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Hopefully we can find a way to get these onto rental properties as well. Having the uptake of renewable energy strongly tied to home ownership is a problem when the rates of home ownership are falling.
I hate the idea of legislation forcing things like this because I can already see the problems like the pink bats scheme - shoddy cheap systems that immediately fail, untrained contractors falling through roofs, installing in impractical locations like full shade...
But the slum lords will not do something that only benefits the tenants (the improved value of the property isn't of great concern to this group, the rest of the house is no doubt collapsing).
I think both legislation to force installs or excessive subsidies lead to the same problems.
I don't know what the solution actually is (and I'm sure it is multiple changes, not one thing) but the way our society both priviledges home owners in many ways and also encourages profiting off owning homes that others live in (which inherently involves keeping others out of being home owners) just does not work for the good of society.
I've heard about some pretty interesting ideas about a community-style Solar Garden, where you invest into a solar farm and the energy generated off that is offset from your bill. Which could work pretty well for rentals...
That's an interesting concept, I will have to look into that some more. I have seen small power co-ops developed for remote communities, but hadn't seen this decentralised approach before.
I would be very cautious about a system like that, it can be dangerouse and/or illegal to plug into the houses system that way. I know it is definitley a no no with generators, and at a minimum it bypasses the safety systems in the meter box.
In the long term we should have a large proportion of renewables in the grid level energy mix (and eventually very low prices) so it may not matter as much but it would be good to encourage them in the short to medium term nevertheless.
I love to see it. I think a lot of people are still scared off of solar because they think it's crazy expensive and they won't see a payoff for 20 years. The more people put solar on their houses, the less need for huge, damaging power plants. I'm sure the people in charge don't like that, but other than that I don't see a downside.
When I installed solar panels on our first home - about 12 years ago - it paid for itself within 5 years, and that’s ignoring the solar feed-in tariff that was very high at the time.
The same size system is now about 1/4 of the cost. It’s really cheap over a few years if all your cooking and water heating is electric. You need to get a reasonable size system otherwise it’s false economy. Everyone’s needs will be different, but not less that a 5kw system is a good rule of thumb.
We paid $4000 all up for our 6.6 kW system 3 years ago. It's been pretty solid and good for the budget despite the dwindled FiT. I wouldn't like to see our electricity bills if we weren't cancelling out most of the daytime usage.
Great to see panels coming to commodity pricing - the challenge is still storage but optimistic that battery cell prices will follow suit as well
Let's hope so since energy prices are going up July 1st