Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians.
Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan.
It makes 7.72Mwh per year, worth $1000. Tight valley, tons of snow. We put that on the loan for 8 years, then get $1000 per year free money for 20 years or so. Biggest no brainer of all time.
Dad in Victoria Australia just got 10.6kw fully installed and operational for $4000 AUD. ($2,700 USD)
Australia has so much electricity during the day they’re talking about making I free for everyone in the middle of the day.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-03/energy-retailers-offe...
> Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians.
It would be worth including control of the people who vote for the politicians by direct investment such as when the oil producing Saudis bought the second largest stake in NewCorps which controls FoxNews controlling the content that influences voters. And, less than ethical control using bots on social media by Russia.
A lot of what influences "solar prices in the US" is controlled by foreign oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia controlling content and media consumed by American voters.
I agree wholeheartedly, and the technocrats are complicit with the GOP here.
It's funny how “free markets” keep producing the most expensive solar prices in the developed world. Don't get me started on Healthcare (I just moved back to the U.S. a couple years ago after 18 years in Canada, what a cluster*ck).
Oil and gas buy politicians, foreign oil money buys media influence, and social-media bots keep voters angry at the wrong targets.
Saudi capital helps shape the messaging, Russia helps amplify the noise, and Americans get stuck paying more for clean energy while being told it’s patriotic.
But hey, Make America Great Again, right?
>Solar prices in the US are criminal, protecting oil and gas who bought all the politicians. >Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan.
This very well may be true, but taken at face value Canada seems to be paying you around $7k to install solar panels on your roof (that's 8k interest free loan is losing out to inflation + any interest it would have earned).
Definitely a great deal if you own a home, if I was a renter/condo owner I'd be annoyed that everyone is subsidizing your free solar however.
> Definitely a great deal if you own a home, if I was a renter/condo owner I'd be annoyed that everyone is subsidizing your free solar however.
What kind of selfish point of view is this? Don't you want people to use energy sources that are better for our entire world, even if it costs you like $10 more in taxes per year? Seems like a no brainer deal if you like "the outside" and you want it to still be there.
I'm a renter, been all my life, I'd be happy to pay more in taxes if it means more solar panels for everyone except me. But I also feel the same about elder care, health care and a bunch of other things, do you feel the same for those things too, or this is specifically about solar or owning vs renting?
>I'm a renter, been all my life, I'd be happy to pay more in taxes if it means more solar panels for everyone except me.
That's because you're rich like most people on HN.
Environmental protection is a luxury good. This has been proven time and time again.
A great reason to prioritize growth and wealth creation. Poor countries don't make those tradeoffs, they're worried about survival not what percentage of their energy usage is renewable.
Solar is so cheap now that it's booming even in poorer countries. The most remarkable recent example is Pakistan, which has seen explosive growth of rooftop solar power, most of it receiving no government subsidies:
Pakistan has imported almost 45 gigawatts worth of solar panels over the last five or six years, which is equal to the total capacity of its electricity grid. Almost 34 gigawatts have come in only in the last couple of years.
It’s a very bottom-up revolution. This is not government deciding this is the route to take. And it’s not being driven by climate concerns, it’s all about the economics. Renewables are out-competing the traditional sources of energy.
> That's because you're rich like most people on HN.
Probably, but I also haven't been rich all my life, I've also been broke and borderline homeless, and my point of view of paying taxes so others get helped, hasn't changed since then. In fact, probably the reason my perspective is what it is, is because money like that has helped me when I was poor, and I'd like to ensure we continue doing that for others.
And I agree, poor countries can't afford to think about "luxury problems" like the pollution in the world, but since we're talking about people living in such countries where we can afford about these problems, lets do that, so the ones who can't, don't have to. Eventually they'll catch up, and maybe at that point we can make it really easy for them to transition to something else?
> A great reason to prioritize growth and wealth creation. Poor countries don't make those tradeoffs, they're worried about survival not what percentage of their energy usage is renewable.
Tell that to places like Pakistan where solar is allowing people to have cheaper electricity without connecting to the grid
As a renter, I'm moderately more in favor of utility-scale solar subsidies rather than subsidizing private solar. It seems like another way to make the arrangement more "fair" is to subsidize private solar, but credit the grid up to the original grant's amount. In other words, in the GP's case, they would only get $1000/year in free money for 15 years instead of 20.
(This is very low on my list of things that I care about, to be clear.)
>I'm a renter, been all my life, I'd be happy to pay more in taxes if it means more solar panels for everyone except me. But I also feel the same about elder care, health care and a bunch of other things, do you feel the same for those things too, or this is specifically about solar or owning vs renting?
There's an alternative, and almost certainly cheaper per watt with cost of scale, where your tax dollars go to a new solar farm instead, something everyone could take advantage of.
Why not both? One works better for people not living in cities, and the other one better for high-density areas.
>One works better for people not living in cities
It's not as if homes outside of cities have their own diesel generators to power their house.
(Since I'm guessing from this line of comments you'll point out the less than 1% of people who actually do do this, maybe it's better to focus only the 99% here).
There is nothing more unjust than forcing someone to buy something they do not want simply because you think it would be good for them.
> Seems like a no brainer deal
This is opinion, not fact. I happen to share your opinion, but enshrining opinions in law is almost always going to violate someone’s consent.
> There is nothing more unjust than forcing someone to buy something they do not want simply because you think it would be good for them.
Who said that? Taxes are what you pay to be a member of the society you live, and also to help those less fortunate, like your neighbors. You can skip paying those, if you stop living in society, many done that before, and it is still possible.You can't possibly see taxes as "forcing someone to buy something they do not want" right? Two completely different things.
And yes, this is all my opinion, like most comments on HN.
> This is opinion, not fact
Not OP, but it wasn't presented as a fact. Literally used the word Seams.
> There is nothing more unjust than forcing someone to buy something they do not want simply because you think it would be good for them
Seatbelts? Circuit breakers? Literally any safety equipment. You're required to have them because it's not just good for you, but expensive to society if hospital beds are low or there's not enough firetrucks to go around.
Similarly, if you're polluting more than you have to be due to the source of your electricity, that's bad for everyone. I also rent, but I still understand that it's to the public's benefit that home owners (a class that is already above me in assets and wealth) be given motivation to consume cleaner energy if I don't want to have the climate get even worse. It's the same thing, just the effects feel less direct. That doesn't make them any less valid.
I feel like it's worse to force someone to buy something they do not want, knowing full well it's going to materially harm them
We are in agreement.
If you're a renter/condo then you're probably getting excess solar generation delivered to you from homeowners with nearby solar roofs. So presumably there is some benefit to you in terms of cheap generation.
> if I was a renter/condo owner I'd be annoyed that everyone is subsidizing your free solar however.
You probably wouldn’t. I hear more people complaining about hypothetical government spending than actual government spending.
> if I was a renter/condo owner I'd be annoyed that everyone is subsidizing your free solar however.
As a non car owner are you annoyed everyone gets subsidized roads?
Are you annoyed corn farmers get subsidies for growing corn?
Would you be annoyed if people got subsidized life saving health care?
It feels like the US can’t have nice things because people are hell bent on others not having nice things.
What a shame.
> As a non car owner are you annoyed everyone gets subsidized roads?
Yes, and people should be annoyed by this given the underfunding, poor urban planning, and outright hostility by many local governments against anything that dares encroach on the sanctity of car culture.
>Yes, and people should be annoyed by this
So you do not use busses,taxi or road travel? do you fly all the time? Do you have stuff delivered by truck/cars or only by air? What about shopping? do you think the items you buy or the things needed to make those items use roads ? In a perfect extremist capitalist word there would be a road tax included in the products and services so you would still pay the text for the roads.
No, in a perfect world, there would be a use tax, and those doing the delivery would pay the cost, and then pass that cost on to you. You might have meant it that way, but it sounded more like a gov. imposed tax based on the price of goods or something.
Why are you acting like subsidizing a homeowners free power is like any of these?
If I instead phrase it as "I'd rather subsidize someone's health care than pay for your free electricity", would that help you understand that there tends to be a priority system when spending tax dollars?
You don't have infinite tax dollars to spend after all.
Yes, yes, and yes. Is it an intentional mischaracterization to conflate not wanting wealth redistribution with “others not having nice things”?
“others not having nice things” is a superset of “others not having unearned nice things”.
Yeah, truly awful. Unlimited electricity that barely contaminates, and at the lowest possible cost for everyone. Just terrible.
Be less annoyed because utility demand declines.
Canada is blessed with cheap energy, the abundance of hydro surely helps to bridge any intermittency other renewables have. I lived there 10 years back, your energy is less than half the cost of mine in Scotland. In Scotland's case we're part of the UK and the rest of the UK is less blessed with the geography for hydro. The incumbent Scottish government also has an anti stance to nuclear.
I hope the incentives for cleaner energy continue to stack up. With the surge in demand from AI surely productivity will be more tightly coupled with energy usage and cost.
Everything that I learned about energy in Scotland comes from Still Game, so I must ask -- how many bars?
"One bar's plenty!"
"Victor, it's gratis, get the three bloody bars on."
3 bars? gonnae no dae that.
Related to UK energy I read this interesting article on transmission congestion between Scotland and England and how this is increasing energy costs due to curtailment of renewables.
https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/transmission-network-unavailability...
TL;DR - Until new interconnectors between Scotland and England are finished in 2029, there will be significant curtailment of Scottish wind power which increases costs.
This is also an interesting site for seeing curtailment per wind farm - https://windtable.co.uk/data?farm=Seagreen
It has been a long standing problem.
Ideas crop up like generating hydrogen with the curtailed energy or maybe at least in Winter, use it for heat generation. The problem would seem to be the capex and the inverse of intermittency being the problem for them in utilising that energy, i.e. waiting for curtailment.
At least with available hydro you can pump water back up hill using a reliable and cheap tech.
I find it fascinating that we have not identified a use for almost free intermittent electricity. You'd think there would be plenty of things to do, but it seems like with the capex investment things like smelting etc need to always be running. Maybe electric car charging can come to the rescue? But even there people need their cars charged usually at certain fixed moments.
Agree. It seems to be a fairly unique problem that intermittent energy sources introduce.
Charging batteries definitely seems like part of the solution and electricity tariffs that adapt to wholesale costs on a shorter time basis help incentivise it. There are times over weekends/holidays where the wholesale price enters negative territory, essentially paying you to charge your battery.
Creating hydrogen to burn is inefficient vs that kind of thing but at least acts as a battery itself, though there's costs/problems in storing it.
And the general problem of how long do you need to store energy vs what the weather forecast may be.
It seems like it's not a solved problem and it'd be exciting to move towards a point where it is. Hard to believe in the 50's they thought nuclear would solve everything and would be "too cheap to meter"
The UK will perpetually have "issues" that lead to higher pricing. We just put up and pay. It is unspoken energy policy to be expensive
Oh no we messed up nuclear oops sorry made it very expensive. Pay up
Oops sorry we messed up transmission pay up
Oops sorry we let people get into huge energy debt pls pay off their debt in your bill...
There is enough wind potential in Europe to power the world [1]. Combined with interconnects to Europe and battery storage, there is no reason power costs can't be driven down. To not do so is a lack of will. Scotland currently generates a surplus of renewables [2], exported. kieranmaine's sibling comment citations dives into the lack of will part.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722022 (citations)
[2] In Scotland, Renewable Power Has Outstripped Demand - https://e360.yale.edu/digest/scotland-renewable-energy-100-p... - January 30th, 2024
(at the rate it takes to deploy transmission, might as well start dropping TBMs in the ground and let them grind towards each other from interconnect landings, potentially faster than the approval grind, complaints from locals about land use and right of ways, etc)
The Greener Homes Grant and Greener Homes Loan you describe have ended, but the 160% tarrif on imported solar panels remains. Solar prices in Canada are still quite expensive, and regulations are needlessly strict. Solar fencing is illegal in many jurisdictions, balcony solar is illegal everywhere, and utility-scale solar is effectively prohibited in the regions with the most sunlight.
Solar production in Canada will continue to grow, but we're not doing nearly as much as Europe to encourage it.
Some provincial grants remain ($5k in BC last time I checked), but yes - Canada can and should do more. Balcony solar seems like such an easy win. Hopefully tariffs get dropped now that we’re talking to China again. And federal Liberals could force municipalities and provinces to reduce some of the red tape surrounding solar installations. Come on Canada, unlocking clean energy shouldn’t have to be a fight!
> Dad in Victoria Australia just got 10.6kw fully installed and operational for $4000 AUD. ($2,700 USD)
How the heck are the panels even installed and connected for that price? That's about 25 panels, IIRC. What about the installation material and the ac/dc converter?
And that on-roof-solar helps (as it becomes widespread) mitigate the growing need for additional grid capacity. Canada is a big country and, outside the major cities, upgrading grid capacity is quite expensive per capita. It's a win-win in Canada, investing in self-sufficiency while reducing the maintenance burden of infrastructure.
It may slightly help with capacity, but it causes bigger problems financially. Even if a home uses next to no power, it still must be connected to the grid. The total number of such homes ends up meaning a lot of power lines, transformer stations, monitoring equipment, and people to do all the work.
If you have all of that expense, and suddenly people have solar panels so pay $0 for an energy bill - do you see the problem? The actual cost of fuel/generation is very small compared to the fixed costs.
The more people use solar, the more in the red the utility becomes. You can 'fix' this by making it so every home has a fixed 'connection cost' and then a smaller 'usage cost' on top, but that destroys the incentive for solar panels - they'd never break even for the average buyer.
Solar is great, fantastic even. But it should be done centrally, or people will have to get used to the idea that they will never pay themselves off and are just doing it for the environment.
The term you're circling is "grid defection".
> must be connected to the grid.
That's a legislative problem. If a home can prove it can produce enough electricity for itself, it should not be forced to be connected.
> You can 'fix' this by making it so every home has a fixed 'connection cost' and then a smaller 'usage cost' on top
A lot of places already do this.
It's not a legal problem. The reality is that the vast majority of homes with solar must be connected to the grid because that's how they're wired and designed. You can do a completely off-grid approach, but it's more expensive and requires large batteries. Most people just do the simple panels and don't have any intention of going off-grid.
Also: Even if half of a neighborhood doesn't need the connection, the work ends up being similar. It's more based on distance/area.
That is an interesting theory, but it doesn’t work like that in reality.
Australia is giving free power to everyone during the day because they have so much.
More solar is a great thing.
If there is no in-house storage to match, how does it help the grid? It is still needed for cold winter nights, where demand is high and solar panels produce nothing. Hydro can provide the power, but the grid will be running at full load.
Most houses in Canada are heated with natural gas. I'm not negating your overall comment, but in general, cold nights don't strain the grid because of heating needs.
Latest Data Shows the Rapid Growth of Heat Pumps in Canada - https://www.theenergymix.com/latest-data-shows-the-rapid-gro... - November 5th, 2025
(still good news, as most of Canada's electric generation is low carbon hydro, and the rest of fossil generation can be pushed out with storage and renewables, although I do not have a link handy by province how much fossil generation needs to be pushed out)
cold winters aren't as bad for the grid as you might expect because the cold keeps the power lines cold which lets you pump more power through them.
in-house storage helps, but net-metering and grid-storage also works
450W-500W solar panels are as low as 52€ here in Germany if you buy a couple of them. Batteries are also very affordable and I look forward to them getting a lot cheaper soon, thanks to Sodium-Ion.
The panel price doesn't matter. It's the installation and the surroundings (electrical setup, converter, battery) that determine the price nowadays.
The price of panels is falling so fast I don’t think anyone truly understands.
I paid nearly double that for our 450w panels 18 months ago.
They are cheaper than fencing material, and will continue to decline in price.
And, credit where credit is due, it's all thanks to China.
The one country that still produces goods rather than switching to complete financialization!
"How are you so successful?" "Oh, well, we build you know. It's a dying art. Have you tried it?"
2022-11-28 - “About 2.6 million Uyghur and Kazakh people have been subjected to coercion, “re-education programs” and internment in the Xinjiang region of north-west China, which is the source of 40-45% of the world’s solar-grade polysilicon. A report by the United Nations office of the high commissioner for human rights three months ago found Xinjiang was home to “serious human rights violations”, and the US has listed polysilicon from China as a material likely to have been produced by child or forced labour.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/29/evidence...
2024-08-27 - Indian solar panels face US scrutiny for possible links to China forced labor
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indian-solar-panels-...
2025-04-30 - Human Rights in the Life Cycle of Renewable Energy and Critical Minerals
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/c...
The US has forced [1] and child [2] labor as well. It's certainly not welcome, but context is important when casting the first stone.
[1] Forced prison labor in the “Land of the Free” - https://www.epi.org/publication/rooted-racism-prison-labor/ - January 16th, 2025
[2] [US] Child labor law violations are at their highest in decades. - https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2024/05/01/... - May 1st, 2024
(staunchly anti child and forced labor to be clear)
I mean I don't exactly have great news for you about the human rights situations in major oil-producing countries either. Not to do whataboutism, but if your energy source is going to implicate you in human rights abuses either way, you might as well take the clean renewable one.
>Canada here. 7.6kw on our roof for $0 out of pocket thanks to $5k grant and $8k interest free loan.
€13.000 for this still seems expensive.
Are there tariffs on Chinese PV in Canada?
Most rooftop install costs are labor. The PV is now a minimal slice of it. Which is why mandating solar on new construction is such an important policy: don't make two sets of laborers clamber around the same roof.
13k CAD is €8.000
>Australia has so much electricity during the day they’re talking about making I free for everyone in the middle of the day.
Not just talking about it, if you get a smart meter and sign up for a plan that matches the grid rates you can actually be paid to take electricity during the day right now.
If you're wondering "couldn't you just make bank with a battery" yes you can. In fact Australia dominates the world in grid connected storage (per capita) and this chart itself is actually out of date (it's growing even faster than shown).
https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/top-20-countries-by-ba...
I'll also point out that gas and oil generation has declined rapidly.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-rise-of-battery-storage-and-...
For anyone that thinks renewables can't phase out peaker plants it happens very naturally and rapidly once there's enough solar to set rates negative in the day.
The quotes for solar on my home in the US ranged between $40,000 (local company) and $120,000 (Tesla). How did you get solar installed for only $13,000?
And that's $1000 per year at today's energy prices, which surely will go up over time.
One could hope with improving tech and decreasing regulations we could have decreasing (nominal) energy prices in the future. That would be progress.
We'll most likely see off-peak or dispatchable-demand energy prices become effectively negligible due to cheap intermittent sources, but the price for reliable 24/7 supply will if anything trend higher. Storage is not enough to bridge the gap in all cases, so you need either very expensive peaker plants or less expensive nuclear to provide a reliable baseload supply for those critical uses.
The baseload framing is increasingly outdated. What grids need isn't constant supply - it's flexible supply that matches variable demand. Solar + batteries handle daytime and evening peaks well. Wind fills different gaps. The remaining "firmness" problem (extended low-wind, low-sun periods) is real but smaller than baseload thinking suggests. Most studies show you can get to 80-90% renewables before you hit hard storage limits. The last 10-20% is the expensive part, but that's a different problem than needing baseload for everything.
And HVDC long haul offsets a lot of those problems as well and is more effective than storage.
Demand is rising very fast compared to supply, I don't think that will happen.
Energy is like RAM or clockspeed: you can't have enough of it.
> decreasing (nominal) energy prices in the future
Hasn't happened ever before, not sure why this time it would be different.
They’re already locked in approved to go up at least 6% a year here. It just went up 16% this year for people out of town.
US also tariffs Chinese EV makers out of the US market so they can keep peddling the fiction that EV sucks or China can't build anything we can't.
This has the same corrupt nexus with the anti-renewable mantra. Essentially subsidize oil and gas under the table and punish renewables then tell the electorate that the latter is worse than the former.
Instead of giving Americans free choice American automakers pay American politicians to prop up their uncompetitive prices and subpar offerings. All while they take in huge private profits. American workers could work on foreign automobiles, just as they do with other automakers not from China. It's not about workers, it's not about national security. You don't even have to go into all the environmental concerns that of course disproportionately affect poorer individuals.
It's corporate welfare. And yes, it should be criminal. At the very least, if the American people are going to inflate CEOs salaries they should have seats on the board.
This is actually not a wild idea. You might be surprised to find who one of the largest shareholders of the Volkswagen group is. It's not like that is an obviously mismanaged socialist hellhole company, it's a perfectly competitive and well regarded car company.
Americans need to start demanding more equity or oversight in operations their governments are already paying for. The fact most Americans think this amounts to communism just means more people have to call out the money is already flowing.
I’m really happy Canada just dropped the Chinese EV tariffs.
What? No Canada isn't cheap solar power -- last I checked rooftop ballasted solar is a 12-14 year payback on avoided costs. Inverter will go beforehand and that excludes any op costs. 8k$ free loan doesn't really provide as much value as you would think.
FWIW - I am all for solar but selling rooftop solar in canada as cheap and no-brainer is false.
3-4 year payback would be a no brainer. 8-13 year payback with an inverter upgrade and op-costs is definitely a decision that needs to be thought out.
The grid you are offsetting is fairly green to begin with so the net benefit is marginal.
If you are going to be isolated and put backup power into the equation. You ROI tanks further but at least you have about a day or two worth of energy in the storage asset.
Largely agree, with one big nitpick.
Canada is a massive exporter of electricity to the USA. The more clean energy CND produces the more there is to displace North East's coal.
Of course, solar on Canadians' roof is a joke. A proper regulatory regime would encourage solar in Arizona and encourage lettuce Canada; not vice versa.
I don't disagree but the major energy being exported is from hydro or nuclear. It isn't coming off rooftop even at the margins. Rooftop solar is purely residential play.
If you are trying to argue that in aggregate the demand for energy in canada drops because of high adoption of residential solar which then passes off clean energy to the US - its a reach. Also the amount of individual infra for each small residential asset is probably not particularly great return on investment - would be better to do as large deployments.
Anything under $2.25/watt would put it within under a 4 year payback period, Alberta has good rates for solar. Rooftop solar doesn't have operating costs that I can think of unless you want to clean them and clear snow which is optional. And inverters usually have a 20-25 year warranty.
You know, when I was researching my system and if it would be worthwhile there were literally dozens and dozens of people who were adamant it couldn’t work here. Too much snow, too tight a valley, electricity already kinda cheap.
I went ahead anyway because I’m a “I’d rather have hard numbers than speculation“ person, and it was literally $0 of my money.
Here we are 18 months later. I have all the hard data, numbers and proof that this system will cost me $0 in the short term, make me over $20,000 in the long term, requires no maintenance and is great.
And yet there are still people like you telling me it can’t work.
I’m proving it does, very well. Panel prices are falling so fast your “last time I looked into it” is woefully out of date.
Why are you denying reality?
Talking about hard numbers without a real "hard number" in your comment. 0$ upfront - how much did you pay for the system / what is the size of the system / whats your azimuth and what are you paying for electricity currently. Its super easy to run the math on this stuff - not rocket science - theres even a free to use API that generates your monthly production estimates.
I run energy modeling - I ran the numbers last month with the new programs and newest panel prices. 12-14 years without any op costs and a 3% per year escalator on electricity. You can get it down to 8 years if you have a great spot without having to put on ballasts but it isn't braindead yes for everyone (especially if they have to watch their money).
Almost identical array in the states (7.8kw) — $25K out of pocket, down to about $12K after state and federal tax incentives.
Still made sense financially, pays for itself after ~8 years and the panels are warrantied for 30... but we're seriously lagging.
There's a similar phenomenon with heat pump systems. Installation costs are absolutely absurd.
What is the underlying reason in the US though? You would think if they are artificially inflated prices the market would fix that. What I’ve found is that a large part of the cost is the actual labor for the installation, how are other developed countries getting around this?
Mostly by giving people free money to install them so they go on the internet to say how cheap they are.
That might be cheaper than grid upgrades though. Even though some people might get upset that somebody else is getting something for free.
It's mostly due to higher "soft costs" such as complicated/slow permitting and high customer acquisition costs. Australia has a higher minimum wage but much lower costs to get a rooftop system installed.
"How to cut U.S. residential solar costs in half"
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/07/11/how-to-cut-u-s-reside...
Birch points to Australia, where he said the average 7 kW solar array with a 7 kW battery costs $14,000. That equates to $2.02 per W, with batteries included.
“You can sell it on Tuesday and install it on Wednesday, there’s no red tape, no permitting delays,” said Birch.
...
In the United States, that same solar and battery installation averages $36,000, said Birch. Permitting alone can take two to six months, and the cost per watt of a solar plus storage installation is up to 2.5 times the Australian price, landing at $5.18 per W.
Those numbers for Australia are very out of date.
My Dad in Australia just got 10.6kw fully installed and running for $4,000 AUD
We have similar problem with prices being high despise renewable energy being cheap ;/
It's not always a no-brainer. If you live in a good established neighborhood in a warmer climate you'd have to remove tree coverage. Even if you did that, it's the other guys not oil or gas that will make it a hassle.
New panels are much less impacted by shade. Friends out of town just installed the same setup as ours, didn’t want to cut down three monster Doug firs shading their roof in summer.
Made 6.9Mwh in 2025, only just less than ours with no shade at all.
I mean physics would dictate that shade impacts performance but if you are able to break the laws of physics I am impressed!
Shade on older solar systems would impact energy production disproportionally. You would typically see dramatic reductions like 50%-80% reduced output due to 10-20% shade. New shade-tolerant solar systems are closer to being proportional.
This is because a string of panels in series are limited by the weakest link — if one panel is fully shaded, it blocks electricity flow through it, and therefore through the whole string. Bypass diodes mitigate that to some extent. But with electronics costs still falling, it's now possible to use more smaller inverters to connect the solar array to the grid, each one with its own separate string, or even an individual panel.
And bifacial panels with higher efficiency were invented to work around that physics.
Real numbers don’t lie.
No one works around physics. You work with physics or you don't work.
What you are describing is adding more solar capability to counter act the shade. Also the other part of it is that the panels work in parallel/not in series or alternatively don't dis activate as many conversion points as possible.
Physics never lies - they are the only laws that you cannot break.
Houses where the roof is completely in the shade from trees? That's not a very common sight.
Missing from your calculus is the cost of creating, cleaning, maintaining and eventually replacing the hardware. None of that is "free" - it is merely externalized to a vulnerable population or to your future self.
Missing from your calculus are the healthcare costs of every person in a country breathing in fumes from electricity plants that burn coal and fumes from cars that burn gasoline.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266675922...
(And a gazillion other studies.)
Not supporting OP because I think hes backwards on the matter. However in Canada the electricity that is being burned isn't coal based - so you need to compare the actual grid not some hypothetical grid.
The misplaced aggression and confusion is actually hilarious. We have reached a religion-level fervor by daring to question the economics of energy.
You are being very aggressive and confrontational in your comments and people are responding in kind.
Not really. People are angry because it is likely their first time hearing a contrarian narrative about solar energy, which likely challenges their own sunk-cost fallacy as solar panel owners.
Everything needs to be created, cleaned, maintained, and eventually replaced. You are acting like this is some sort of surprise.
I have roof top solar. I have never had to clean or maintain them in any way. Same with my friends who have roof top solar. The worst I’ve heard of is a microinverter failing, which was covered by warranty.
My gut response to your post was also aggression, not because you’re preaching uncomfortable truths, but because you’re repeating fossil fuel lobbyist talking points that I’m getting really tired of seeing all over social media.
They're trolling and people keep feeding them so they keep posting.
I'd disagree the fervor is religious.
I think it's more frustration. Pointing out there is a maintenance cost to infrastructure is silly and doesn't add to the discussion.
We all know materials have to be shaped into machines to extract energy.
Simply ask to quantify the cost of shaping those materials into machinery, respective to other means of energy production. You will be met with hostility and scorn, accused of all sorts of improprieties, and ejected from the tribe, without ever receiving a data-supported answer.
The vagueness of your statement makes it impossible to discern any actual point outside of some broad anger/frustration packaged as humor.
Canada's alternative energy source is very rarely coal (no where near me at least) but a lot of the grid capacity is coming from LNG outside of ON/QC. BC has a bunch of rivers and other water features but has been highly reluctant to build out hydro supply, as an example.
Unlike the UK (which mothballed and eventually tore down its coal power stations) there is still a whole bunch of coal power online in Canada.
Lingan Generating Station would be a typical example. Big thermal power station, built to burn local coal, realistically the transition for them is to non-coal thermal power, burning LNG or Oil, or trees or whatever else can be set on fire. If they burned trash (which isn't really a practical conversion, but it's a hypothetical) we could argue that's renewable because it's not like there won't be trash, but otherwise this is just never going to be a renewable power source.
Canada is a huge place, so I don't doubt that none those coal stations are near you (unless, I suppose, you literally live next to Lingan or a similar plant but just aren't very observant) but most of us aren't self-sufficient and so we do need to pay attention to the consequences far from us.
>there is still a whole bunch of coal power online in Canada.
Ontario, Quebec, BC and Alberta, the four largest provinces by population and a heady percentage of the land area, have zero coal power generation facilities.
Ontario is mostly nuclear supported by hydro, with an absolute fallback of natural gas. Quebec is overwhelmingly hydro + wind. BC is mostly hydro. Alberta is mostly non-renewables like natural gas, but phased out its last coal plants.
If someone is in Canada, odds are extremely high that there is no coal plant anywhere in their jurisdiction. I also wouldn't say that there is a whole bunch of coal power online -- they're an extreme exception now.
To me "a bunch" is when it'd be tedious to list them. For a few years the UK had few enough that you could list their names, then gradually four, three, two, one, none. Canada as a whole isn't in that place yet, though it doesn't have plans to build more of these plants and they will gradually reach end of life or transition to burning something else.
Coal isn't one of the "convenient" fossil fuels where you might choose to run electrical generation off this fuel rather than figure out how to deliver electricity to a remote site, coal is bulky and annoying. Amundsen Scott (the permanent base at the South Pole, IMO definition of remote) runs on JP-8 (ie basically kerosene, jet fuel), some places use gasoline or LNG. I don't expect hold outs in terms of practicality for coal, it's just about political will.
That's a fair point, though I think OP's recommendation to switch to solar is also to people outside Canada and most of the world is still burning fossil fuels to generate electricity.
OP probably shouldn't have been replying to a Canada based question.
Especially when they are offshored to China. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01308-x
Roof maintenance is a need in Canada regardless of the presence of solar. Solar roofs do demand additional maintenance but the benefits over relying on natural gas for power (which is the alternative in Canada outside ON/QC) is worth it.
I will stand by your statement from the philosophical point of view that nothing in life is free and everything has its trade offs - but this is a pretty clear positive. In addition, Canada has pretty decent workplace safety enforcement for the sort of workers that'd be doing the maintenance - it certainly isn't perfect but it is something that Canadians seem to find important.
Panels have warranties of over twenty years now. They pay for themselves much earlier. You probably have to replace the inverter earlier, but that’s not a huge expense. I don’t know anybody who lives in a place where it rains who cleans the panels on their roof.
Oh, okay. Does a warranty cover sweeping snow off your panels and washing them many times throughout the years? I guess if one does not value time, then solar panels could be considered "free" - but this is a bizarre sacrifice.
Lies. I'm using solar panels since 2022, still producing same peak energy and not cleaned them once. Some companies/electricians will try to sell you a cleaning and maintenance service for ~80-100EUR/year here but it's basically throwing money.
I live in a fairly arid place (Bay Area) where it rains in winter but gets quite dry and dusty in the summer. I've had rooftop solar since 2016 and have noticed that generation decreases by as much as 8-10% when the panels are covered in summer dust.
I wonder if it's worth setting up a sort of sprinkler system so you can easily clean it by opening a valve. Maybe add a pipe with some holes in it to the top of the panel, and some flexible hose to hook it up to the next one.
Where are you getting this maintenance schedule from?
I haven’t touched ours, they are clean and have been going fine with zero maintenance, though admittedly it’s only been a year.
> I haven’t touched ours, they are clean and have been going fine with zero maintenance, though admittedly it’s only been a year.
> Where are you getting this maintenance schedule from?
The solar panel owner does not know the required maintenance they are now permanently responsible for. Ibid, your honor.
You’re being extremely argumentative all over the comments to this story. Do you yourself own any solar panels? Your ceaseless naysaying constantly contradicts people’s lived experience (including mine) as owners.
Focus on solutions, not trying to be right. It’s aggravating.
> Your ceaseless naysaying constantly contradicts people’s lived experience (including mine) as owners.
Also, like, every study on this matter. The efficiency drop from being dirty for vaguely modern solar panels is _tiny_; below 5% and potentially below 1%.
They are clean, I can see that and could wipe them if I needed to. The power output is the same.
Where are you getting this maintenance schedule of yours from?
> Where are you getting this maintenance schedule of yours from?
Their "Anti-Solar Talking Points" handbook from Big Oil.
As above, cleaning solar panels is generally close to pointless.
I got solar panels installed two years ago and I've washed them once. I'm still getting great production. Are you trying to convince yourself that maintaining solar panels is difficult? Because it isn't.
> I got solar panels installed two years ago
> I've washed them once.
> I'm still getting great production.
Thank you for reiterating my point.
Washing solar panels _at all_ would be fairly unusual, and arguably pretty pointless, particularly given they're so cheap now; you're looking at, optimistically, a 5% efficiency improvement, but many studies say more like 1% in practice.
If you're in a place that gets significant snowfall such that they're often covered then production during winter is likely to be fairly marginal anyway, so may not be worth your while.
You don't bother with the snow. Winter is low production energy due to the suns positioning - it melts in the spring and your back to producing. Most solar power is between march - september anyways.
Why do you think that level of maintenance is needed?
I’ve had the system 18 months now. I’ve never once cleared snow or washed them. We get tons of snow.
Zero maintenance.
Solar panels last practically forever. Despite the official lifetimes of 25-30 years, that was a conservative estimate for budgeting purposes, and they're still working after that time, with moderately reduced efficiency (around 70-80%).
I've had my system for 10 years and maintenance has literally been 0. Rain and snow clean the panels. Panels themselves warrantied for 30 years but will likely last longer.
Roof-based panels also take on some roof wear, increasing longevity of roofing as well.
Yeah of course solar is cheap if you get everyone else to pay for it.
Encouraging. However, it isn't clear from the article at first glance (or the deeper analysis being referenced) how electricity consumption by power source is changing.
In other words, as an example, a 10% increase in solar power generation does not necessarily mean that there was a 10% increase in electricity consumption where that electricity was generated via solar.
Every time, over the years, that there has been some kind of headline saying renewables have overtaken fossil fuels, when you look at it a bit more closely there is always a big 'but'. For example, it was compared to coal (not taking into account electricity from gas), or it was for one day, or it was a percentage of new installations, or it excludes winter, includes nuclear etc.
This time, however, it looks like it's actually true and that's just for wind and solar. This is incredible, and done through slowly compounding gains that didn't cause massive economic hardships along the way.
The only asterisk this time is that this is electricity, not energy. Still impressive, but electricity is only 22% of total energy use.
For that, you want this graph: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...
In my opinion, the "but" is still the "hellbrise" considerations brought up in the Decouple podcast. Renewable energy is fantastic but, at grid scale, has to be coupled with sufficient storage: https://www.decouple.media/p/hellbrise
The “but” this time is that we are talking about electricity demand, not total energy demand. Electrification of heating is the next big milestone.
It’s still a great trend.
This is an important observation. For years these headlines came with asterisks - one sunny/windy day, excludes gas, new capacity only, etc. This being actual annual generation for wind+solar combined vs all fossil fuels is genuinely significant. The compounding nature of it is key too - solar capacity is now large enough that even modest percentage growth adds enormous absolute capacity each year.
How much did Russia's recent invasion of Ukraine and nat gas price and supply changes accelerate things?
Ember Energy: European electricity prices and costs - https://ember-energy.org/data/european-electricity-prices-an... (updated daily)
The most underreported part of this story is the battery piece at the end. Batteries are beginning to displace natural gas in evening peak hours - that's the exact window where solar critics have long argued renewables fall short. If this trend accelerates (and battery prices are dropping faster than most models predicted), the "intermittency problem" starts looking more like a solvable engineering challenge than a fundamental barrier.
The next milestone to watch: when battery-backed solar becomes cheaper than gas peakers for evening demand across most of Europe. We might be closer than people think.
I looked into sodium-ion batteries for which factories are coming online in China. The theoretical manufacturing cost of those is very very low, which will make solar + batteries very cheap. I suspect China will reach those costs ahead of schedule.
Those are two thresholds: cheaper than peakers using piped gas from Russia, and cheaper than peakers using LNG shipped via tanker ship. I imagine the latter threshold has already been met, only depending on the amortization period you choose for the battery purchase.
If you’re interested in this topic I highly recommend Tony Seba’s analyses.
He argues that because solar and wind are now the cheapest forms of new energy generation, they are on an unstoppable exponential "S-curve" that will make coal, gas, and nuclear power obsolete by 2030.
Look up his videos on YT, for example this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj96nxtHdTU
Curious if this will eventually change China's calculus with regards to Russia. If Europe is a big customer for Chinese exports, and Russia is antagonizing, it seems like China would have an incentive to put pressure on Russia.
It already seems like Russia is positioned to be completely subservient to China in the future.
China is happy as a clam that Russia is self-isolating and destroying their internal economy. The natural resources of Russia are vast and if China is the only one exploiting them and funneling them into the Chinese economy it'd be an excellent outcome. I don't think China is opposed to strong economies as trade partners but dependent economies are much easier to control and monopolize.
Russia is only isolated from the west (e.g. exports to India are booming) and its internal economy is growing faster than Europe's.
Russia holds leverage over China because China is incredibly resource dependent and very susceptible to the threat of blockade through the first island chain by the US. Only Russia can bypass such a blockade with fertilizer, grain, oil and gas.
The US is driving these countries into each other's arms.
If Europe were a big customer for Russia energy, it seems like Russia would have an incentive to not antagonize it.
Oh, see how well it went.
It also works the other way around and I am pretty sure that was what Russia was betting on - with Europe's dependence on Russian energy, Europe would not react strongly to Russia's invasion.
That did not go as expected for Russia either.
It worked until it didn’t. That’s how it goes. Peace is always hard work and irrational actors (in terms of: well being of people, not necessarily aspirations of empire) can muck everything up.
Economical co-dependency is a good tool for increasing the price of going to war and making it irrational. It’s also not a zero sum game and tends to profit both sides. However, it can suck if you do it with non-democratic regimes and autocratic rulers who trample human rights.
So between France, Germany, Poland and all the other EU members it‘s keeping the continent at peace and generally does not suck because it‘s between broadly democratic nations. It also benefits each one massively and makes things possible like a common electric grid that increases reliability in general. So nearly all upside.
I do think economic cooperation with the Soviet Union and later Russia - much, much more limited than between EU members - was helpful in cooling tensions and making the world a bit safer, sure, but Russia has clearly behaved in a way that makes that no longer a good idea.
China is usually seen (I think broadly correctly) as more of a rational actor than Russia. Russia is much more run for the benefit of a weird dictator than run as a country.
Europe was a bit customer for Russia energy, and Russia invaded an EU neighbor nonetheless. After which it stopped being the customer. So it seems like that incentive didn't really work.
I think that was raincole's point. I guess we can't account for Russia or the US making decisions that are completely counter to the benefit of their people.
Had Russia indeed invaded Ukraine in three days, I don't think the EU today would have been any less dependent on Russians energy than in 2022.
> If Europe is a big customer for Chinese exports, and Russia is antagonizing, it seems like China would have an incentive to put pressure on Russia.
China wants Russia to at least keep the Ukraine war going, if not eventually win the darn thing. Russia winning (or getting away with an armistice that lets them keep Crimea and Donbas) means a precedence China has for a land-grab of its own - obviously Taiwan, but other countries in its "sphere of influence" have seen hostilities for years, from land grabs [1] to overfishing [2], not to mention the border dispute with India.
And as long as we are distracted with Israel/Palestine or Ukraine/Russia, China has free rein to do whatever they want.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_So...
[2] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/energy-world/chinas-overfi...
Donbas is mostly wheat fields, Taiwan is mostly SOTA semiconductor fabs that currently are the sole pillar holding up the AI (and compute in general) zeitgeist.
The global response would not be the same, even remotely. And what would China get from it? A tiny island of rubble and an ego boost, while losing enormous global favor? The cost of that island may well be a few trillion for China, just so they can say they defeated the nationalists.
The semiconductors are propping up the AI zietgeist in the US, but is that true globally? Why would Canada/Brazil/Europe care about Taiwan? China will still sell them the chips.
The only one who would really care is the US. So by taking Taiwan, China blows up the US stock market and takes control of the chips.
Every country on Earth benefits from the chips that come from Taiwan, and not just the governments, the people using pretty much anything that does computation. That includes China.
Yes I am aware. Which means that if China takes over political control of Taiwan and says, "We will still sell chips just like normal to everyone except the US".
Would the rest of the world decide to go to war with China for the political freedom of Taiwan?
China is playing the long game. They can go spend a trillion bucks and hire/steal the tech and they could destroy Taiwan's competitive advantage, and they could just economically crush them.
That makes sense, but if that's the case, why aren't they invading Taiwan now? Wouldn't now be the perfect time?
The consensus among Western defense and foreign policy types is that China will most likely invade Taiwan in 2027, relative to any other single year, conditional on them doing it at all.
Yep, a time when anyone can say to an ally "Greenland must be mine" and more or less get away with it...
Because that would be way more destabilizing globally before the precedent is set and China doesn't want instability.
Which is also, coincidentally why they seem like a better trade partner to me as European at this point.
I don't think that mainland China needs any sort of precedent over Taiwan should they decide on military action. The situation is completely different from Ukraine. The South China Sea is also on long-running dispute that predates the PRC (and dates from a time where all the neighbouring countries were Western colonies...) and what has been happening is more a policy of "fait accompli" by occupying unoccupied disputed islands first rather than an "invasion".
I don't know what is the thinking on Ukraine now in Beijing, but they were massively pissed off when Russia invaded because it has caused a lot of disruption to belt and road and to East-West relations in general.
I'm curious as to how this will shift once the shift towards more electrification continues. This is only about electricity generation, not total power consumption.
Nowadays, for very energy intenive things like heating or driving a car, fossil fuels still are more prevalent than electric alternatives. Once demand shifts in favor of the electrified alternatives, electricity demand is continuing to raise (although not as steep as the drop in demand for the fossil fuels will be). Particularly in heating, where peak demand is in times with very little solar generation, it seems like this will be challenging.
While the prices of energy storage have come down significantly and are projected to continue to drop, there is still a noteable lack of cost effective long term storage solutions.
> Particularly in heating, where peak demand is in times with very little solar generation, it seems like this will be challenging.
Heating is actually likely to be one of the easier questions here, because heat is just fundamentally an easier problem to tackle than most other intensive uses of energy in the modern world.
1. Solar isn't the only incredibly cheap form of intermittant renwewable energy production. Wind is also great, tends to support local manufacturing economies more than solar, and is anti-correlated with peak-sunshine. The wind tends to blow hardest in the winter and around sunset.
2. Heatpumps can pretty comfortably achieve 300+% coefficients of performance, meaning that for every joule of energy you put into a heatpump, you'll get 3+ joules of heat pumped into your home, office, or city-scale heat thermos
3. Heat energy storage is cheap compared to batteries. You just store large quantities of water or sand and heat it up with a resistor or a heat pump. The scaling of surface area versus volume ensures that the bigger you make the heat-battery, the less energy you'll lose from it over time (percentage wise).
4. Heat is a waste product from many other forms of energy usage, and can be harnessed. For instance, gas peaker plants aren't going away any time soon, and cities which aren't harnessing the waste heat from those peaker plants and using it in a district heating system are wasting both money and carbon.
Just a couple kilometers from my home for instance is a gas power plant that stores waste heat in giant thermoses, and pumps hot water to my building to to be used for heating. They currently have the largest heat pump in europe under construction on the same site intended to supplement the gas plant, both to take up slack from the fact that it'll be running less often, and to expand the service to yet more households.
Regarding the affect of EV adoption on electricity consumption the site https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/ has some interesting data. I'd recommend looking at the following graphs:
* Distance travelled by passenger cars in Norway
* EV electricity consumption and total power generation in Norway
EVs now make up approximately 1/3 of miles travelled, but the increase in total electrcity consumption is fairly small.
now that 98% of cars sold are BEV, i wonder how long its gunna take for that 1/3rd to get to 95%
The article uses the words "more power" and "overtaking fossil fuels", but the graph is actually about electricity generation. They are not the same thing, at least, in my head, because not all energy consumed in Europe comes in the form of electricity. If I heat my home with natural gas and drive an ICE car, this is me using fossil fuels in a way that has nothing to do with electricity and it won't be reflected in that graph. This is an important stepping stone, but it is not "solar and wind overtaking fossil fuels in Europe"
Good catch. Electricity is maybe 20-25% of final energy consumption in most EU countries. The real test is whether cheap renewable electricity can pull heating (heat pumps) and transport (EVs) onto the grid fast enough. The encouraging sign is that both are happening - heat pump sales have surged in several EU countries, and EV adoption is well ahead of most forecasts from 5 years ago. But you're right that "overtaking fossil fuels" in total energy is still years away.
"Power" usually means electricity when used colloquially.
Solar with a modern LFP battery system is a no-brainer solution for 21st century energy infrastructure. The safety record beats pretty much everything else, and as long as the sun is out, it just works.
Focusing on Solar+Battery is only effective when the solar is not accounting for a majority of electricity generation (at least in geographies significantly north of the tropics). The problem is that while the sun shines, solar will drive everyone else out of business, but then leaves you stranded in the winter, and no practical amount of electricity storage will save you.
Fortunately, wind energy generation also exists, and is a nearly ideal complement to solar power, because it's nearly as cheap as solar, and its energy peaks are mostly anti-correlated with solar energy peaks (typically the winter and sunset are the windiest parts of the year / day).
Wind's main problem is that it's more reliant on large scale projects (rather than solar which scales all the way from a pocket calculator to an installation the size of city), and wind is also more susceptible to regulatory / NIMBY sabotage than solar.
Especially with China currently flooding the market with cheap solar and batteries, I think it makes sense for governments to focus much more of their attention and efforts on promoting (or at least getting out of the way of) wind projects, and let the market drive solar adoption.
In the UK just having batteries already helps. There's a surplus of wind at night. Shifting it to 5pm peaks pays back the cost of the battery quicker than solar panels pay for themselves.
WW3 called and said solar is harder to disrupt through bombing than massive power plants. Seems like a great deal even if it was more expensive.
> In 2025, both Ireland and Finland joined the ranks of European countries that have shuttered their last remaining coal plants.
Interesting, they mentioned Finland. I wonder how Norway and Finland fair using solar since they have rigorous winters with polar nights.
Hydro in Norway, nuclear+wind in Finland.
https://www.iea.org/countries/norway/electricity https://www.iea.org/countries/finland/electricity
Very interesting.
I was also reading: https://norwegianscitechnews.com/2019/10/the-way-forward-for...
Imagine the powerhouse America would be (pun intended) if we subsidized nuclear energy to become the defacto producer of nuclear power plants world wide. Sometimes it is easier said than done but this really is as easy as said.
You have it backwards. At the current cost curve for renewables and storage, Nuclear will never again be able to compete.
See: the overly optimistic SMR plans being predictably scrapped in many places.
What you do have is ample land to build out solar and export eg. Ammonia (made out of Hydrogen) for "free" energy.
Correct me if I am wrong but the only reason nuclear is expensive is because of how costly the facilities are to build and maintain. If we were not setback during the anti-nuclear era, we would have gained economies of scale. The reason why solar is so cheap is for the exact same reason is it not? I am not an expert on this topic so take everything I say with a massive grain of salt as I am willing to be wrong on this.
Edit: After further reading it appears that solar will be the defacto affordable option in energy production, even with SMRs and streamlined construction in the picture. Perhaps a mix of renewables, better battery infra, and SMRs for stable sources of power is the future.
At the same time subsidies are being phased out. I was about to get 8kW panels + batteries installed when my country decided to pull them, and I'm not going to spend 10k out of pocket.
The UK has some of the highest energy costs in the world due to the stupid Net Zero taxes. Our economy and manufacturing is suffering.
OTOH, 60%-80% of electricity production is already renewable/low-carbon.
This is a glib statement that disregards a massive amount of complexity.
Energy is not expensive because of Net Zero taxes. Here's a breakdown of the average UK electricity bill over time [1]. The Renewables Obligation, that subsidised wind and solar at a time when they were infeasible without subsidies, was a scheme that ran between 2002 and 2017. It was stopped once renewables became cheaper than the alternatives. We will continue to pay for the renewable plants set up back in the day, but this will gradually taper off. In this electricity bill estimate for 2030 [2], you'll find that the Renewables Obligation is much lower (£17 rather than £102) for two reasons: plants losing subsidies as they age out and a chunk of the subsidy being borne by the treasury from general taxation.
So why aren't electricity bills coming down? Because we're recognising the reality that we will need to be powered by a mix of nuclear, wind and solar. Check out this real time dashboard of electricity generation in the UK [3], which shows you how Wind has zoomed in the last 14 years. From 2GW to 14GW, wind is now the single largest source of energy generated in the UK.
Wind is only going to grow, because it is cheap compared to the alternatives. In the Jan 2026 auction for wind power, an 8.4GW contract was awarded for a price 40% lower than the cost of a gas power plant. And unlike gas you aren't at the vagaries of global gas prices, like we were in 2022.
And now you're thinking, if wind is so cheap and we're continuing to build more, why is the estimate for the 2030 electricity bill higher than 2025? The 2030 page explains this - the wind is being built in the North Sea, far from where it is needed - in the South of England. This means investing in the transmission network, which will cost £70B over the next 5 years. That cost will be passed onto consumers.
So no, bills aren't high because of renewables. The decision to double down on wind, solar, batteries and nuclear by the previous and current government are sound. We will be more energy independent than we were in 2022 and possibly paying a bit less in overall bills. The reduction in carbon emissions is a nice bonus.
[1] - https://www.electricitybills.uk
[2] - https://www.electricitybills.uk/2030
[3] - https://grid.iamkate.com
Looking at the data it seems that uk industrial electricity is the most expensive before taxes, is that not correct?
Have you considered that what you're paying for isn't just energy now, but energy security in the future?
I don't see any energy security for the future for the UK unfortunately. We sold ourselves short during the GW/Blair Neo-labour era. Scotland maybe, they have wind-farms but the UK likes to tax that. We've just started the era of paying for the cost of Brexit. It's hitting hard.
My weekly supermarket shop for the basic essentials (cheese, eggs, flour, vegetables) now come to around $60/80 a trip.
Parmesan Cheese is around ~£22-£45 ($30-$60) per kg compared to the US $7–$24+ per kg.
Why not? You've got abundant wind and solar. Once installed, even if for some reason you can't get new turbines or panels, you'll still have a decent amount of capacity.
Solar is hit & miss. The only capacity we really have is wind and those are only efficient to those near the sea or in the highlands. England, Scotland, Wales are governed by rain 80% of the year and with the sun we get, household solar rarely breaks even.
Just because we've got, if the government isn't supporting it's pretty much wasted. The renewable farms we do have are mostly funded by private investments firms. Scotland and Wales wants more renewable but the UK government says no.
> End 2024 installed electricity generating capacity was 105 GWe: 35.0 GWe natural gas; 32.8 GWe wind; 18.3 GWe solar; 7.4 GWe biofuels & waste; 5.9 GWe nuclear; 4.8 GWe hydro (including 2.9 GWe pumped storage) and 1.3 GWe oil.
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...
A quick search says the UK produced 18,314 GWh of solar last year. And this was mostly funded by private investment? It seems like for some infrastructure investment, the government is getting long-term renewable power. If the solar isn't making money, why is it growing 30% annually?
What is stupid about nuclear? It's a huge amount of clean, secure energy.
Would your preference be dependence on Russian/US oil natural gas? Would you feel the same if Russia invaded Finland/Baltics and US took over Greenland?
> What is stupid about nuclear? It's a huge amount of clean, secure energy.
It's not the stupidly of the reactor producing. I don't agree with it personally, but hey whatever, it's a thing. The stupidly of it is that we are small island.
Claim what you wish about how safe they are but like anything: errors and malfunctions. Cyber sabotage and all that.
If an reactor were to implode we're eff'd. We don't have landmass to facilitate the output waste in the UK and the waste we do currently produce has to be shipped elsewhere; sold for dark money.
> Would your preference be dependence on Russian/US oil natural gas? Would you feel the same if Russia invaded Finland/Baltics and US took over Greenland?
My preference would be my hand with a gun pointed at my temple and myself pulling the trigger. To dark?
Why not? Few more of these (1) and you should be golden. One years auction will be 12% of all uk demand.
1 https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-uks-record-auction-for-o... )
If either one of the two alternative government parties of the UK get in they will scrap all. Reform UK sets out plans to tax renewable energy, conservatives are all for the oil.
2030 is four years away & the next election is in 2029. The Labour party is unlikely to get in again, and if they do it'll be a miracle. Far-Right or Fascist Right.
Reform UK won't get enough seats to sit in parliament this election but if in the future, it's a dystopian vision I don't want to think about. Trump-XL, tax the EU, climate change doesn't exist, kick out asylum seekers, higher taxation to further screw Scotland and Wales. Heavily back pocketed by the US oil and tobacco industry, Nigel is foul MAGA of the UK.
Conservatives, sponsored by oil and pharmaceutical. Exxon, Esso, BP et cetera. They got their wish with Brexit, they made a bucket load of cash from that and they're the ones who scrapped the renewable industry in the first place.One of their aims is to scrap the NHS and make it privatised.
> A supermarket shop for the basic essentials (cheese, eggs, flour, vegetables) now come to around $60/80 a trip.
No it doesn't. Maybe if you are shopping at Waitrose. It is more expensive. But it isn't £45 for basics. I did an entire shop which will last me the week for £30 (in Aldi).
I shop at Sainsburys where I can. The main supermarkets for me are Morrison and kind of forced to use M&S.
Everyone has their super market preference. ASDA would be cheaper still. You can't disagree that prices have sky rocketed, shrunk in quantity and now lower quality.
> Pamantasan Cheese
What cheese? A misspelling?
The social and environmental cost part is being removed in April and should save around 15-20% of the bill. I guess that is what you mean by net zero taxes?
> due to the stupid Net Zero taxes.
No. Citation neede. The issue is the moronic way energy auctions are done, first by setting the price to the highest source that can satisfy (always gas) but ignoring (!) geography. Then, phase 2, dropping the impossible providers (i.e. Scottish hydro in the North for South England), and doing another (much more expensive pass). The Octopus CEO had a succinct explainer recently, can't find the video...
Found it: https://youtu.be/5WgS-Dsm31E?t=91 starts at 1:31
There’s a certain poetic aspect to this.
Fossils are dead, slow.
Wind moves fast. Photons move even faster.
But Trump explained to us yesterday, how wind and solar is for losers. Surely, we should be looking in to how we can transition back to fossils.
At the end of the day, the retail cost of electricity in many EU member countries can be two to three times the cost of electricity in the US. Ultimately that’s what matters to consumers and businesses.
Also, Trump called out the idiotic decisions by greenies such as shutting down nuclear power plants and make long your industries less competitive as a result.
If this is true, it has nothing to do with solar or wind but rather strange decisions in the past in some countries that they (and their neighbors) pay for now (looking at you Germany).
Nuclear does not cause prices to be lower. Putting that aside, political discourse here in Germany was "interesting" to say the least.
The shift to renewables started off pretty well in the early 2010s before it came to a grinding halt thanks to some wierd debates around the topic. For the past few years, buildout of solar has been remarkably fast, especially considering the slow pace of other projects. In 2025, 16.4 GW of solar power went live.
The biggest issue that drives prices here is the grid. New high voltages transmission lines have faced intense local oppsition, so transmision between North and South is limited, which is problematic given the focus of the north on (offshore) wind and the south on solar PV. Since Germany is a single electricity price zone, the low to negative electricity prices from wind turbines do not reflect the reality of grid capabilities, resulting in significant redispatch costs.
The solution would be obvious. Split Germany into n electicity price zones (with n>1). However, there is a lot of political opposition, specifically from the conservative CDU/CSU against this.
So yeah, Germany is struggling with relatively expensive electrcity prices, complaining about it, but refusing to implement a borderline free solution for it.
The high voltage DC transmission lines from north to south are being built right now and for example SuedLink is expected to be operational in 2028. Their transmission capacity will be more than enough. Why would you split Germany into electricity zones now, if in a few years the transmission problem will largely be fixed?
Declining industrially and demographically, no innovation, soaring energy prices, and our share of the world economy has shrunk for ten years straight and is projected to continue shrinking in the future. By all metrics us europeans are losers.
Now we just need to figure out scalable storage. Ideally something like the sand batteries that you can scale with construction equipment rather than just adding more rows of tiny lithium batteries
Now, let's aim at total energy consumption, not just electricity generation.
Well, OK--but at what cost?
Electricity/heating and gasoline in the EU is many times more expensive than in the U.S., and as a result EVERYTHING is more expensive.
Mix that with lower buying power and taxes and we spend 2-3 times for stuff.
I would think that most people would happily choose lower prices over clean energy and paper straws.
Our companies are also less and less competitive because of these initiatives, and companies from China take over in part thanks to the complete lack if environmental and labor laws over there.
Seems to me like this is happening more and more, and it's so widespread and obvious that it almost makes you think that politicians are being bought by Chinese companies/government.
EU electricity prices are high, but attributing this to renewables is backwards. Wholesale electricity prices drop when wind and solar are producing - that's been documented extensively. The high prices are largely due to: (1) gas setting marginal prices during peak hours, (2) grid infrastructure that hasn't kept pace, and (3) taxes/levies that fund the transition. As battery storage grows and reduces gas dependency for peaks, prices should moderate. The countries with the highest renewable penetration (Spain, Portugal) often have lower prices than those still dependent on gas imports.
I'm not attributing to renewables, but green initiatives.
For instance, the rising prices of carbon permits under the EU emissions trading scheme.
So, my point is that countries that don't ignore the economy just to be green--like the U.S. and specially China--seem to have vastly cheaper electricity and gasoline, which I would guess makes them more competitive/lowers prices.
Over here we have no NG and no oil, and on top of that we tax our companies because of emission limits, while in China they burn coal like there is no tomorrow.
We wanted to outlaw non-electric cars, while the car industry in Europe is huge and we don't have a way to build batteries, etc. etc.
Seems to be a pattern that is hard to understand.
> Well, OK--but at what cost?
It costs less? The Danish organisation for green energy interest (biased I known) has calculations that shows a 5 billion DKK saving per year for the Danish consumers. So about €0.02 per kWh.
I also think you're wrong about prices. I think most will pay more, if they get clean energy. Not a lot more, but if it's only a few cents, I think many/most will pay that, perhaps not happily, but still. People, in parts of Europe at least, are perhaps more baffled that the Americans won't pay the slightly higher cost and and protect the environment. As it happens that's not a choice we need to make, wind and solar is now cheaper than fossil fuel.
I'm not sure, prices here in Poland have skyrocketed because of the EU green initiative and we started exporting and prices went up 3-4 times.
I'm good with protecting the environment. Here, though, we're making European companies less competitive. They shut down, and Chinese companies fill the gap, flooding us with products that are worse for the environments because they have no laws, bad for workers because they have no laws, and bad for the environment again because instead of local they're shipped across continents on boats that burn as much fuel as a whole country for a year just to bring cheap plastic stuff that we used to make better ourselves.
> Electricity/heating and gasoline in the EU is many times more expensive than in the U.S.
Maybe because Europe as a whole has little to no signifcant oil reserves ready for extraction? Very much unlike the US.
> I would think that most people would happily choose lower prices over clean energy and paper straws.
The US does have plenty of cheap energy and yet its industrial output is dwarfed by Chinas, which is increasingly relying on domestically products green tech. Also, people seem to be not very concerned with energy prices. If they were, they would not act as irrational when it comes to topics like heatpumps or electric vehicles.
> that it almost makes you think that politicians are being bought by Chinese companies/government.
Looking at the energy policy of some countries (Germany specifically), it seems vastly more likely that politicans are bought by oil companies.
True, there is no oil and we just relied on cheap gas from Russia--which I guess it didn't turn out to be a good strategy after all.
That's interesting about oil companies. Is that who's lobbing to pass laws that just seem (to me) to be written on purpose to make our companies less competitive? How does that work, how do oil companies profit from that?
If you can sell more oil and at a higher price, you get more money.
OK, but how, they lobby to pass laws against coal and nuclear, so that you burn more oil..?
Yes, and against bike lanes so more people have to drive, and against subsidies for public transport, and against public transport entirely, and so on.
I see.
That makes sense, every interesting thanks.
Renewables lead to energy independence and a more distributed energy grid. It's fundamental to security, and can't be so easily measured in terms of money. The EU is increasing its independence from China via initiatives like the Net-Zero Industry Act. And this talk of "politicians being bought by Chinese companies" is laughable in the face of what oil companies are doing, to the benefit of exporters like USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other regimes, and definitively not the EU.
I'm not sure, I'm in Poland and all we had was coal. Now it will take a few decades to have our own source of power again. Maybe 20-30 years..?
What are oil companies doing to drive European companies out of business (not saying they aren't, I just don't know)?
Poland still has majority coal power production! It's one of last places you can possibly blame renewables for pricing.