The misplaced aggression and confusion is actually hilarious. We have reached a religion-level fervor by daring to question the economics of energy.

I'd disagree the fervor is religious.

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.

Simply ask to quantify the cost of shaping those materials into machinery, respective to other means of energy production. You will be met with hostility and scorn, accused of all sorts of improprieties, and ejected from the tribe, without ever receiving a data-supported answer.

You have received data from several people in this thread alone. Have you updated your opinion accordingly?

Because it's such a weasel "just asking questions" thing to do.

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.

You are being very aggressive and confrontational in your comments and people are responding in kind.

Not really. People are angry because it is likely their first time hearing a contrarian narrative about solar energy, which likely challenges their own sunk-cost fallacy as solar panel owners.

Everything needs to be created, cleaned, maintained, and eventually replaced. You are acting like this is some sort of surprise.

I have roof top solar. I have never had to clean or maintain them in any way. Same with my friends who have roof top solar. The worst I’ve heard of is a microinverter failing, which was covered by warranty.

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.

How long have you had your system - biggest risk point is year 10-12 and then 20-24 on inverter failure replacement which is fixable but just stretches out your payback period.

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%.

They're trolling and people keep feeding them so they keep posting.

The vagueness of your statement makes it impossible to discern any actual point outside of some broad anger/frustration packaged as humor.

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.

"For a few years the UK had few enough that you could list their names, then gradually four, three, two, one, none"

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.

Oh, OK, eight is fewer than I thought, my impression was a dozen or more. I take it back then.

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.

OP probably shouldn't have been replying to a Canada based question.