This very well may be true, but taken at face value Canada seems to be paying you around $7k to install solar panels on your roof (that's 8k interest free loan is losing out to inflation + any interest it would have earned).
Definitely a great deal if you own a home, if I was a renter/condo owner I'd be annoyed that everyone is subsidizing your free solar however.
As a non car owner are you annoyed everyone gets subsidized roads?
Are you annoyed corn farmers get subsidies for growing corn?
Would you be annoyed if people got subsidized life saving health care?
It feels like the US can’t have nice things because people are hell bent on others not having nice things.
What a shame.
Yes, and people should be annoyed by this given the underfunding, poor urban planning, and outright hostility by many local governments against anything that dares encroach on the sanctity of car culture.
I'm a militant cyclist and I'm extremely unhappy with the state of urban planning in the world. But... Roads are a really good thing and I'm glad my government builds them.
I just wish they'd built them a bit differently, at least in the city.
So you do not use busses,taxi or road travel? do you fly all the time? Do you have stuff delivered by truck/cars or only by air? What about shopping? do you think the items you buy or the things needed to make those items use roads ? In a perfect extremist capitalist word there would be a road tax included in the products and services so you would still pay the text for the roads.
https://truecostblog.com/2009/06/02/the-hidden-trucking-indu...
Yes, the costs should be apportioned to those who are making them. If the bus causes the most road damage, then it should be charged. Then it'll make financial sense to invest in rail. Financial incentives are how capitalism works and the purpose of governments under capitalism is to apply externalities to the source causing them.
2. Everyone is a pedestrian.
fuck cars
Legally criminal actions are violations against the state, which is why a prosecutor decides whether to file charges and does not need the consent of the victim to do so. We already have what you suggest with civil law and private security.
"Yet you participate in society, curious!"
> In a perfect extremist capitalist word there would be a road tax included
There's nothing capitalist about that. Driving around and polluting the environment is currently done for free. That should be taxed. Highways and streets are by and large (in NA) used as a publicly subsidized private good at the expense of everyone else. Subsidized to the detriment of all because it pulls funding away from public transit that would move more people, prioritizing convenience of drivers over the safety of everyone else (to say nothing of it creating dead spaces with nothing but parking as far as the eye can see).
That already exists. In large parts of North America there isn’t a tax proportional to vehicle age, and the tax on gasoline doesn’t cover road wear (to say nothing about the unproved externality of pollution). So municipal property taxes and the like are used to cover the costs of road repair.
> electric cars.
The same way we pay for electricity and natural gas, report your kms and then have the odometer inspected on a semi regular basis and when you get rid of the car.
“others not having nice things” is a superset of “others not having unearned nice things”.
If I instead phrase it as "I'd rather subsidize someone's health care than pay for your free electricity", would that help you understand that there tends to be a priority system when spending tax dollars?
You don't have infinite tax dollars to spend after all.
Yes we should immediately end these subsidies.
> It feels like the US can’t have nice things because people are hell bent on others not having nice things.
The US as a whole has lots of nice things. And sometimes the things the US has are not as nice as they could be because an unwise subsidy is paying for something inferior, and a small group of people who financially benefit from the subsidy advocate politically against changing it.
What kind of selfish point of view is this? Don't you want people to use energy sources that are better for our entire world, even if it costs you like $10 more in taxes per year? Seems like a no brainer deal if you like "the outside" and you want it to still be there.
I'm a renter, been all my life, I'd be happy to pay more in taxes if it means more solar panels for everyone except me. But I also feel the same about elder care, health care and a bunch of other things, do you feel the same for those things too, or this is specifically about solar or owning vs renting?
Only if those who make the same or more than me are paying that same tax. After their subsidies of course.
Rich folks getting even richer off the backs of poor folks is bad. Even if it's dressed up as good for the environment or whatever justification you want to come up with.
As a homeowner, I would not take these subsidies as I find them to be immoral. Doesn't mean I won't be installing solar, but I'm doing it for far different reasons than saving money.
By your logic, shouldn't homeowners stop being selfish and just pay for these things themselves in order to make the world a better place? Why do they need renters, other taxpayers, and other ratepayers to subsidize them?
There's an alternative, and almost certainly cheaper per watt with cost of scale, where your tax dollars go to a new solar farm instead, something everyone could take advantage of.
If a country has abundant land and expensive labor, the money is probably best spent improving grid transmission capacity and otherwise getting the f- out of the way of utility-scale renewables. Places like Pakistan, which is going through a rooftop solar boom, are arguably the opposite - scarce land in the cities, but cheap labor to get up on roofs.
Happy to hear any analyses to the contrary and update my knowledge accordingly.
On the other hand, it is also distributed which from some perspectives is a benefit, and is also do-able with very little planning and grid extension. So that's one argument for it.
How things come out on balance depends a bit on what you value and how you imagine the future.
I think homeowners should install solar panels and batteries where it makes economic sense. If there's money left over after funding utility-scale solar then it should be used for EV incentives and/or funding electrified mass transit. The whole point is to electrify everything rapidly and reduce carbon emissions.
Solar panel grid tied inverters generally will refuse to function if there's no external power coming in.
The benefit from the distributed generation means that if your local area has large loads added you don't necessarily need to upgrade the HVDC lines from the power plant to accommodate.
though linemen are trained that they are working on a live line unless they have personally shorted it out. There are many other ways a seemingly dead line can be live so they don't take a chance.
The load side (your neighbors) cannot pull more power than is being generated. My 7kW array can generate 7kW and no more. No breakers will trip in a hypothetical scenario where my inverter fails to shut down during an outage, and my neighbors are trying to drawing 10kW.
You're probably right about linemen but there are a lot of other reasons not to feed power onto a dead grid.
Right, but as always, ROI is hardly the most important thing in life, there is more considerations than just "makes more money". For example, as someone affected by a day long country-wide electricity outage where essentially the entire country was without electricity and internet for ~14 hours or something, decentralizing energy across the country seems much more important, than optimizing for the highest ROI.
But again, this is highly contextual and depends, I'm not as sure as you that there are absolute answers to these things.
If you personally have battery backup, that helps you personally and you should pay for it, just like you might pay extra to turn up the heat while I keep it lower to save money.
Decentralizing through subsidies at the homeowner level is maybe not the best use of money.
Consider the lower production cost of renewable electricity: in the long run, it offsets the investment. Bonus: no risk of accidents, no hazardous waste, no dependence on a fuel source, no weapons proliferation...
Decentralizing solar power reduces electricity transmission costs and improves reliability. This doesn't offset the additional cost, but it's not negligible.
It's not as if homes outside of cities have their own diesel generators to power their house.
(Since I'm guessing from this line of comments you'll point out the less than 1% of people who actually do do this, maybe it's better to focus only the 99% here).
Yeah, no true, I don't understand the point/argument though?
More people relying on renewables == long term better for everyone on the planet
That includes moving people outside of cities to renewables energy sources, is your point that this isn't so important because they're a small piece of the population usually?
That's because you're rich like most people on HN.
Environmental protection is a luxury good. This has been proven time and time again.
A great reason to prioritize growth and wealth creation. Poor countries don't make those tradeoffs, they're worried about survival not what percentage of their energy usage is renewable.
Pakistan has imported almost 45 gigawatts worth of solar panels over the last five or six years, which is equal to the total capacity of its electricity grid. Almost 34 gigawatts have come in only in the last couple of years.
It’s a very bottom-up revolution. This is not government deciding this is the route to take. And it’s not being driven by climate concerns, it’s all about the economics. Renewables are out-competing the traditional sources of energy.
Even in Gaza Strip you'll see sometimes solar panels next to the refugee camps, and broken ones on top of the ruins.
Further, environmental protection is not a luxury good, it's a long term investment. Ask me more in another 30-50 years when the larger impacts of climate change are happening. Or ask someone else about how much we've spent on superfund cleanup sites.
Environmental protection is a luxury good in economic terms. The Environmental Kuznets Curve is compelling to me. It's extremely difficult to assess the ROI on long term investments, particularly when your country has unstable rule of law or conflict.
I'm pro-solar, it's amazing technology that empowers individuals and communities. I just don't agree that everything I love I must force other people to pay for.
Rethink your position because it's completely upside down
Probably, but I also haven't been rich all my life, I've also been broke and borderline homeless, and my point of view of paying taxes so others get helped, hasn't changed since then. In fact, probably the reason my perspective is what it is, is because money like that has helped me when I was poor, and I'd like to ensure we continue doing that for others.
And I agree, poor countries can't afford to think about "luxury problems" like the pollution in the world, but since we're talking about people living in such countries where we can afford about these problems, lets do that, so the ones who can't, don't have to. Eventually they'll catch up, and maybe at that point we can make it really easy for them to transition to something else?
> The 20th century infrastructure model was:
> Centralized generation
> Government-led
> Megaproject financing
> 30-year timelines
>Monopolistic utilities
> The 21st century infrastructure model is:
> Distributed/modular
> Private sector-led
> PAYG financing
> Deploy in days/weeks
> Competitive markets
Tell that to places like Pakistan where solar is allowing people to have cheaper electricity without connecting to the grid
Solar is great. It can stand on its own without subsidies.
Maybe there is an argument to be made, but it sounds like a very poor one if poor countries are now putting up solar panels because it's the cheapest form of energy production. Sounds like subsidizing the same panels going up on houses is a bit silly now that the costs have shifted so much.
The argument can probably be made for direct subsidies of R&D for bleeding edge solar tech, and perhaps even battery installations to get volume up. Or maybe even subsidizing local production vs. buying everything from China.
The arguments for wealthy countries to subsidize their wealthiest citizens to install solar for personal gain seems rather weak at this point in the game. It certainly made sense 20 years ago, but in most areas where it makes economic sense to begin with solar penetration has hit a tipping point.
You don't know this, and to some degree likely cannot know this.
But at a national level the data is compelling. I'm convinced by the Environmental Kuznets Curve.
Which data do you find compelling?
For people who don't know the Environmental Kuznets Curve is basically the hypothesis that as economies grow past a certain they naturally start to cause less environmental damage.
As far as I can tell the main empirical evidence in favour of this is the fact that some western countries have managed to maintain economic growth whilst making reductions to their carbon emissions. This has, of course, partially been driven by offshoring especially polluting industries, but also as a result of technological developments like renewable energy, and BEVs.
On the other hand, taking a global sample it's still rather clear that there's a strong correlation between wealth and carbon emissions, both at the individual scale and at the level of countries.
It's also clear that a lot of the gains that have been made in, say, Europe have been low-hanging fruit that won't be easy to repeat. For example migrating off coal power has a huge impact, but going from there to a fully clean grid is a larger challenge.
We also know that there are a bunch of behaviours that come with wealth which have a disproportionately negative effect on the environment. For example, rich people (globally) consume more meat, and take more flights. Those are both problems without clear solutions.
(FWIW I agree that solar power is somewhat regressive, but just for the normal "Vimes Boots Theory" reasons that anyone who is able to install solar will save money in the medium term. That requires the capital for the equipment — which is rapidly getting cheaper — but also the ability to own land or a house to install the equipment on. The latter favours the already well off. There are similar problems with electric cars having higher upfront costs but lower running costs. The correct solution is not to discourage people from using things, but to take the cost of being poor into account in other areas of public policy).
Also, you keep ignoring that the environment is a public good. Poor people in Canada will also be disproportionately impacted by bigger temperature extremes (heat waves, extreme cold), worse air quality, etc.)
To be clear, I don't think rooftop solar subsidies are the best use of government money either. Governments should subsidize utility-scale solar, EVs, efficient buildings, and mass transit. They should focus on cheaper and more efficient permitting, and better grids.
It’s not that they’re paying more than rich people. It’s that even with progressive taxation, tax(everything the government currently spends money on) < tax(current spending + solar subsidies). That is to say… giving solar subsidies to rich people causes the tax paid by everyone to increase. Those making more money pay a larger fraction of the increase because of progressive taxation but everyone who is paying taxes pays incrementally more when the government spends more money.
Do you want to guess how cheap solar will be in 10-20 years, and how much power we could generate in the mean time.
This is not a discussion worth having.
The efficiency of solar does not matter in 2026. Panels are so cheap that just you don't have to think about it if you have abundant land. If solar is 4x less productive in the winter you just build 4x as many panels. Panels have to be angled more vertical the further north you go so the snow will just slide off. They are not "non-operative 3-4 months a year" - this is just Big Oil FUD.
So filling Canada with panels because they're cheap isn't likely the best environmental choice, on net. Though I admit I haven't done the math here, it's just an intuition that "just build 4x panels" isn't the solution.
As for
> those panels themselves take energy and rare earth minerals to create
You've swallowed Big Oil propaganda and are choosing to parrot it without thinking. The actual truth?
"Every year, [ICE vehicles] consume over 17 times more tons of oil (2,150 million tons per year) than the amount of battery minerals we’d need to extract just once to run transportation forever. Even when including the weight of other raw materials in ore and brine, one-off mineral demand would still end up over 30% lighter than annual oil extraction for road transport. And unlike minerals, oil products are promptly burned in internal combustion engines and must be replaced each year, forever
Admittedly this is about minerals for batteries. But solar panels are also recyclable.
Source: https://rmi.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_uploads/2024/07/the_b...
This is one of the major design problems of SMRs (along with the abandonment of economies of scale).
Why can't they sell nuclear plants abroad? Sure Western countries won't buy them but the rest of the world probably would if the price were right.
this is not a matter of some fictional invisible hand. these are decisions made by real people who do not care about you, society, the health of the environment or the people who inhabit it. stop carrying their water.
I see this lie repeated in many places. Environmental protection is much, much cheaper than the alternative.
(This is very low on my list of things that I care about, to be clear.)
If everyone gets the benefit it's either A) exactly the same cost but with additional government program or B) some form of wealth distribution and not necessarily in a direction you favor
Also large solar installations are significantly more cost efficient.
Mind you I am IN FAVOR of subsidized residential solar, but let's not pretend government money is free.
> Seems like a no brainer deal
This is opinion, not fact. I happen to share your opinion, but enshrining opinions in law is almost always going to violate someone’s consent.
Who said that? Taxes are what you pay to be a member of the society you live, and also to help those less fortunate, like your neighbors. You can skip paying those, if you stop living in society, many done that before, and it is still possible.You can't possibly see taxes as "forcing someone to buy something they do not want" right? Two completely different things.
And yes, this is all my opinion, like most comments on HN.
Actually, generally speaking this is almost certainly not possible for more than short periods of time.
The book "The Stranger in the Woods" is one such case, about a man who lived in the woods for 27 years by himself.
That said, it isn't easy, and it's harder in some countries than others, but I'd still say it's possible in many countries today, YMMV.
Not OP, but it wasn't presented as a fact. Literally used the word Seams.
> There is nothing more unjust than forcing someone to buy something they do not want simply because you think it would be good for them
Seatbelts? Circuit breakers? Literally any safety equipment. You're required to have them because it's not just good for you, but expensive to society if hospital beds are low or there's not enough firetrucks to go around.
Similarly, if you're polluting more than you have to be due to the source of your electricity, that's bad for everyone. I also rent, but I still understand that it's to the public's benefit that home owners (a class that is already above me in assets and wealth) be given motivation to consume cleaner energy if I don't want to have the climate get even worse. It's the same thing, just the effects feel less direct. That doesn't make them any less valid.
Giving money to politicians is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
You probably wouldn’t. I hear more people complaining about hypothetical government spending than actual government spending.
The answer to this isn't "less subsidies" it's "find a way to make everyone benefit from the subsidies.
Why should I subsidize farmers if they can't compete?
Why do I have subsidize our own manufacturing companies if they can't compete so their workers have a job, at my expense?
Why do I need to subsidize car owners to have yet another lane but can't get a decent train instead?
Here in Poland suddenly all miners pretend to be subsidized by the state, even if they work for private companies.
Why do I need to subsidize them if the companies they work for can't turn a profit, or when they did for decades chose to pay dividends and do buybacks instead of investing? And now I pay the bill?
I mean, at some point you need to cope with the fact that money has to be spent and circulate in some fashion to promote economic activity and projects.
You could argue that subsidizing solar brings energy prices down in any case.
€13.000 for this still seems expensive.
Are there tariffs on Chinese PV in Canada?
It would be worth including control of the people who vote for the politicians by direct investment such as when the oil producing Saudis bought the second largest stake in NewCorps which controls FoxNews controlling the content that influences voters. And, less than ethical control using bots on social media by Russia.
A lot of what influences "solar prices in the US" is controlled by foreign oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia controlling content and media consumed by American voters.
It's funny how “free markets” keep producing the most expensive solar prices in the developed world. Don't get me started on Healthcare (I just moved back to the U.S. a couple years ago after 18 years in Canada, what a cluster*ck).
Oil and gas buy politicians, foreign oil money buys media influence, and social-media bots keep voters angry at the wrong targets.
Saudi capital helps shape the messaging, Russia helps amplify the noise, and Americans get stuck paying more for clean energy while being told it’s patriotic.
But hey, Make America Great Again, right?
Oil and gas don't buy polticians more than any other industry does, but voters do get particularly angry at politicians when the price they pay for energy suddenly spikes.
Which makes it more of a ladder pull than a rug pull...
[1] https://www.sce.com/clean-energy-efficiency/solar-generating...
Our countries absolutely do the same if not more to influence voters both here and in these other countries, especially online.
I hope the incentives for cleaner energy continue to stack up. With the surge in demand from AI surely productivity will be more tightly coupled with energy usage and cost.
"Victor, it's gratis, get the three bloody bars on."
https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/transmission-network-unavailability...
TL;DR - Until new interconnectors between Scotland and England are finished in 2029, there will be significant curtailment of Scottish wind power which increases costs.
This is also an interesting site for seeing curtailment per wind farm - https://windtable.co.uk/data?farm=Seagreen
Ideas crop up like generating hydrogen with the curtailed energy or maybe at least in Winter, use it for heat generation. The problem would seem to be the capex and the inverse of intermittency being the problem for them in utilising that energy, i.e. waiting for curtailment.
At least with available hydro you can pump water back up hill using a reliable and cheap tech.
OVO[1] and Octopus[2] offer smart charging tariffs that give EV owners reduced electricity rates.
The usual caveat is you can only benefit if you can install a charger and park near that charger. Still, based on this 2021 article [3] 65% of UK homes have at least one off street space, so the potential for a majority of homes to smart charge is there.
To extend the benefit of cheap smart charging to more people, it would be good to see legislation that makes it easier for leaseholders and renters to require the installation of a smart charger where technically possible.
1. https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/charge-anytime 2. https://octopus.energy/ev-tariffs/ 3. https://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/cars-parked-23-ho...
Charging batteries definitely seems like part of the solution and electricity tariffs that adapt to wholesale costs on a shorter time basis help incentivise it. There are times over weekends/holidays where the wholesale price enters negative territory, essentially paying you to charge your battery.
Electrolysing hydrogen to burn is inefficient vs that kind of thing but at least acts as a battery itself, though there's costs/problems in storing it.
And the general problem of how long do you need to store energy vs what the weather forecast may be.
It seems like it's not a solved problem and it'd be exciting to move towards a point where it is. Hard to believe in the 50's they thought nuclear would solve everything and would be "too cheap to meter"
Oh no we messed up nuclear oops sorry made it very expensive. Pay up
Oops sorry we messed up transmission pay up
Oops sorry we let people get into huge energy debt pls pay off their debt in your bill...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722022 (citations)
[2] In Scotland, Renewable Power Has Outstripped Demand - https://e360.yale.edu/digest/scotland-renewable-energy-100-p... - January 30th, 2024
(at the rate it takes to deploy transmission, might as well start dropping TBMs in the ground and let them grind towards each other from interconnect landings, potentially faster than the approval grind, complaints from locals about land use and right of ways, etc)
Conversely, standing charges ARE regionalised - because that does advantage the SE of England. Oh well!
Solar production in Canada will continue to grow, but we're not doing nearly as much as Europe to encourage it.
Surely local manufacturers don’t use 100% Canadian made parts.
This has the same corrupt nexus with the anti-renewable mantra. Essentially subsidize oil and gas under the table and punish renewables then tell the electorate that the latter is worse than the former.
Instead of giving Americans free choice American automakers pay American politicians to prop up their uncompetitive prices and subpar offerings. All while they take in huge private profits. American workers could work on foreign automobiles, just as they do with other automakers not from China. It's not about workers, it's not about national security. You don't even have to go into all the environmental concerns that of course disproportionately affect poorer individuals.
It's corporate welfare. And yes, it should be criminal. At the very least, if the American people are going to inflate CEOs salaries they should have seats on the board.
This is actually not a wild idea. You might be surprised to find who one of the largest shareholders of the Volkswagen group is. It's not like that is an obviously mismanaged socialist hellhole company, it's a perfectly competitive and well regarded car company.
Americans need to start demanding more equity or oversight in operations their governments are already paying for. The fact most Americans think this amounts to communism just means more people have to call out the money is already flowing.
If you have all of that expense, and suddenly people have solar panels so pay $0 for an energy bill - do you see the problem? The actual cost of fuel/generation is very small compared to the fixed costs.
The more people use solar, the more in the red the utility becomes. You can 'fix' this by making it so every home has a fixed 'connection cost' and then a smaller 'usage cost' on top, but that destroys the incentive for solar panels - they'd never break even for the average buyer.
Solar is great, fantastic even. But it should be done centrally, or people will have to get used to the idea that they will never pay themselves off and are just doing it for the environment.
> must be connected to the grid.
That's a legislative problem. If a home can prove it can produce enough electricity for itself, it should not be forced to be connected.
> You can 'fix' this by making it so every home has a fixed 'connection cost' and then a smaller 'usage cost' on top
A lot of places already do this.
Also: Even if half of a neighborhood doesn't need the connection, the work ends up being similar. It's more based on distance/area.
Australia is giving free power to everyone during the day because they have so much.
More solar is a great thing.
(still good news, as most of Canada's electric generation is low carbon hydro, and the rest of fossil generation can be pushed out with storage and renewables, although I do not have a link handy by province how much fossil generation needs to be pushed out)
As an example:
I live in New England. We do not have enough natural gas pipeline capacity to meet demand in long periods of very cold weather, and have very limited natural gas storage that can't buffer that for as long as a cold spell can last.
In these periods of time the grid traditionally keeps the lights on by switching over a significant portion of the grid to burning oil for power, and/or with the occasional LNG tanker load into Everett MA. These are both....pretty terrible and expensive solutions.
Burning less natural gas during the day still helps at night/at peak, because it means there's been less draw-down of our limited storage/more refill of it during the day, so we don't have to turn to worse options as heavily at night.
There still needs to be enough power to supply to all those homes in the event of a protracted time where solar is unavailable. It gets less applicable as homes start to get multi-day battery banks installed, but those are incredibly rare since they are too expensive.
The whole "wealthy homeowners get subsidized solar and then effectively free backup power paid for by everyone else" needs to end.
Not just talking about it, if you get a smart meter and sign up for a plan that matches the grid rates you can actually be paid to take electricity during the day right now.
If you're wondering "couldn't you just make bank with a battery" yes you can. In fact Australia dominates the world in grid connected storage (per capita) and this chart itself is actually out of date (it's growing even faster than shown).
https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/top-20-countries-by-ba...
I'll also point out that gas and oil generation has declined rapidly.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-rise-of-battery-storage-and-...
For anyone that thinks renewables can't phase out peaker plants it happens very naturally and rapidly once there's enough solar to set rates negative in the day.
It’s not in the negative enough to be worthwhile dumping max amps but it’s certainly worth storing to buffer against peak hour pricing.
I paid nearly double that for our 450w panels 18 months ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/29/evidence...
2024-08-27 - Indian solar panels face US scrutiny for possible links to China forced labor
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indian-solar-panels-...
2025-04-30 - Human Rights in the Life Cycle of Renewable Energy and Critical Minerals
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/c...
[1] Forced prison labor in the “Land of the Free” - https://www.epi.org/publication/rooted-racism-prison-labor/ - January 16th, 2025
[2] [US] Child labor law violations are at their highest in decades. - https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2024/05/01/... - May 1st, 2024
(staunchly anti child and forced labor to be clear)
Hell, more journalists have died reporting in Gaza than in WW2, Vietnam, Iraq and Afganistan combined and nobody gives two damns.
What country?
In 10 years the price has fallen dramatically, you’re getting majorly ripped off.
Hasn't happened ever before, not sure why this time it would be different.
Energy is like RAM or clockspeed: you can't have enough of it.
FWIW - I am all for solar but selling rooftop solar in canada as cheap and no-brainer is false.
3-4 year payback would be a no brainer. 8-13 year payback with an inverter upgrade and op-costs is definitely a decision that needs to be thought out.
The grid you are offsetting is fairly green to begin with so the net benefit is marginal.
If you are going to be isolated and put backup power into the equation. You ROI tanks further but at least you have about a day or two worth of energy in the storage asset.
Canada is a massive exporter of electricity to the USA. The more clean energy CND produces the more there is to displace North East's coal.
Of course, solar on Canadians' roof is a joke. A proper regulatory regime would encourage solar in Arizona and encourage lettuce Canada; not vice versa.
If you are trying to argue that in aggregate the demand for energy in canada drops because of high adoption of residential solar which then passes off clean energy to the US - its a reach. Also the amount of individual infra for each small residential asset is probably not particularly great return on investment - would be better to do as large deployments.
"If you are trying to argue that in aggregate the demand for energy in canada drops because of high adoption of residential solar which then passes off clean energy to the US"
Well... ya. If on sunny day 10 000 homes in the GTA offset 1000W of energy, that'a 10MW more power that CND can export. Furthermore, the GTA has massive energy storage capacity from an artificial lake by the falls so the 10 MW doesn't become a rounding error.
.... but 10 MW is piss. Solar in CND is piss.
I went ahead anyway because I’m a “I’d rather have hard numbers than speculation“ person, and it was literally $0 of my money.
Here we are 18 months later. I have all the hard data, numbers and proof that this system will cost me $0 in the short term, make me over $20,000 in the long term, requires no maintenance and is great.
And yet there are still people like you telling me it can’t work.
I’m proving it does, very well. Panel prices are falling so fast your “last time I looked into it” is woefully out of date.
Why are you denying reality?
I run energy modeling - I ran the numbers last month with the new programs and newest panel prices. 12-14 years without any op costs and a 3% per year escalator on electricity. You can get it down to 8 years if you have a great spot without having to put on ballasts but it isn't braindead yes for everyone (especially if they have to watch their money).
Current price: 7.6 kW AC; Installed: 26,155.65 - 5,000 Grant = 21,155.65$. << Hard numbers.
We got 7.6kw installed for $13,000 CAD. I ordered everything myself, had a local installer do it on his weekend, paid an electrician $180 to pull permits and actually wire it into the main house panel. All inspections complete and legal. $5000 grant $8000 interest free loan.
The system makes 7.76Mwh per calendar year. Electricity here is 0.13/kwh, and already pre-approved go up minimum 5% per year. It just went up 6% for 2026, 16% for those out of town.
So the system makes right on $1000 of power every year that I don’t have to buy. We’ll put that onto the loan for 7-8 years , then get at least $1000 a year for the 20 or so years remaining of the system life.
I’m nothing out of pocket, and I’m just putting the same into the loan for 7-8 years that I would have paid in electricity anyway, so no difference.
No brainer.
My house now uses net zero energy ( disconnected natural gas entirely)
I have no idea where you’re getting a quote for so high. Even the highest I got was ~$20k, and that was over 18 months ago.
I don't think what you are providing as an example is what most people are doing. Most people are going through residential installers and not doing all the effort you did to bring down costs.
I commend your effort but it isn't what most people would be doing or paying for and represent otherwise isn't quite honest for people looking to get numbers for their own install.
Fully hands off solar company, $16.5k fully installed, permitted, inspected for 7.6kw on the roof.
They also got the $5k rebate and $10k interest free loan. Their power price just went up 16% in 2026, so they’re extremely happy to have the solar to insulate them from that.
Of course the panels are now a good bit cheaper than when I bought them, and cheaper than when my friend did already.
"How to cut U.S. residential solar costs in half"
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/07/11/how-to-cut-u-s-reside...
Birch points to Australia, where he said the average 7 kW solar array with a 7 kW battery costs $14,000. That equates to $2.02 per W, with batteries included.
“You can sell it on Tuesday and install it on Wednesday, there’s no red tape, no permitting delays,” said Birch.
...
In the United States, that same solar and battery installation averages $36,000, said Birch. Permitting alone can take two to six months, and the cost per watt of a solar plus storage installation is up to 2.5 times the Australian price, landing at $5.18 per W.
My Dad in Australia just got 10.6kw fully installed and running for $4,000 AUD
Australia is spending tax dollars to get solar on every roof in the country instead of building coal or nuke plants. Now people are getting free power as a result.
Made 6.9Mwh in 2025, only just less than ours with no shade at all.
Real numbers don’t lie.
What you are describing is adding more solar capability to counter act the shade. Also the other part of it is that the panels work in parallel/not in series or alternatively don't dis activate as many conversion points as possible.
Physics never lies - they are the only laws that you cannot break.
It reminds me of when I was telling my Canadian friend how my pool gets a lot of leaves in it from all the trees and they said that was unfortunate. In Austin the pools get too hot to actually swim in if they aren't shaded.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266675922...
(And a gazillion other studies.)
I think it's more frustration. Pointing out there is a maintenance cost to infrastructure is silly and doesn't add to the discussion.
We all know materials have to be shaped into machines to extract energy.
If you had a concern about the material costs of renewables you should know what they are and if you wanted to have a good faith discussion, you'd also be able to compare against legacy energy material costs.
My gut response to your post was also aggression, not because you’re preaching uncomfortable truths, but because you’re repeating fossil fuel lobbyist talking points that I’m getting really tired of seeing all over social media.
Im with you I hate the people who preach fossil fuel talking points. I also don't like the shady solar sales people who say solar is a no brainer - they are just pushing product to install on your roof. It is a pretty good product but not 100%.
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.
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.
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.
Sure, it's embarrassing that we still have any coal plants. But really, there are only eight small units remaining, located in the provinces of Nova Scotia (4), New Brunswick (1), and Saskatchewan (3). Every other jurisdiction abolished them.
Maybe small nuclear will be the solution for these holdouts. The fact that Alberta held onto coal for so long, and never built a nuclear plant, was outrageous.
Fantastic virtue signaling. Of course totally devoid of any mention about the individuals picking raw materials for those electric car components though, since they're not "our" children.
You think elves drill oil and mine coal?
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.
I haven’t touched ours, they are clean and have been going fine with zero maintenance, though admittedly it’s only been a year.
> Where are you getting this maintenance schedule from?
The solar panel owner does not know the required maintenance they are now permanently responsible for. Ibid, your honor.
Focus on solutions, not trying to be right. It’s aggravating.
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%.
Where are you getting this maintenance schedule of yours from?
Their "Anti-Solar Talking Points" handbook from Big Oil.
> I've washed them once.
> I'm still getting great production.
Thank you for reiterating my point.
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.
Zero maintenance.
Roof-based panels also take on some roof wear, increasing longevity of roofing as well.
It is like saying that you pay $30,000 for a car. But the most important question is: For which car?
Also, if the installation services are so expensive, you can always install everything yourself.
Study how to do it, get the tools and materials, and then do it. It would be time-consuming, challenging and perhaps it would carry extra risks. Absolutely.
But it is not rocket science. It can be done. As long as there is a motivation to do it, i.e. a good value you will get out of it in return, it should be a valid approach to consider, in my opinion.
Still made sense financially, pays for itself after ~8 years and the panels are warrantied for 30... but we're seriously lagging.
There's a similar phenomenon with heat pump systems. Installation costs are absolutely absurd.
How the heck are the panels even installed and connected for that price? That's about 25 panels, IIRC. What about the installation material and the ac/dc converter?
Government incentives. Spend tax dollars putting solar on literally every roof in the country instead of more coal or nuke plants.
So solar only makes sense when it's nearly completely subsidized?
That's not the statement you think it is.
If enough people adopt solar, it gets cheaper, and everyone get cheaper power, or even free like Australia.
Tax dollars could be spent on new coal or nuke plants, or to incentivize solar installs. Which one is the right future? Do new coal and nuke plants result in free power like Australia?
I think a big part of why the US GDP is so high is that a lot of things are just f…ing expensive. Education, health care, solar, restaurants and so on. You have to actively resist the “usual” lifestyle or you end up in a sea of debt.
Are you saying that because you assert cost is driven up “artificially” by taxes or other structural headwinds? Or are you saying that fossils enjoy an advantage due to lopsided subsidies? Or something else?
For example, in my jurisdiction it's: < 5 square meters of panels on your roof, <60V DC, AC on homeowner side of panel (as long as electrical work done by homeowner).
That's not a lot, but my primary purpose is as a generator replacement -- keep my fridge powered during a summer power outage or my furnace fan powered during a winter one. The other 364 days of the year it just slowly pays for itself.
Panels, battery, wiring and paying a roofer to install the flashings for the mounts all cost under $3000. A single one of the required inspections would have cost about that much.
Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan.
It makes 7.72Mwh per year, worth $1000. Tight valley, tons of snow. We put that on the loan for 8 years, then get $1000 per year free money for 20 years or so. Biggest no brainer of all time.
Dad in Victoria Australia just got 10.6kw fully installed and operational for $4000 AUD. ($2,700 USD)
Australia has so much electricity during the day they’re talking about making I free for everyone in the middle of the day.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-03/energy-retailers-offe...