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Every kWh your panels make from sunlight that you use immediately (or store "behind the meter"), you don't have to buy from the grid.

And not buying something tends to be cheaper than buying :)

by marcianx2 hours ago|

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Building it out and maintaining it isn't free. And per a friend who's been selling consumer solar installations for years in the North East and gotten disillusioned: the equipment maintenance, repairability, and replacement story isn't great at the company they last worked at and results in a lot of environmental waste. One of the reasons they left. Of course, this is just second-hand information - I don't personally have much intuition for how widespread the issue is.

by blackjack_2 hours ago|

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Every gallon of gas you use was produced far away, shipped halfway around the world for processing, and shipped back to you. Even if you are in the US, we basically don’t have the equipment to process our own gasoline from the crude we produce.

This means that millions and millions of machines have to be maintained, shipping lanes have to stay open, infrastructure has to stay profitable, distribution has to stay easy and cheap. The web is invisible to the end user, but it is massively complicated and expensive to upkeep.

Solar, once you have the panels you have to clean them every once in a while, and replace a failing panel every once in a while. But they produce for ~30 years after being made once.

So it’s funny to argue about environmental waste in this way. It’s an issue, but everything in a solar panel can basically be recycled and we are seeing the facilities start to come online as the first wave of PV panels starts dying off.

by jimbokun1 hours ago|

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All of that is still much better than for fossil fuels.

by rcxdude2 hours ago|

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Residential solar doesn't make that much sense from a system point of view - it's a lot more expensive than utility grade solar for the same amount of energy, but with the way the energy market works retail electricity prices are much higher than wholesale prices and that makes the upside of rooftop solar a lot bigger for consumers.