I like it, but with housing prices already out of control I wonder if this is the wisest? It’s just going to make housing that much more expensive. Long term it’s great! But I hope they have some fancy financial footwork to curb the upfront costs.
I think 1500 euro on a house will not make a big difference.
Last set I put on a roof was about that price (50 euro per panel, 400 for inverter rest for mounting)
It’s 1500 here. 3000 for the mandated concrete walkway. Another 5k for the required hard wired fire alarms.
Just examples of things that are reasonable sounding that add up quickly. I hate to sound like some libertarian douchbag, but we need to be careful we don’t regulate our way out of affordable shelter.
The solar panels make the shelter more affordable. Whatever you end up paying extra on mortgage, you’re going to save more on the power bill.
Our current house has everything electric, including warm water, heating, and transportation (electric car). Our power bill is way lower than our previous apartment of less than half the size.
In April alone our power bill will be around -6 euros, and the summer is ahead of us. December/January were around 400 euros, so I expect a balance of around 1000 euros for the whole year.
We paid 120 euros a month before (so 1400 a year), not including heating, warm water or charging the car. Heating and water were part of a 400 euro “hausgeld” payment that included garbage collection, lift costs, building maintenance, etc, so let’s say 200 a month. Car let’s say 550 a year (15k km a year, half of it long trips so just counting 7k changing locally). So we are saving 2.5k a year, maybe 3k, in bills.
The whole system (panels, installation, battery, etc) cost 27k total, so our mortgage is about 1.5k more a year extra (assuming 0 upfront investment) than in would be without solar.
So more than twice the size of the shelter and savings of at least 1k a year, very pessimistic calculation. Maybe as high as 6k, if we extrapolate the old costs with the size.
While I have no idea what the market is like there, here in the US, most of the desirable locations have housing price dominated by land. According to my insurer, full replacement cost of rebuilding my home on the current is less than 1/3 the cost of buying the home. Does it really matter if building code makes that replacement house a little nicer, when 2/3 the cost is the location?
It does, when that additional expense is the difference between being able to buy the home and not being able to. Or when it makes a difference in a developer’s decision to build or not build a home.
In long term, you would not be paying much on electricity, which is a saving. The upfront cost would be higher, but it is a good move imo, because retrofitting almost always has some shortcomings, like poor implementation, or unnecessary damage
It doesnt add a lot of cost, but it also doesnt help as much as you think.
In Australia its mandatory to have an (I think) 2Kw/h system installed. Which is about enough assuming its running at full tilt to power the air conditioner in the peak of summer on a small house. A mate of mine who knows a lot about solar said “2kw is about enough that your home is essentially energy neutral when you’re not in it. So the fridge, water heater, appliances on standby…”
Of course when you start talking a national scale it does add up.
maybe it is difference in cost of living, or maybe solar output, our monthly consumption in peak summer hits some 1000-1500 units (arbitrary for now), we ourselves do no thave solar (some issues right now, but fixing them) but we in theory can get 100–200 units a day here, more if pick a larger unit, so that is, almost double of our reuirements. In winters, we rarely go over 300 (we do not have centrallised heating, and electricity is used in kitchen, and heating water), with a lowered output energy (lets say 1000 units a month) we would still be thrice over.
Yeah theres a LOT of variables at play here. I saw a headline today that “Uk braces for 30C heatwave.” As an Aussie I thought “Thats cute” we regularly see summer days into the mid 40’s so you can imagine what our peak daytime drain looks like.
You guys also tend towards way smaller houses than us, significantly higher population density, generally cloudier weather, energy costs will be wildly different… so many variables.
You have to remember that without a battery, your solar generally only helps out 8 hours a day and those are usually the 8 hours when you arent home, and arent the times energy companies charge peak rates…
When my wife and I built our house and sorted our (fucking massive) solar system our consultant said "Smart appliances are your best friend. Load the washer and dryer, set them to turn on at 10am before you leave the house. Set the airconditioning to come on at about 3 in the afternoon so that you not only get home to the AC/Heat but your using energy that would otherwise go back to the grid and then once the sun goes down you’re only maintaining temp which is way less energy intensive. Home batteries are still just not cost effective enough yet for us to justify one.
Dont get me wrong, even a small solar system on every house will make a difference. Just maybe not as much as people would like to think. The one benefit of having it be mandatory (and you’re right on this one) is that every new house will se set up for it, wired in right and easily upgradable from whatever they make the minimum standard.
our peak summers reach 55-60 °C, but in uk’s case, they have additional issuee of being very humid, in whuich case, the percieved temperature is much higher.
Where i live, we have both options for solar, that is either to use batteries, or int the days, we directly use solar, and send excess back to grid, and consume from grid during nights. This is kinda battery less (you still need some smaller batteries to get consistent power rates, but batter pak size would be smaller.
When my wife and I built our house and sorted our (fucking massive) solar system our consultant said "Smart appliances are your best friend. Load the washer and dryer, set them to turn on at 10am before you leave the house. Set the airconditioning to come on at about 3 in the afternoon so that you not only get home to the AC/Heat but your using energy that would otherwise go back to the grid and then once the sun goes down you’re only maintaining temp which is way less energy intensive. Home batteries are still just not cost effective enough yet for us to justify one.
that just seems to be a lot of power being wasted. but i can understand your point regarding batteries. We mostly use “dumb” appliances (read not iot devices) and mostly just control manually.
I on the other hand am actually not a huge solar fan, but mostly because we are running out of resources, good quality silicon, silver and other value metals, and cost of solar wwould actually start rising. I am more of a nuclear fan, but i undeerstand, that smaller nuclear reactors are still a thing of future, and I also kinda get why people do not like centrralised large reactors. To me, that is still the most efficient way to generate power.
Its not “wasted” financially. I dont know the rates but if 1 unit costs 50c from the grid during the day they will only pay me 10c to feed into the grid, at peak times (evenings) they want $1 from the grid and I cant contribute. If I preheat/cool my house with 5 units of energy I would have only gotten $.50 for and halve my evening usage on maintaining it from say 10 to 5 im up by $4.50
The numbers are bullshit, but you get the idea.
Also down the track a little my wife and I are looking at making one of our cars a phev so we wanted to be able to charge it at home off solar.
Along those lines, I don’t understand why there don’t seem to be thermal storage head units for heat pumps. Cheaper and more effective than batteries, at least for storing heat, plus less noise and expense as the system doesn’t have to come on as often.
Why doesn’t everyone doing solar or with time of use metering have these? Online I only found one example and it was only available in Canada
My parents had thermal storage electrical heat with time of use metering and it made a huge difference on their electrics bill. Seems like it would apply to heat pumps as well
I like it, but with housing prices already out of control I wonder if this is the wisest? It’s just going to make housing that much more expensive. Long term it’s great! But I hope they have some fancy financial footwork to curb the upfront costs.
I think 1500 euro on a house will not make a big difference. Last set I put on a roof was about that price (50 euro per panel, 400 for inverter rest for mounting)
It’s 1500 here. 3000 for the mandated concrete walkway. Another 5k for the required hard wired fire alarms.
Just examples of things that are reasonable sounding that add up quickly. I hate to sound like some libertarian douchbag, but we need to be careful we don’t regulate our way out of affordable shelter.
The solar panels make the shelter more affordable. Whatever you end up paying extra on mortgage, you’re going to save more on the power bill.
Our current house has everything electric, including warm water, heating, and transportation (electric car). Our power bill is way lower than our previous apartment of less than half the size.
In April alone our power bill will be around -6 euros, and the summer is ahead of us. December/January were around 400 euros, so I expect a balance of around 1000 euros for the whole year.
We paid 120 euros a month before (so 1400 a year), not including heating, warm water or charging the car. Heating and water were part of a 400 euro “hausgeld” payment that included garbage collection, lift costs, building maintenance, etc, so let’s say 200 a month. Car let’s say 550 a year (15k km a year, half of it long trips so just counting 7k changing locally). So we are saving 2.5k a year, maybe 3k, in bills.
The whole system (panels, installation, battery, etc) cost 27k total, so our mortgage is about 1.5k more a year extra (assuming 0 upfront investment) than in would be without solar.
So more than twice the size of the shelter and savings of at least 1k a year, very pessimistic calculation. Maybe as high as 6k, if we extrapolate the old costs with the size.
While I have no idea what the market is like there, here in the US, most of the desirable locations have housing price dominated by land. According to my insurer, full replacement cost of rebuilding my home on the current is less than 1/3 the cost of buying the home. Does it really matter if building code makes that replacement house a little nicer, when 2/3 the cost is the location?
It does, when that additional expense is the difference between being able to buy the home and not being able to. Or when it makes a difference in a developer’s decision to build or not build a home.
Affordable?
Electricity prices are also already out of control.
In long term, you would not be paying much on electricity, which is a saving. The upfront cost would be higher, but it is a good move imo, because retrofitting almost always has some shortcomings, like poor implementation, or unnecessary damage
It doesnt add a lot of cost, but it also doesnt help as much as you think.
In Australia its mandatory to have an (I think) 2Kw/h system installed. Which is about enough assuming its running at full tilt to power the air conditioner in the peak of summer on a small house. A mate of mine who knows a lot about solar said “2kw is about enough that your home is essentially energy neutral when you’re not in it. So the fridge, water heater, appliances on standby…”
Of course when you start talking a national scale it does add up.
maybe it is difference in cost of living, or maybe solar output, our monthly consumption in peak summer hits some 1000-1500 units (arbitrary for now), we ourselves do no thave solar (some issues right now, but fixing them) but we in theory can get 100–200 units a day here, more if pick a larger unit, so that is, almost double of our reuirements. In winters, we rarely go over 300 (we do not have centrallised heating, and electricity is used in kitchen, and heating water), with a lowered output energy (lets say 1000 units a month) we would still be thrice over.
Yeah theres a LOT of variables at play here. I saw a headline today that “Uk braces for 30C heatwave.” As an Aussie I thought “Thats cute” we regularly see summer days into the mid 40’s so you can imagine what our peak daytime drain looks like.
You guys also tend towards way smaller houses than us, significantly higher population density, generally cloudier weather, energy costs will be wildly different… so many variables.
You have to remember that without a battery, your solar generally only helps out 8 hours a day and those are usually the 8 hours when you arent home, and arent the times energy companies charge peak rates…
When my wife and I built our house and sorted our (fucking massive) solar system our consultant said "Smart appliances are your best friend. Load the washer and dryer, set them to turn on at 10am before you leave the house. Set the airconditioning to come on at about 3 in the afternoon so that you not only get home to the AC/Heat but your using energy that would otherwise go back to the grid and then once the sun goes down you’re only maintaining temp which is way less energy intensive. Home batteries are still just not cost effective enough yet for us to justify one.
Dont get me wrong, even a small solar system on every house will make a difference. Just maybe not as much as people would like to think. The one benefit of having it be mandatory (and you’re right on this one) is that every new house will se set up for it, wired in right and easily upgradable from whatever they make the minimum standard.
our peak summers reach 55-60 °C, but in uk’s case, they have additional issuee of being very humid, in whuich case, the percieved temperature is much higher.
Where i live, we have both options for solar, that is either to use batteries, or int the days, we directly use solar, and send excess back to grid, and consume from grid during nights. This is kinda battery less (you still need some smaller batteries to get consistent power rates, but batter pak size would be smaller.
that just seems to be a lot of power being wasted. but i can understand your point regarding batteries. We mostly use “dumb” appliances (read not iot devices) and mostly just control manually.
I on the other hand am actually not a huge solar fan, but mostly because we are running out of resources, good quality silicon, silver and other value metals, and cost of solar wwould actually start rising. I am more of a nuclear fan, but i undeerstand, that smaller nuclear reactors are still a thing of future, and I also kinda get why people do not like centrralised large reactors. To me, that is still the most efficient way to generate power.
Its not “wasted” financially. I dont know the rates but if 1 unit costs 50c from the grid during the day they will only pay me 10c to feed into the grid, at peak times (evenings) they want $1 from the grid and I cant contribute. If I preheat/cool my house with 5 units of energy I would have only gotten $.50 for and halve my evening usage on maintaining it from say 10 to 5 im up by $4.50
The numbers are bullshit, but you get the idea.
Also down the track a little my wife and I are looking at making one of our cars a phev so we wanted to be able to charge it at home off solar.
Along those lines, I don’t understand why there don’t seem to be thermal storage head units for heat pumps. Cheaper and more effective than batteries, at least for storing heat, plus less noise and expense as the system doesn’t have to come on as often.
Why doesn’t everyone doing solar or with time of use metering have these? Online I only found one example and it was only available in Canada
My parents had thermal storage electrical heat with time of use metering and it made a huge difference on their electrics bill. Seems like it would apply to heat pumps as well
deleted by creator
That’s the point. They want to squeeze the lower classes.