion of the rural part is pine. Some landowners harvest pine trees on unused land.

[adregan]

For pines, not great. Timber farming was so heavily encourage for so many years that there is a glut and prices have stayed about the same in real dollars for decades.

Solar panel leases are so long (50 years on top of the decade to interconnect), so they come with additional negatives as you are often signing up the next generation for a relationship that they had no say in.

[small_scombrus]

> What are the returns for a landowner leasing a solar farm

Depending on what you're doing with your land, you can multi-use solar farm + grazing, or solar farm + some crops which increases it's value.

[adefu]

A rude awakening?

[mekdoonggi]

As in, the rest of the world transitions with economical EV's, panels, and batteries from China while the US protects its auto market.

The rude awakening is when US customers used to buying $60k gas guzzlers are able to buy a $20k EV.

[seanmcdirmid]

The US would lose its superpower status before that happens, the awakening won’t be so drastic because we would have already started sliding into being a much poorer country than we are today. It’s already started at any rate.

[mekdoonggi]

I should say, a surprise for anyone who is completely unaware of the developments around the world, which a lot of people in the US are.

I don't this requires the loss of "superpower" status really. Already, if you dropped all EV, solar, battery tariffs in Florida, I think people there would be blindsided by how fast things start to take over.

[seanmcdirmid]

I guess, but I doubt it would even happen before American unambiguously lost its #1 status. They simply won't allow those products into the states until they acknowledge that they actually need them.

At least the rest of the world is going to get richer in the meantime.

[tonyedgecombe]

A surprising and unpleasant discovery that one is mistaken.

[inkyoto]

> Australians are able to buy solar panels […] but the cost equation is shifting very quickly.

As of now, Australia has some of the lowest costs of solar panel installation in the world – the federal and state/territory governments have been providing subsidies to households to increase solar energy uptake across the nation, and, as a result, the popularity of solar panels has exploded, driving the costs down.

> If anything I'm surprised that this is happening in an area that hasn't benefited as much from dramatic reductions in electricity costs (places with Wind + Solar without large tariff regimes) rather than Australia […]

Energy costs from a conventional grid have actually more than doubled across Australia (in comparison to 2008). With solar, there was a perverse situation in Australia for a while when households connected to the grid could export the solar-generated electricity and get paid for it, but that did not lower consumer electricity prices, which kept on climbing instead.

More recently, though, paying to export – a limited feature that applies only under certain network tariffs and/or certain retail plans (especially wholesale pass-through plans during negative price periods) – has been introduced, but the battery technology has also caught up.

So with the advent of new battery technology, households have now become awash with an abundance of electricity that they can now use to, e.g., run air-conditioning if not 24x7 then very close to it, which has been a great boon for the last couple of summers when Australia has gone through bursts of severe hotwaves across the country (temperatures varied between mid-40's and as high as +50 degrees Celsius last week in some parts of Adelaide, South Australia).

[jillesvangurp]

US people pay about 2-3x more for just the red tap than Australians pay for the total price of getting solar installed. Including all the hardware, labor, and red tape. In the EU it's slightly better than in the US but not a lot. Also a lot of red tape, permitting and other friction.

[bogeholm]

> If anything I'm surprised that this is happening in an area that hasn't benefited as much from dramatic reductions in electricity costs

Electricity has been comparatively cheap (to DK at least) for a long time due to all the hydro.

I remember as a kid when visiting family in Norway, we were surprised that there were no rules on turning off the lights when closing the door to an empty room :)

[ZeroGravitas]

Norway already had cheap, clean electricity thanks to hydro, so it makes sense they would lead on EVs and heat pumps.

[tonyedgecombe]

They also have lots of oil which makes the transition more remarkable.

[seanmcdirmid]

Oil they prefer to export rather than use. They had built up a nice sovereign fund accordingly.

[seanmcdirmid]

Norway has lots of hydro, it’s in their best interest to use as much electricity as possible since it’s very cheap to produce.

[jansan]

If you compare Norway to other countries, you should always keep in mind that Norway is just blessed with energy. They have more hydropower than they consume, so electrifying everything just makes sense, even if you ignore consequences for climate and environment. They also have their own oil, and electrification will also allow them to sell more of it abroad or keep in the ground for future generations.

However, it also helps that they are good at long term planning.

[speed_spread]

Also, outside of the zone of influence of an imperialist authoritarian power which would prevent them from handling the exploitation of their resources for the benefit of their nation instead of the profit of foreign oligarchs. See Petro-Canada privatization.

[nobodyandproud]

Real talk: For the US, one equation to make this palatable is the ability to produce its own solar panels and batteries at comparable cost.

The US fucked up, but give it time.