224
Solar has taken off in red states. Trump’s funding freeze is causing panic
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
224 points (98.3% liked)
News
25269 readers
3897 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't recall the exact timeline, but about 10 - 15 years ago my neighbor got a bunch of solar panels installed. Between state and federal funding, almost 2/3rds of the cost was subsidized. On top of that, the local power company pays 1-to-1 for the energy she produces during the day because she is grandfathered in. Her power bill maxes out at something like $30.
I was strongly considering getting solar panels for my house in recent history. The power company no longer pays 1-to-1 for new installations, they only pay approximately 30%. So if they charge 18 cents per kilowatt hour, they'd only credit me 6 cents. On top of this, the state I live in no longer offers tax incentives, so the only thing I had going for me was the federal incentives. Even at that, it wasn't worth it from a purely economic standpoint when I did the calculations.
The icing on the cake is that when the power goes out, you still lose power even if you have solar panels. The only way around that in my part of the world is to go completely off grid, buy a bunch of extremely expensive equipment and batteries, or to have someone do an illegal connection.
So, we came to conclusion that solar wasn't really affordable for us. The monthly payments on the loan were going to be about 20% higher than our current electric bill and by our calculations, it was going to take about 17 - 20 years to break even. And that's only if the equipment lasts that long, which is a gamble given our weather that includes hurricanes, tornadoes, and so on.
Solar is definitely not a panacea. Near as I can tell, no 'green' alternative is - they really depend on making use of local conditions and resources in ways that are not compatible with late-stage production-line capitalism.
In my area (US southeast), between weather and tilt-of-earth, the solar models predict about half as much annual energy as an identical installation in California or Arizona. Tack on that our electric rate is also about half California, and rooftop solar is a pretty iffy proposal.
Wind might be better here, if there were any residential/suburban options. Hydro, if you happen to live on a stream. Basically, the useful local resources all require massive scale to utilize, and nobody wants to do that when gas is cheap.
For sure! I'd love to switch to solar (or any alternative carbon-friendly / carbon-neutral energy source) entirely and specifically for the perceived environmental benefits. But I'm also not in a financial position where I can do it when it happens to cost so much more than traditional means. If I had been fortunate enough, like my neighbor, to have been in the position to make the plunge 10 - 15 years ago, it would make perfect sense. But with all the government subsidies being cut, the power company drastically reducing what they pay for the excess energy, and the cost of batteries plus associated equipment being so high, it's pushing solar back into the territory of being unaffordable for a lot of people. Really sad in so many ways. And yet, I'm still trying to figure out how I might make it work.