cahomeown456's comments

This is good as an alternative take: https://www.amazon.com/Debunking-Economics-Revised-Expanded-...

An economics Nobel is not the same thing as a Nobel in (for example) Physics, and citing it as an appeal to authority is intentionally misleading.

This is a mitigation required because of the terrible housing situation in California. If normal people could afford to buy a home, they could install chargers themselves and this massive public construction effort would be unnecessary.

Where did the money go? To the academic establishment (USC in this case): tenured professors, deans/administrators, etc. Where did the money come from? The US taxpayer.

The whole rotten system is a thinly-veiled massive government subsidy to the higher education industry. In addition there's a weird incentive structure for students where you either minimize loans to a reasonable amount (increasingly difficult), or you go all-in and borrow such an extraordinary amount that is impossible to pay off in any reasonable time. Then in 20 years, it's all "forgiven" and the US government covers the balance. There is no way for this to be sustainable in the long term.

For anyone stumbling across this thread, the above is wrong (possibly intentionally so). The cost of the panels and related hardware are roughly 30-50% of the total installed job cost (for me, roughly $6-8k of the $15k total). The rest is standard labor cost for installation, electrical, etc. None of that is unreasonable. If I was doing 100% of the labor myself (which is impossible because I'm not a licensed electrician), it would still cost me nearly $10k.

mercutio2 is indirectly making the claim that PV installers are inflating the prices. He does this in an attempt to frame the investment as being better than it is, by claiming it's much cheaper than it really is. This is disingenuous.

He then makes the claim that economies of scale will magically make it even cheaper, because the roofers and electricians will already be there to build the home. This is absurd. Just because they are already building the house does not mean the craftsman will do the PV work for free. It will take them X additional hours to do it and that costs money, just about as much as it would cost for a house that has already been built.

Lastly he makes the totally false claim that PV reduces roof maintenance/repair costs. Nothing could be further from the truth! PV actually increases replacement costs, dramatically! For example:

1. https://www.quora.com/How-do-solar-panels-affect-roof-shingl...

2. https://www.buildings.com/article-details/articleid/19851/ti...

This California regulation is a boondoggle that is being done for social/political reasons, pushed by the environmentalist lobby. It is a way of forcing consumers to purchase something they wouldn't otherwise do under the free market. Whenever you hear someone say "market failure", chances are they want the government to force you to buy something they like.

What this does is force new homeowners to make an iffy investment that they probably wouldn't otherwise make given a choice in the free market, but cleverly hides it in the price of new construction.

If it was such a slam-dunk great idea, everyone would be installing solar systems right now but they aren't because it isn't clear that it makes any financial sense.

I'm a homeowner in southern California. I've looked into it and a solar system would cost me about $15k and it would pay itself off after about 8 years.

However that assumes constant price conditions. If there's a glut of solar installations, prices for daytime generation may fall to where it no longer offsets all evening/night consumption. Once that happens you're forced to either invest in extremely expensive battery storage, or the breakeven date gets radically extended out into the future.

Overall, it seems like a pretty "meh" investment. The people doing it are the environmental True Believers(tm). I'd rather put the money into a new bathroom at this point.