A friend was complaining about his electricity bill. He said, "With all this the heat this summer, I've been running the air conditioner a lot and the electricity bill is through the roof."
He knows me well and before I could even say it, he said, "I know, speaking of my roof, I should put solar panels up there, right?"
"Well, yeah," I said. "It makes more energy during the sunny summer months, so production scales up and down well with AC use; keeping the electric bill pretty flat with even a modestly sized solar system."
Him: "I might do it someday. Last time I looked, it was too expensive."
Me: "I'd check again. The prices have been dropping and there are incentives that can help pay for it. I'd get a quote from Tesla, Sunrun, and at least one other installer."
Him: "It would be cool to get home batteries too. We don't lose power often, but last winter we did and we had to go stay with my in-laws for a couple of days. I'd pay a lot to avoid doing that again, haha."
This conversation made me think of an expression, “The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.” In a lot of ways, our home is part of that unevenly distributed future. We have 2 long-range EVs in the garage, we have solar panels on the roof, and batteries to time-shift our energy use and back up for grid outages. Each one is great on its own, but when you put them together, they have positive compounding effects that allow you do even more.
Batteries are the most expensive component in an EV. Solar and EVs will be the obvious choice by 2030 (if not sooner). Wright's Law and Swanson's Law provide positive feedback loops for these technologies. Prices will continue to drop for solar and batteries; opening a larger market for them; further increasing economies of scale, further reducing costs, rinse and repeat.
So in 2030, if your roof has sun exposure, you can be assured, you'll have solar up there and if you are shopping for a new car in 2030, an internal combustion vehicle will be harder to find than a stick shift transmission is today in 2021.
Disclosure: I'm long Tesla.
Speaking of solar panels, one thing I have noticed more over the last few years is how few new houses/developments in our area have them, and I think more importantly, plan for them. So much of the new construction, high density or not, has rooflines that are shaped/aligned/pitched (how many dormers does one house need?) in such a way as to make adding them awkward and much less efficient. It strikes me that a city planning rule of some sort could mandate/incentivize developers to consider these things at the time of construction, so even if solar panels are not there day one, they could be a meaningful option in the future.
ReplyDeleteVery true. It is easy to plan for solar (and EV charging) in new construction by pre-installing wiring conduits and the like.
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