For the price you’re talking about, you could also get a system with 15 kW of panels with a good 20-30 kWh of battery storage too!
It's the regulation cost that's really hurting us.
Just the required paperwork for the permit in my region cost ~2.5k. structural engineer was 800, architecture diagram was 800, certified electrician stamp on the plans was 800.
Add in the extra cost to facilitate RSD (~5k after mlpe devices, and extra wiring) and tack on the cost for utility interconnection agreements.
Then deal with the NEC requiring UL listed items with no/very little cross certification with things like CE which effectively means you can't buy equipment from China, at least not without a US shop taking a huge markup for branding/certs.
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Overall, it's just a mess. I walked away from the project (completed, all approved) with a huge dose of skepticism for the permitting/certification/approval process.
11.2kw in panels, ~12kwh lfp battery, split phase 240v install - ~28k usd.
Of which ~10k was regulation driven, and doesn't change much by install size.
"Balcony solar" (<800W) with absolutely zero paperwork (edit: I'm wrong, still needs G99) has just arrived to the UK.
The specific exclusion of batteries too is a sop to the industry. It’s a step forward, but needs to go further.
Currently in the U.K. they have to have U.K. appeal not just standard eu approval. Hopefully this will be fixed by next year and prices will Be more reasonable.
Hopefully too regulators will Change to allow battery Storage as long as it’s not pore than 800W inverter.
Current lowest costs from national retailers that I've found (been looking today as it happens!) is City Plumbing - £336 for 475w, £480 for 1050w (panels with 800w max inverter).
Personally, I'd love to see the United States, and the rest of the world, decrease its reliance on oil. We won't get off it in any of our lifetimes, but we should move in that direction. I like diversifying. Any bit helps. Solar in Australia and Arizona. Maybe less so in northern Maine. Wind turbines where there's wind. I personally don't have any aesthetic objection to them. I think they look kind of cool. And certainly better than smokestacks. And so on.
I've been doing some advocacy work related to balcony solar mostly from a conceptual standpoint but am a renter and don't know much about the actual costs and process behind installing roof panels. I'm curious to know whether there are any low-hanging fruit we could organize around to reduce the regulatory burden on the consumer.
No need for permits for rooftop solar and the only dealings I had with the energy company was filling out an online form to register it. Took maybe 2 minutes.
From where did you source the equipment?
400V TN 3P grid with export where I am paid spot. Had to fill in a form online that got approved automatically. The energy company (separate from the grid company) automatically detected my export and started deducing the sales of solar from the bill.
The installer had to confirm the installation to the Enova government entity to release my €3k subsidy though.
I just contacted a well-reviewed solar installer and they took care of everything.
My family got an fixed three phase setup with a 12kWp, 8 kWh battery (BYD) and a Hybrid Inverter (SMA) alongside a Level 2 22 kW EV charger for a grand total of 16.000€.
My plugin solar setup was a DIY with 1kWp of panels + an 800W inverter and did cost a total of 350€, including the mounting hardware.
I did not add a battery because at the time it would have doubled the price. Also, because I have net metering the battery never pays itself off.
(My installer ended up flaking on me, and then I gave up because NEM 3.0 was coming too soon to find a fallback.)
At least you bought them 8 years ago and not 20, you could have had a 1.5kW system for the same price.
Homeowners are getting the short end, but the solar installers are doing well.
Here's a long podcast episode talking about why it's so much more expensive in the US versus Australia, with a solar expert from Australia that had just added a bunch of C&I solar here in the US:
https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-the-real-story-with-australian
Local permitting, utility fuckery, tariffs, etc. all add up.
The far lower costs in Australia are not due to executive pay, it's due to basic efficiency. Americans are doing things in horrendously wasteful ways, because the system is set to act that way, and changing our system of government is too difficult due to political infighting. One of many examples in the article:
> These things are highly optimized that companies will try to do the scheduling so they’re doing two or three jobs on the same street or in the same suburb on the same day, so they don’t have to drive across town to do the second job. If there’s a delay of a couple of days, it’s because they’re trying to make sure that they’re going to do your neighbors at the same time they’re going to do yours. The thing that costs you money in contracting is what they call truck rolls. I believe in the US there’s something like five or six truck rolls per solar installation. In Australia, it’s as few as one or two.
See also the US healthcare system. Or residential building.
What system exactly. Offices ?
> See also the US healthcare system.
The US healthcare is full of suits getting commissions and powerpoints.
> Or residential building.
Again suits and commissions.
> I'm in Europe
Wait until you hear about American Insulin.
That’s the total cost including all materials and labour from scratch to a fully functioning system.
We (northern part of Germany) installed 7 KW panels with 10 KW battery for €15K in 2024. My neighbor is installing 10 KW panels with 10 KW battery for €18K this week. So it seems the total costs have not dropped any further in the last 2 years.
Matt Ferrell just did a video on this recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3eEzdpi12I
The UK variant seems to have more traditional failure modes of "excessive charges for maintenance of communal areas": https://parliamentnews.co.uk/tales-of-intimidation-excessive... , but people are still capable of having the occasional fistfight or protracted legal dispute about the wrong kind of hedge in a more informal, adhoc way.
Just lookout for tornadoes.
This setup would cost north of $50k (possibly north of $75k, depending) if installed by contractors. Labor costs are extremely high here, since COL is extremely high.
I do wonder if having an electrician come by after the fact to inspect it counts as "supervising", though.
The exam is much harder than one might expect, but if you're reasonably competent with residential wiring, far from impossible. It covers a bunch of stuff that is irrelevant for 90% of all residental solar installs, naturally.
Free refills on soft drinks are generally still a thing in the U.S.
$30k is mad.
You mean "to have installed".
I installed 6.7kW for $12k, but did all the work myself (with a permit).
Permitting was new for me and it was tough to navigate alone, but definitely possible.
If you don't have utility approval to connect, you won't get net metering benefits, although you could offset active use (and if you had battery storage, I guess you could make it work). At least my meter doesn't run backwards, it has a count for energy in and a count for energy out. If we didn't have utility approval and had significant energy out, I'm guessing there would be questions. We have a fairly generous tarrif, and our system doesn't make sense without utility approval --- we generate on one meter and use on another meter and rely on meter aggrigation for the generation and use to offset, and they will offset 1 for 1, once the account gets fully set up.
Our utility is still offering 1 for 1 net metering for new installs (accumulated credit expires at the end of March every year) and have not proposed a new rate schedule. They say that existing connected systems will be able to remain on the current schedule indefinitely. That's the best I can do for the future at this point.
If it does change for us in a negative way, I'll have to bite the bullet and buy an electric car and charge when the sun is up. :P Hopefully negative changes happen later rather than sooner.
I got 7.6kW fully installed with inverter for $8k CAD a few years ago.
At that date I got into the feed-in-tariff scheme, and it has long since paid for itself just in cheques mailed to me by the utility.