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[–] 12 points 3 months ago (8 children)

My neighbor across the street has solar panels. I chatted with him once, and he brought them up. I asked if he got the battery wall too, and he said no, but seemed slightly miffed. Then, he said his electric bill was $60/mo. I probably didn't seem suitably impressed, I didn't tell him mine is $50/mo. and I don't have solar panels, I just don't use much electricity. I wanted to ask whether he was leasing them, or took out a loan for them, but didn't.

I think the only way residential solar panels make sense is to have a battery, especially in the winter when we get a lot less sun, and most people are at work during the day, so a lot of residential electrical use is after sunset. That's why I asked, but I didn't say any of that to him.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago* (5 children)

    Nah. I'm in Australia and our electricity bills have been slaughtered by two thirds. We used to have a powerpal (it died, ironically for the following) and even midwinter there would be huge chunks of the day where it registered 0 meter use - we are literally powering everything in the house just via solar.

    So even without a battery (they're 20k+) we've cut a large chunk of fossil fuels clean out of use. We also feed back into the grid - we get bugger all money for it, but that's not the point. The point is reduction of fossil fuelled power.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    That sounds way nicer than the US. Even the high pressure sales guy said the math didn't math for our house. It's basically a 20 year loan to pay off the panels and even though we don't have many trees I guess our house is at the wrong angle? To break even we would have to make it to 20 years. To save we would have to keep it longer than that. But they were only warranteed for 10. No thanks.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    Either the batteries are way more expensive in Australia than here in Europe or you have old prices.

    The batteries that I am running are definetly much cheaper than yours (<5k), although I did install them myself.

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