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San Francisco Adopts Law Requiring Solar Panels On All New Buildings (theguardian.com)
San Francisco will soon become one of the first major cities in the U.S. to require solar power on new buildings. The rule, which received approval from San Francisco's Board of Supervisors this week, is set to go into effect in January 2017. According to the legislation, all new buildings with 10 stories or fewer -- both residential and commercial -- will have to use either solar panels for electricity or a solar system to heat water. The Guardian notes that smaller Californian cities such as Lancaster and Sebastopol already have similar laws in place, but San Francisco is the first large city to adopt the new standard. "In a dense, urban environment, we need to be smart and efficient about how we maximize the use of our space to achieve goals such as promoting renewable energy and improving our environment," Supervisor Scott Wiener said in a statement. Vox has more details.
San Francisco Adopts Law Requiring Solar Panels On All New Buildings
What about heat pollution? What if you wanted to build a nice roof garden instead?
Why does absolutely everyone have to do exactly the same thing all the time?
A hill so very steep that it's in perpetual shadow for the entire year? That's a pretty steep hill, even for San Fran.
With the ridiculous land values, installing a system like this would only be a tiny fraction of the home value, at least.
Now it's time for the rest of the country to catch up. Could you imagine some city in Alabama doing this?
How will small businesses that are just making ends meet cope with this mandate? Are they (SFBS) granting subsidies of any kind?
I also think it's strange that buildings over 10 floors are exempt. They'd seem to be the most ideal candidates.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
and if I'm building on the north side of a hill???
Did you read the bill? They are typically more than one liners. There's probably all sorts of caveats and exclusions in the details. Not to mention that just because the law says something any builder can request a variance.
So its a bit premature to just assume you would actually need to put solar panels on a building that gets no sunlight.
idiots....
Once you've determined the bill actually does require you to put panels on your permashaded building AND your request for a variance has been denied you can call them idiots.
Until then though, I figure the idiot is more likely to be you.
Not all locations are conducive to solar energy. Some properties are in shadows most of the day due to topography and surrounding terrain. Some properties face the wrong way so sun only hits directly half the day.
How many of these systems will be installed and never maintained? How many of these systems will just be shut off?
There will be many systems that will never recoup their costs installed under this new regulation.
So the most expensive city in the country is now more expensive because solar panels are mandatory? How crime free is this liberal paradise? Oh wait its dangerous as hell.
what happens when you spend thousands on the infrastructure to install solar, then a slightly taller building goes up right beside you, putting your array in shade and rendering it useless?
people already bitch about losing their views when a new building goes up beside them. and the view costs nothing.
I hope those SJWs in San Francisco realize that all those solar panels will contribute to the Sun burning out sooner. There's already not enough sunlight to go around. Just ask Greenland.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Mandatory installation of solar energy for newbuilt houses is nothing new in many European regions.
But these buildings usually have lifetimes of 60+ years. (If noone starts a war..)
As far as my outsider's knowledge goes, many Americans choose to build 'cheap and lightly' with resulting lifetimes of less than 20 years.
Photovoltaic cells may last a lot longer. So... have things changed or will the solar cells be simply transferred to a new roof, when the old house is rotten?
Solar panels are great until you have to fight a fire in a building that has them on the roof.
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com...
Or the north side of taller buildings? Why do the short buildings have to do this and not the ones that will stick up above them?
Since when does San Francisco allow people to put up new buildings?
I thought they just put up as many barriers to build things as they could. Hey, wait a sec...!
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Just another regulation that is designed to increase the cost of housing in order to keep poor minority people out.
What do solar cells to to your fire insurance rates? I would think the fire department wouldn't go near them since they're almost always generating electricity at the panels.
San Francisco seems to be having a pretty major housing issue. What's the best fix? Make it more expensive to build things!
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Now, if they could only adopt a law to actually allow the construction of NEW buildings.
Oh Danny, this isn't Russia. Is this Russia? This isn't Russia, is it? Didn't think so.
How will small businesses that are just making ends meet cope with this mandate?
How do small businesses cope with mandates of elevators and wheelchair accessibility and sprinkler heads and exit signs and the thousands(!) of other code requirements?
[Buildings over 10 floors] seem to be the most ideal candidates.
Probably not. For one thing, tall buildings tend to be located near other tall buildings. Unlike low-rise buildings which are often approximately the same height, the height difference of skyscrapers can be 100s of feet. Shading becomes more of a challenge. But probably more importantly, the roof space of tall buildings is essentially too valuable -- it's needed for communication and mechanical units. Finally, skyscrapers make up a remarkably tiny percentage of roof space in San Francisco, so their inclusion or exclusion has a trivial impact on achieving the goals of the legislation.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
A hill so very steep that it's in perpetual shadow for the entire year? That's a pretty steep hill, even for San Fran.
The shadow does not need to be perpetual. If a roof is shaded for even part of the day, then it would make more sense to put the panels elsewhere. Solar panels make sense in many situations, but mandating them everywhere is stupid. But this all academic anyway, since very few new buildings are likely to be built in SF. Last year, more than 95% of building permit applications are denied, by the same politicians that complain about a lack of affordable housing.
OK so which SF politicians just coincidentally also own a solar panel company?
About other buildings cutting of the sun to one's solar panels.
what about rooftop gardens
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Last year, more than 95% of building permit applications are denied, by the same politicians that complain about a lack of affordable housing.
How many of those building permit applications were for affordable housing? I wouldn't be surprised if they were all for luxury condo units. Developers love luxury project because they can make more money. My apartment complex has gone through three corporate owners in as many years, each of them splashing exterior paint and redoing the landscaping to charge luxury rents.
a solar system to heat water
You need an entire solar system to heat up water? I know water has a high heat capacity, but geez...
Way to kill an already struggling new construction market!!!
I thought everyone in SF was pissed because housing costs so much? For all those wondering, this is why no one cares.
They can do it because you want to live there. Its called economics.
I'm quite surprised by the hostility of environmental pushers on Slashdot. Yes we have to convert to greener methods, but accepting things that are done in a stupid way and being hostile towards people who point out when things are stupid and suggest how it could be done better is not the way to go. Rarely are generalized requirements the best way to handle everyone.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
A good friend of mine lives in the city. His one story house is down the north slope from his neighboring two story row-house. His roof doesn't get any sun much of the year, and when it does it ain't much.
That said, adding panels during new construction adds very little to the cost.
This is a building regulation. Exemptions from building regulations aren't that uncommon.
Don't worry, San Francisco hasn't allowed any new buildings to be built in decades.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
They can do it because you want to live there. Its called economics.
Luxury development is a nation-wide problem.
Out of every five multifamily rentals built in the country's biggest cities from 2012 to 2014, four were luxury apartments "that command rents in the top 20 percent of the market," the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The 82 percent figure that real estate researchers at CoStar Group came up with in its analysis for the newspaper is an average of data from 54 separate metro areas. The percentage is even higher in some cities from the list, such as Atlanta's 95 percent luxury construction rate from the three-year period.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/05/22/3662239/luxury-housing-80-percent-developers/
You are the only idiot for failing to read the article:
Under existing state law, California’s Title 24 Energy Standards require 15% of roof area on new small and mid-sized buildings to be “solar ready,” which means the roof is unshaded by the proposed building itself, and free of obtrusions.
I think buildings should focus on minimizing energy consumption for heating and cooling. It's not sexy, but low grade thermal energy is cheap.
I've seen a number of studies that tackle the limits of solar power from a number of angles, these include technical and economic.
A technical problem with solar power is that peak output is at noon but peak load is near sunset. Temperatures typically reach a maximum at about 4:00. People tend to go home to cook supper at about 5:00. Along with a few other factors that add to the electric load the viability of solar power peaks at about 30% of total production. Anything more and additional solar power can negatively affect the grid.
The economics are also problematic. If there is too much solar power then the price at solar production peaks can make the price go negative. That might seem nonsensical but if supply exceeds demand then there are people that would be willing to pay people to take their power just so that they don't have to go through the expensive process of shutting down power production to avoid the also expensive process of starting it back up once the sun goes down. Solar subsidies make this problem worse. The solar panel owners are paid subsidies by how much power they put on the grid, if the price is negative they still get paid the subsidy and if the subsidy covers the negative price then it's profitable. Again the estimates I've seen is that if solar power capacity exceeds about 30% these economic factors start to become a problem. In a free market this fixes itself but with mandates like this, and subsidies already in effect, the problem remains.
Those are just two examples on how too much solar can be problematic. Technologies like grid storage is not a solution because storage costs money and even if solar power were free this storage would have to be cheaper than things like wind, hydro, coal, natural gas, nuclear, or whatever else comes along. With nuclear, coal, natural gas (especially natural gas), hydro, and wind being so cheap the mandating of solar power on a market that's not ready for it is asking for disaster.
As terrible as it would be I'd feel a bit of schadenfreude if California sees blackouts because the solar panels overwhelmed the grid.
You want to tell me that can't happen? Consider this, with all the solar panels out there is it possible for the grid to see more energy coming in than going out. This means the grid will become unstable unless some of the solar panel capacity is disconnected. What mechanism is there to disconnect these panels? Who is going to see their personal income reduced from selling power so that the rest of the grid remains stable? This is the tragedy of the commons at work. The solution is not more government since that is the "commons" the tragedy warns us about. The solution is to let people chose, to let them take ownership. How is this done? I'm not sure. What I am quite sure about is that the solution would take more words than a Slashdot comment window would allow.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I'm all for this. On cloudy days, we can both provide extra sunlight, reduce the nuclear weapons stockpiles, generate rooftop solar power, aaaand launch kilotons of hardy payload to the stars.
"San Francisco Adopts Law Requiring Solar Panels On All New Buildings"
Not premature enough for the headliner.
So, breathe.
>Did you read the bill?
>There's probably all sorts of caveats and exclusions in the details.
Probably? Did YOU read the bill?
...and not for any kind of reasons of profitability. There are severe infrastructure hurdles to overcome with any kind of off-site power generation, and SF has just declared that they are going to do all in their power to exacerbate them.
First, let's forget about how utilities generally have to pay you for what you generate that winds its way back to their network, although production at this scale can certainly become significant to a utilities bottom line (which means increasing prices per kWh for the rest of their power that you consume).
Instead, let's focus on the fact that above all else, the power grid wants to be in a stable state. Change produces waste. Every time demand surges, they've got to spin up some generator that consumes a natural resource and churns out a multiple of 60 Hz that can be efficiently transformed to the precise frequency expected. This usually means consuming more natural gas (faster to get up and running from a dead stop) and easing in cheaper (slower) coal plants if demand stays high. And if demand plummets again, you just produce more than you need. There's no practical way to store even a significant amount of power. Maybe other markets can siphon it off and buy it, and maybe they can't. God forbid that you should need to repeatedly disconnect and connect a generator, charging the lines each time. Into this less-than-ideal system, we're talking in the long run about injecting an entire city's worth of solar production and uncertainty into the mix. There is no guarantee energy will be produced or managed more efficiently.
There is also the issue that our system was set up to distribute power from a few generators to many nodes. Many nodes trying to send power back up the pipe to the plants won't necessarily be efficient.
If SF is very lucky, most new construction will opt for the water heater option, so all this new power stays at the site of generation. Dumping it into the grid would just cause more headache.
It should be required that all new buildings below 6 stories to have enough on-site AE electricity to equal the energy usage of the HVAC. In doing this, it will lead to using geo-thermal HVAC, along with aerogel based windows, as opposed to triple pane that are expensive and not as good.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Have we reached energy parity with PV solar panels yet? ie. does the amount of useful electrical energy generated over the life of the panel exceed the amount of energy required to manufacture it? It certainly wasn't a few years ago when I last looked.
Also have they sorted out the massive pollution that arises as from the PV panel manufacturing process?
I'd like to know, as I am considering installing a few but there's no point if they still do more harm than good.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I'm with you on this one. It would be beautiful to see cities with flat roof gardens.
As far as the solar panel we could put them on the side of the house. Maybe even do some design to look good. And I'm not sure solar panels use the same light as plants. We could possibly develop transparent solar panels for an awning over the garden. This might let us have our cake and eat it too.
My dream home: Below ground living quarters; two or three floors; ground level parking lot and then a workshop and storage floor before the garden roof. Sort of reverse from most peoples expectations but way more efficient.
Meaning you can't build in the shade of an existing structure or geological feature? I second the "idiots!"
San Fran will now REQUIRE people to cover their buildings with toxic materials that this schizofrenic pack or activists/politicians have declared too toxic to be thrown in the trash. Either this stuff is toxic and therefore must be specially handled and disposed of, or it's not in which case it should be fine in a landfill.
Like most left-wingers, they believe in totally contradictory things.... and they see nothing contradictory in that. This is another sign of the death of the American intellect.
Why would you use brand new buildings for affordable housing and not the older ones? By simple fact of economics rents for those apartments would be cheaper and you wouldn't have to wave a magic wand and make a wish for lower rents like you do with new construction.
Weird to have you beat someone up for not reading the bill when you didn't even read TFA. California already had a stupid law saying x% of new buildings statewide must be "solar capable", meaning not shaded. That is the stupid law. This is an incremental stupid law that only makes some sense (in a halfwit sort of way) because of the original stupid law.
Not everyone gets to live where they want to live if to many people desire to live in the same spot. If all these luxury developments were truly cause everything to be overpriced, they would not be able to find tenants for these units.
Apparently since it seems to be speeding up, that indicates there is in fact a demand for luxury apartments in these locations.
I know my property value is damn close to being double in value then it was nearly 7 years ago when I bought it. If it keeps going up, I'll have to take out the equity and buy a condo or two out of state, but that will depend if the numbers all work out. They just might :)
Hi. You made a bit of a fly-by assertion that piqued my interest. Can you explain further how adding panels at the time of construction adds very little to the cost?
I am required to put panels on my roof. Do they need to be plugged in or can they just be roof ornaments?
If they have to be plugged in, then I need an inverter. Does it need to work?
If so, can I undersize the inverter or does it need to be the right size to handle the full generation of my panels?
If the latter, suppose I need two inverters and eventually one burns out. Do I need to replace it?
If so, what kind of monitoring do I need to detect when the inverter goes bad?
How long do I have to replace a broken inverter? What if I know nothing about inverters?
Do I have to grid tie it?
Etc
As soon they find it to be sexist somehow.
Weird to have you beat someone up for not reading the bill when you didn't even read TFA.
Not that weird. Common sense applies here.
California already had a stupid law saying x% of new buildings statewide must be "solar capable", meaning not shaded.
That's not quite what it means. It means they must be constructed so that they themselves don't preclude the use of solar on their roofs by their own design, it obviously doesn't mean that they passed a law requiring new buildings to somehow defy physics and receive sunlight even if there is a mountain or neighboring building blocking it.
That is the stupid law.
How is it a stupid law? It's a pretty modest 15% and easily achievable.
Then you put a few black pipes on the roof, run water through them on the way to your actual water heater, and call it a tax. First time it leaks it gets bypassed.
How much energy would be saved with a highly reflective roof with a low tech answer?
http://www.whiteroofproject.org/faq
"New Residential and Commercial structures!"
SF Council dives into the Butt-Hole again.
This will KILL new and renewed construction in SF!
Those old old old ratty buildings and moldy shitty residences will get even more old and ratty and more shitty in the salty air of SF Bay.
Ha ha
How many of those building permit applications were for affordable housing?
It doesn't matter. If they are all luxury condos, then the people moving into them are moving out of other housing. The supply of housing will still go up, and prices will then go down. Economics 101.
Housing prices in SF are high because they build NOTHING.
And that is okay - affordable housing is merely luxury housing that has aged. If all else is held fixed, shouldn't brand new facilities command a price premium? Society's standards have also increased my apartment for one has almost as much space as my father's childhood home which housed a family of five. If you let the affluent have the new housing stock, they'll stop gentrifying the older housing stock and driving up rents.
Mandating solar panels in a city that gets fog all year round is pretty idiotic.
How many of those building permit applications were for affordable housing?
It doesn't matter. If they are all luxury condos, then the people moving into them are moving out of other housing. The supply of housing will still go up, and prices will then go down. Economics 101.
That's how it's supposed to work, but it's not really. Because those landlords in the units being moved out of don't want to admit their property is past prime and they need to lower their rent accordingly. So you end up with what I have in my hometown (a college town). Lots of under-inhabited luxury apartment buildings waiting for that student with parents with deep pockets that isn't going to come, and a population of local residents who can't find housing affordable for local wages (which are also being depressed by an influx of naive students who will work for cheap -- because they have outside financial backing or student loans keeping them in housing).
To dumb things down to a level you already know but forgot to apply:
Silicon increases in resistance with temperature thus a hot PC is bad news.
Many photovoltaics are made of silicon.
It is nice to see at least some small parts of the US are finally catching up.
In Israel buildings up to 8 stories are required to use solar water heating and it has been this way for decades.
You don't need a hill to be in perpetual shadow in SF, you just need a smaller building among the skyscrapers. Also, it's foggy most of the year. There are certainly a ton of places where solar is more useful than SF.
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I don't think anyone can reasonably claim "adds very little to the cost", but my guess would be that, relative to the price of the entire building, it's probably not a *substantial* cost. Moreover, if the building is designed for solar panels from the beginning and they're installed while the building is going up, those costs are probably lower than retrofitting after construction.
Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of government over-regulation, but it's not like there isn't a precedent for this sort of thing. We already have all sorts of building codes for all aspects of construction for very good reason (naturally, *some* regulation is absolutely required). In case people aren't aware, the local government can even force developers to pay for the costs of local road, sidewalk, environmental, or other area infrastructure improvements before they approve building permits.
And lastly, in a place with a good deal of sun and that's perpetually energy-hungry (and will get moreso as we start ditching gasoline in greater quantities), adding solar panels to reduce the peak-time load on the electrical grid makes a lot of sense. SF does a lot of nutty, left-wing things, but honestly, this doesn't strike me as anything too outrageous. My preference would have been to add incentives rather than make it mandatory, but in general, I guess I'd have to say I support the idea, if not the exact method. And of course, I'd hope that provisions exist for reasonable exceptions where they make sense.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I'll point out to readers that the above poster is the imbecile that suggested that manufacturing is in great shape because despite a massive drop in both production and wages the wages dropped more - hence greater productivity! How wonderful! Far less income for the country, but look at those lovely numbers!
Ooloorie, I asked you some questions before as to why you felt justified in insulting me - please answer them instead of avoiding the topic.
But a builder declaring that the building won't receive sunlight might lose more in sales than by installing solar cells that don't generate much power.
Many home buyers don't realize the amount of sunlight that will fall on a place at other times of the day/year, before buying their houses.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Because there is no money in old housing, look at what happens when a military base gets decommissioned, all the base housing gets raised, with the explanation being its "substandard", bullshit, if it was good enough for our service members, its good enough for low income housing, plus the fact, no community wants a flood of hundreds of cheap houses dragging down the prices.
Land is also "required" and "life enabling" but it is ownable and owned. Sleeping on public property violates sit/lie laws of many localities; therefore, land is required. And intruding on another's private property (the Goldilocks method) is trespassing; therefore, land is ownable.
> going from illegal to mandatory overnight
LIBERALISM IS A MENTAL DISORDER
By simple fact of economics rents for those apartments would be cheaper and you wouldn't have to wave a magic wand and make a wish for lower rents like you do with new construction.
My apartment complex is 50 years old. Is the rent cheaper than the brand new apartment complex built down the street? Nope. They both have brand new exterior paint and landscaping, advertising themselves as luxury apartments, and charging similar luxury rental rates. The only way you can tell that my apartment complex is old is from the elevators that have doors that you pull open before getting in.
The supply of housing will still go up, and prices will then go down. Economics 101.
A brand new apartment complex opened down the street from my 50-year-old apartment complex in Silicon Valley. They both have brand new exterior paint and landscaping, they both advertised themselves as luxury apartments, and they both charge similar luxury rents. Unless you lived in the area for a while, you can't tell which apartment complex is older from the outside. In fact, all the older apartment complexes are playing the same "luxury" economic game. I'm about three years away from being priced out of the market.
Stop pretending to be stupid, you are not a cocaine ravaged former DJ so stop pretending to be one - a massive drop in expenditure on wages due to job losses. Also no innovation means no paying people to improve stuff so another false spike on "productivity" numbers.
You are pretending to be ignorant or actually are, so how about a little lesson?
In the early 1990s I worked at a steelworks with fantastic productivity numbers with almost exponential growth (tons of steel per man hour), yet somehow not enough steel could be produced to meet orders that had previously been met easily and the place started losing massive amounts of money. It turns out the hours of contractors were not counted in the "productivity" numbers and there was a process of shedding skilled staff to drive those numbers. All the numbers that mattered - revenue, product shipped, expenses, hours of lost production from breakdowns, accidents, fatalities - were bad, but that productivity number was great so it was all bonuses at the top end of town until the parent company took a closer look and shut most of the place down. Don't blame me (some idiots like to shoot messengers), the rolling mill I worked at was one of only two parts of the place that kept going.
That example illustrates why "productivity" numbers are entirely useless without context. If you were not born yesterday you should be able to find a few more of your own.
In general the [potential] wind velocities on the roof of very tall buildings make installing solar impractical.
Then why not mandate turbines?
It is really simple: If you have N people that want to live in a city, and M living spaces, and N > M, then it is a simple fact that some of them will not be able to rent or buy. If you put additional units on the market, at a price that people are willing to pay, then there will be more affordable housing. The SF housing market is a classic case of high prices driven by artificially restricted supply. No conspiracy theory is needed.
If the luxury apartments aren't being used, then the owners not getting any rental income. It's a bigger problem for them than it is for you.
I agree it's a good direction to be heading in, but SF is not the best place to do this. First, SF is perpetually foggy, meaning ROI for solar panels is much lower there than the surrounding Bay Area. Second, this limits the tech to just solar. Other tech, such as wind turbines now have no chance to compete, even though I think they're much better suited to the windy SF weather. And finally, this law applies to new construction, which SF has almost none of. If anything, this will make new construction even harder, exacerbating rent problems.
Overall this is a feel-good, do nothing legislation, a bit like the UN passing a resolution condemning terrorist attacks.
If the luxury apartments aren't being used, then the owners not getting any rental income. It's a bigger problem for them than it is for you.
The owners of the luxury apartments aren't making money, but they also have a place to live already. Worst case they can move into one of their own units. The people who can't find an affordable place to live needed it yesterday.
Explain to me why they'd go to all that trouble to buy or build an apartment only to not make money on it. Have you actually spoken to them? Maybe they're not even aware of the problem because they handed the property over to a shitty management firm.
Throw a .5 watt Radio Shack solar cell on the roof and you complied with the law. ;-) That would be funny.
Panels just aren't all that expensive. Yeah, they aren't free, but a lot of the cost of putting panels on the roof is:
* Design/engineering time
* Planning costs (city/county registration, review, etc)
* Grid integration (registration with local electrical utility, inspection, etc)
* Construction time (getting a crew out there with all the materials, etc)
When doing new construction you're going to be doing all those things already. Yes, there will be incremental increases in all those things, but they will be smaller increases than doing the entire process from scratch. So the cost of adding solar to a building as it's being built will be less than the cost of the building plus the cost of solar. And there are already companies that will install solar for net free in much of the US, including San Francisco.
Where did I mention an amendment to anything?
Your SIG loser. Are you going to have to hand your guns back when you turn 45? No? Then obviously being an imaginary part of a militia has nothing to do with your gun rights, or your freedom (which seems to vanish the second you step into the airport and no longer have the freedom to avoid your balls being squeezed by the TSA).
You may have guns (like I do), but you are not free.
You are also living in the past on the power generation thing, following the same stupid party line that tells you that you are free while taking your freedom away.
Perhaps it's time to start thinking for yourself instead of spreading propaganda from those who convince you not to think and behave like a good little "comrade".
Where did I say long term?
I was addressing how you were pretending the ongoing crash since 2008 never happened you obtuse idiot.
> Moreover, if the building is designed for solar panels from the beginning and they're installed while the building is going up, those costs are probably lower than retrofitting after construction.
Again, I do not understand these assumptions people are making. What exactly does it mean to "retrofit" a house with solar panels? In a rooftop installation, the racks are built specifically to connect onto existing roofs. The wiring goes to the grid tie point, which is outside the house.
> adding solar panels to reduce the peak-time load on the electrical grid makes a lot of sense
I would say 90% of comments on this article are frustrating just like yours above here. Why do people just make assertions without any explanation? It leads you guys to not think things through before you say them. Solar power generation happens during the 5 "sun hours" per day in SF. Meanwhile, demand curve looks like this: http://www.mpoweruk.com/images/elec_load_demand.gif Residential demand occurs when there is no solar generation. Commercial demand is better aligned but still offset.
See? Central planning is complicated. If only there were some sort of incentive based system that integrated all this complicated information into, say, a net benefit (or cost) number, and would help encourage use of solar panels when it makes sense and discourage use of solar panels when it doesn't make sense. If only...
Sorry, do you have a solar installation? Because it sure doesn't sound like you have any idea what you're talking about. The panels in isolation aren't expensive relative to the power they generate, but the power they generate is DC. If you're a human living in a typical Earth house, you need AC. That means you need an inverter.
Design and engineering time? What are you designing for a cookie cutter grid-tie solution? Nothing. Firms use the same panels and the same grid-tie inverter and the same wiring in every install. The configure the wiring the same in every install. The only variable are the "solar ready" dimensions of the roof, the number of panels, and size/number of inverters... all of which are done with a calculator/spreadsheet tool. They all have them. I know. I've worked with them. It even spits out a nice sales presentation to the customer about how they're going to pay nothing for utilities for 30 years based on generation efficiency and usage assumptions that will never hold true.
Planning costs? Again, these are cookie cutter setups and there is not much planning to do due to the few variables listed earlier. The biggest expense here is any filing costs and just the time involved harassing the government bureaucrats until they do their job.
Grid interconnection costs? Again, cookie cutter and nothing to do except submit the forms based on 90%+ filled out templates they already have and then harass the quasi-government bureaucrats until they do their job.
Construction time...yes of course this costs money, but it is installation of prefabricated pieces. I think "construction" implies the wrong activity. Companies do these installs in 3 days.
> When doing new construction you're going to be doing all those things already.
Again, you seem to have no idea what you're talking about. When you're doing new construction you're going to have certified solar installers designing your house, on your roof, etc. already? These are different people doing completely different things and there is no efficiency gain I can think of having them do it at the time of construction vs. after construction is complete, except maybe the ability to share a ladder and some power tools. I'm not even entirely sure that a solar install company would be willing to do an install before the construction is complete and inspection is passed.
What is economics?