Batteries are dropping fast in price, but for the USA, they might be going up because of tariffs. Neatly sidestepping that:

I have a powerwall 2 with 5kw panels, which I've had since about 2021. At the time it was the biggest, cheapest, had a grid isolation mode, and could be mounted outside. (I didn't trust tesla back then, and I sure as shit don't now. Moreover, once it catches fire, that shit aint going out anytime soon)

It still cost about £7k installed.

From about march/april to end of october, we are power sufficient (london, even with rainy days, gas hot water though.)

If I were to get a new system, 13kwhr of battery is something like £2k, plus inverter/charger.

The panels are dirt cheap, to the point where the scaffolding costs more than the panels. (and the mounts.)

In USA, as a general off the cuff that may be wrong, DIY prices is generally ~1/3 of contractor price.

A $45k quote would correspond roughly to 14k euro of materials.

Similarly in Australia I recently paid about $10k AUD (after subsidies) for 13kw of panels and a 10kw inverter.

New subsidies this year for batteries mean I can get a 15kwh battery installed for around 2-3k AUD

Crazy stuff. Ten years ago I paid £5.5k GBP for a 3.7kW system. Since then I would expect the labour component to have gone up but the panels to have come down. I guess the skilled labour shortage in the US is having a very real effect on prices.

Under the subsidy rules for feed-in-tariffs at the time, that had to be done with an MCS approved installer. All work in England would require an approved "Part P" signoff anyway. However it did not require council planning approva, nor grid approval for that size of system.

There's not a shortage of skilled labor so much in US as there is a shortage of people able to go through the racketeering process of getting a contractor license, which also requires being a half-slave to someone with a license for a number of years. It's straight up mercantilist style shake-down to benefit prior entrants. It is easier in US to become an electrical engineer than it is to become a guy who adds a new outlet to a room addition, but that has nothing to do with skill.

In fact when I was first hired as an engineer, it was actually someone that wanted an electrician but hired EEs instead because they are cheaper and more readily available.

One of the worst is something like installing HVAC stuff. I got an EPA refrigerant license in 2 days of studying and then did my own myself. If I wanted to install it for a profit for someone else, I would have to spend 4 years working for someone else with a license first to get the contractor license! The end result is it legitimately cost like $700 to have a single capacitor replaced on an air conditioner, and in places like Florida if you do it for someone else without years of 'training' you're now a felon.

I always found solar farm engineering intensely interesting and looked seriously into becoming an electrician as a second career as something to "retire into" once I got sick of working in tech. And like you say, it turns out it's not something you can just make a lateral move into, no matter how quickly you can learn and how hard you're willing to study. "Becoming an electrician" is a young person's game.

There are a few places where you can work as an electrician without a license. Might be the same bumfuck places where solar or wind farms are. I think most of them are in the midwest or plain states.

Where I live you can't but go figure you can become a licensed finish carpenter with a simple test.

One loophole I looked I might look into some day is moving to another state with the least requirements for a license, then getting it, then transferring it to another state, which is allowed at least here.

I see 7k€ for 12kWp, retail, for a diy ground install set for our summer house. That's before 4k€ in subsidies. No net metering, and feedin compensation is capped at 0.02€/kWh. But at 3k€ net, who cares? Even with the low electricity rates here, this makes sense. Even for a summer house!

In my town in NY state USA, they require a stamped engineering drawing for a ground mount system and it has to be rated for wind and snow load. Most of the ground mounts which come with stamped drawings have run about $1/W total cost which will meet my local needs for a set of panels in the 5kW to 20kW size range. This cost includes concrete, all support structure, and the racking that the panels attach to. This cost does not include panels, wiring, nor inverter.

If you're able to get a 12kW rated full system, including racking, panels, and inverter for the equivalent of $1/W that's an amazing deal! I wish prices here were like that.

I posted above about the price because when we've gotten quotes – and this is over a year back – they were really high! Not sure what the deal is because the graphs all show the cost of green electricity cratering; but somehow on the residential side of things here in the U.S – even in rural areas with very relaxed restrictions – it's super pricey!

For comparison, my 10 kW solar install completed last week cost 24k CAD (15k EUR). That's just panels, inverters and installation. The incremental cost was likely in part due to the ~160% tariffs on solar panels imposed by the Canadian government, but not all.

Ouch. My 7.8kW system fully installed was 13k CAD ( a bunch was DIY)

Had it for a year now. Generated 7.7kWh which is worth $950. Took out natural gas, power bill for the entire year (heat pump, elec hot water) was $1000.

Snowy mountain town in a tight valley in BC.

Prices were high even during the Biden administration.

Markups due to subsidies are a part of it.

Costs are also high for solar installers in the US. It is a relatively dangerous job (on par with roofers) which makes health insurance premiums unaffordable. The permitting process is also quite onerous in a great many localities, involving multiple parties (your installer, the HOA, the city, the county, the power company) and multiple inspections. US installers also tend to provide generous warranty plans, 15 years parts and labor is typical, and have to make sure they have the capital to honor them. This is especially a problem as some solar hardware manufacturers have had some serious quality control issues, especially on the inverters, and have resulted in quite a lot more warranty work than was initially expected.

The other issue was just plain pent-up demand. Installers could charge what they wanted because there weren't enough of them to go around, even as everybody and their dog started their own installer business. Many of those businesses were poorly run and have since gone under, leaving the homeowners high and dry when the inverter craps out and they're told by every other installer that they will not work on someone else's install and also told by the inverter manufacturer that if they attempt to replace the hardware themselves it will result in their warranty being voided.

Subsidy causing high prices? You're going to have to explain that.

Customer is willing to pay 10k. Supplier will charge 10k.

Customer is willing to pay 10k, state is willing to pay 5k. Supplier will charge 15k.

That applies with inelastic goods - land for example - where supply can't increase

Assuming the base cost is 8k

Supplier A and Supplier B charge 15k and have 100 customers between them, making 350k each

Supplier B decides to undercut Supplier A, and charge 14k, and get all the customers, making 600k profit

Customer might be willing to pay 10k, but if there's two identical quotes, one for 10k and one for 9k they'll go for the 9k

> Customer might be willing to pay 10k, but if there's two identical quotes, one for 10k and one for 9k they'll go for the 9k

But you see the point. There's a comfortable cushion where everyone can make more money off the taxpayer and have an easier time of it. Spend a bit of it on better marketing to elevate yourself and justify the higher price in people's minds.

Only if you believe that the invisible hand of the market doesn't work

I'm not sure government incentives allow the free market to do its work, then. Why would you think it would?

government incentives help to reduce the externalities

You seem to think that two companies selling product A will rather sell 50 for $10 per unit profit than 100 for $9 per unit profit because it's easier.

I mean, it's a view, sure.

> You seem to think that two companies selling product A will rather sell 50 for $10 per unit profit than 100 for $9 per unit profit because it's easier.

If the numbers are closer, then that's exactly what happens.

Would you rather sell 50 units for $19 per unit or 100 for $10 per unit? Option 1 gives you way less overhead and headache with cheap-o customers.

It's not my view, though. I already said what I think is more likely to happen.

- Subsidy starts: prices drop.

- Greed kicks in because capitalism: prices rise again, maybe not back to pre-subsidy levels, but they rise.

- Subsidy gets axed: prices rise to above pre-subsidy levels.

(Note: I'm personally entirely pro "subsidize things you want more of". But that requires a stable, trustworthy government that plans on longer timescales.)

Sounds like a situation where there's not enough competition.

the Netherlands had a net-metering subsidiy + good competition + frictionless install and as a result we have 3,5 solar panels per person installed.

Or price fixing.

There are two more steps:

- Demand drops due to increased price to buyers.

- Prices drop so manufacturers can remain profitable.

> Greed kicks in because capitalism

There were no greedy people before capitalism. Of that we can be sure.

The perpetual existence of greed is not a good enough reason to structure all of society around that singular trait.

It doesn't reward greed, it rewards value. You could just as well say national borders reward invasions.

This is a redefining of terms classic in capitalist analysis.

An example I'll take from Cory Doctorow: Google search isn't getting worse. We know this because nobody's toppled Google's monopoly on search. Because of the magic of the market, if what you perceive as search being worse was actually search being worse, then, Google would no longer dominate.

Since google continues to dominate, actually, search isn't worse.

Capitalist analysis requires QED circular logic to justify its inherent contradictions.

Capitalism may occasionally reward value, but very, very rarely does it reward value more than greed.

Proof: teachers are some of the worse paid jobs in our society despite being essentially the backbone of our nation. A single teacher in the course of a year can completely alter the course of history for a classload of kids. Multiply over a two decade career... And that's just elementary school. Highschool teachers will influence hundreds of kids each semester.

Yet their wages in many states cap out at around what a recruiter makes. Recruiters being nothing more than middlemen between a labor market and a hiring market - as a former recruiter, trust me, that multi billion dollar industry creates essentially no value.

Of course the capitalist analysis means the entire system is immune to criticism - "actually, teachers don't get paid much because they don't add much value, if they added more value, they'd get paid more." QED. Circular logic.

"The multi tens of billions of dollars American health insurance industry adds value. If it didn't, it wouldn't be worth multi tens of billions of dollars."

Capitalism rewards greed, and the greediest are the most capitalistically rewarded.

No, greed is a necessary component. Because under capitalism both parties don't execute the trade, rationally at least, unless both are greedily better off.

Without greed it goes from a positive sum system to a destructive system because you no longer have the parties being better off from the transaction. From a cursory standpoint that might be ok (the economy won't implode if some small fraction does this like a minority of commercial activity being charity functions) but you basically lose most the information conveyed in prices and cost causing complete loss of productive allocation and it is an economic implosion.

You're mischaracterising "not wanting to overpay" and "getting something you need in return for what you have in excess" as "greed".

It's a pointless conversation if you're willing to do that. You're just changing definitions before arguing them.

I will allow for sake of argument then trading for needs to be excepted. Under your definition it would also implode, just not fully destruct.

Trading for wants is no different to trading for needs from a capitalism perspective. It just removes the need for a central bureaucracy that decides what counts as a need.

Do note that nothing in this system incentivizes behaviour that creates societies that could last, say, several hundred years.

There was a study in France showing that for rent subsidies.[1]

In France, the state pays max(rate * rent, cap) for apartments for students, unemployed and poor workers. Usually people don't qualify for ratio of the rent, because it's way over the cap for the subsidy. To keep up with inflation, the state re-evaluate the cap of the subsidy almost every year.

A french economist showed that there was a correlation between the cap of the rent subsidy and the rental market prices for small apartments. Of course, correlation is not causation, it could just be that the rental market follows the inflation as much as the cap. But this correlation doesn't happen for bigger and more luxurious appartments. Her explanation is that your poor household is only ready to afford €100 per month, as an example, the subsidy cap is €500, so the rental market prices these apartments to €600 (= 100 + 500). When the state re-evaluate the cap to €550, the rental market goes up to €650. (= 100 + 150)

[1] https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/fichier/1376573/es381-3...

The key difference in the markets is that it takes a very long time to build more apartments and houses, especially in France. There also isn't an option to not have housing. (Low elasticity) That keeps the short term supply effectively static. Same amount of supply, increase in money spent, inflation.

In a market like solar, there is production of more solar systems. There are also multiple readily available substitutes. (e.g. on-grid power) The effect of the subsidy should drive increased volume from manufacturers, keeping net price stable.

and now you know why america's GDP is so high