We cancelled our install after TN removed the state level breaks. It pushed the payback out past the expected lifespan of the panels (25 years). I would have been fine with a 10 year payback, but 25+ was just not worth doing.
Is this because of the labor costs in the US? In other countries the payback period is much shorter. Someone I know in Brazil told me it is 3-5 years for them.
On a related note, I asked my AC guy if he knows any trustworthy solar installers. He told me that only crooks are in that business :)
> On a related note, I asked my AC guy if he knows any trustworthy solar installers. He told me that only crooks are in that business
It's basically this.
There is very little robust competition in the solar installation market, and a lot of the market is a principle agent problem on top of it.
Almost all these solar installation firms targeted at residential are more or less financial engineering companies selling loans wrapped up with solar as an afterthought. They make all their money on the financing end.
I started to look into getting a highly customized solar+backup power setup done at my place, and I just gave up due to how difficult it was to find anyone to throw any amount of money at even when I never hoped to see a payback on the project. I just wanted it to ride out potential power outages.
If you can DIY you can get payback in under 5 years for many locations. But it's just a lot to learn to do perfectly the first time.
> Almost all these solar installation firms targeted at residential are more or less financial engineering companies selling loans wrapped up with solar as an afterthought. They make all their money on the financing end.
I agree. It's like car dealerships who are more interested in getting you on financing.
In the US, there's often a large labor/materials upcharge on anything that can be branded as "green" - you see a lot of the same thing with higher end heat pump systems and such, too. Efficiency is (for whatever reasons) frequently sold as a luxury product feature in our market and the installers take advantage.
>> I would have been fine with a 10 year payback, but 25+ was just not worth doing.
We are struggling with this also -- with or without an incentive. The payback period is long. Makes sense if you think forward rates will be super-high. But people are quite aggressive with their forward rate estimates, yet super-liberal with the lifespan estimates.
I've dealt with enough appliance breakdowns to know all the tricks companies pull
- You have a 25 year warranty, but only on parts. The labor ends up costing more than an entire new system.
- You have a 25 year warranty, but only on labor. The parts ends up costing more than an entire new system, possibly because the parts are no longer made. Labor warranty is now useless and you need to buy a new system all over.
- You have a 25 year warranty on parts and labor, but the company declares bankruptcy and you have no warranty any longer.
- You have a 25 year warranty on parts and labor, but the company got acquired and the acquiring company "cant find your warranty details in their system". Regulators are powerless to actually help despite months of letters.
- You have a 25 year warranty on parts and labor, but a tree/hail falls on the house and they declare it out of bounds of warranty. You go through your home insurance, but they only cover current value, not replacement value. You buy a whole new system, only partially covered and start all over again.
- You have a 25 year warranty on parts and labor, but manufacturer blames the malfunction on improper installation, but the installation company is long-gone/retired/non-responsive/bankrupt. Possibly the Accord insurance form is fake also (how many people actually verify the insurance Accord is real?)
Been there, done that, on all the above. Eventually, your only religion is deferred maintenance because you know you get ripped off royally no matter what you do. We havent yet heard horror stories because these systems are new, but you'll hear all the above as time goes on, and people realize the actual life of their systems are far shorter than their payback periods.
Most good solar panels have a 12-15 year warranty on the panel, and a 25-30 year warranty on performance.
But this is a warranty, and you have many panels. If they're all going to fail, they will fail sooner. If one fails or breaks eventually, even if it's not under warranty, replacing the panel is dirt cheap. Of course you need to replace it with an identical panel, so it makes more sense to buy extra panels and just assume some will die. But even if you paid for a replacement, that's already just $100-$200, and it'll probably be cheaper in the future.
So the warranty isn't really that important long-term. They're more important for the short term, and a Tier 1 solar provider's so reliable that you don't really need it anyway.
Skill? If you can use a screwdriver, and lift 50lbs, you can do it.
1) Throw the "DC Disconnect" switch to de-power the panels. 2) Unscrew old panel from rails. 3) Disconnect MC4 connectors (with fingers). 4) Remove old panel and install new panel. 5) Connect MC4 connectors. 6) Screw panel into rails. 8) Throw "DC Disconnect" lever to re-power panels.
There's also a step 7 where the panel needs to be connected to the ground of the other panels, but with modern systems there's these metal clips that just clip onto the edges of adjacent panels to make the ground. Your system may be different but the ground is a pretty simple connection of metal to metal.
Yeah I just have absolutely zero interest in owning, being responsible for, and avoiding scammers in my own electrical power generation, with some vague hope of breaking even decades later. I'll gladly pay a utility for reliable power, regardless of wind and cloud conditions, where they are responsible for all the infrastructure upstream of my meter.
Right. I do a lot of self sufficient things (including some of my own power generation) but I lack the desire to become my own power utility end to end. It’s already frustrating enough since I provide water and sewage to multiple households and electrical connection to the utility with solar and generator backup.
You would be surprised how little water drop is required to cause wells to "go dry". When wells are punched into an aquifer, they stop when they hit water, they don't keep going to be deeper. A water level drop of just 2 inches caused all sorts of issues for locals when Intel built its new Fabs in New Mexico.
Intel said that it wouldn't be an issue, yet when it happened, they did nothing to help and forced a huge number of people to have to put in new wells. The same will happen in Ohio.
I've read a lot about Aaron's time at Reddit / Not A Bug. I somewhat think his fame exceeds his actual accomplishments at times. He was perceived to be very hostile to his peers and subordinates.
Kind of a cliche, but aspire to be the best version yourself every day. Learn from the successes and failures of others, but don't aspire to be anyone else because eventually you'll be very disappointed.
Yeah, definitely not a statement on Aaron himself. More a statement on idolizing people. There will always be instances where they didn't live up to what people think of them as. I think Aaron was fine and a normal human being.
Aaron was not happy. Neither is Trump, or Musk. I don’t know if Bernie is happy, or AOC. Obama seems happy. Hilary doesn’t. Harris seems happy.
Striving for good isn’t gonna be fun all the time, but when choosing role models I like to factor in how happy they seem. I’d like to spend some time happy.
Try to imagine a society where people only did things that were rewarded.
Could such a society even exist?
Thought experiment: make a list of all the jobs, professions, and vocations that are not rewarded in the sense you mean,
and imagine they don't exist.
What would be left?
I don't need to imagine. Teachers almost everywhere around the globe have poor salaries. In my country there are lower enrolment requirements to universities to become a school teacher than almost every other field of study. Means the dumbest students are there.
And then later they go to the school to teach our future, working with high stress and low salary.
Same with medical school in many countries where healthcare is not privatized. Insane hours, huge responsibilities and poor pay for doctors and nurses in many countries.
Nowadays everyone wants to be an influencer or software developer.
Teachers, sure. But what about janitors & garbage collectors, paramedics, farm laborers, artists, librarians, musicians, case managers, religious/spiritual leaders?
Because only one person can be king, but everybody can participate and contribute. Also there's too many things out side of just being "the best" that decide who gets to be king. Often that person is a terrible leader.
Upvoted not because I agree, but I think it‘s a valid question that shouldn‘t be greyed out. My kids dream job is youtube influencer, I don‘t like it but can I blame them? It‘s money for nothing and the chicks for free.
Tragedy of current days. No one wants to be a firefighter, astronaut or a doctor. Influencers everywhere! Can you blame kids? Do you know firefighters who earns million dollars annually?
AaronSw exfiltrated data without authorization. You can argue the morality of that, but I think you could make the argument for OpenAI as well. I'm not opining on either, just pointing out the marked similarity here.
edit: It appears I'm wrong. Will someone correct me on what he did?
This is an argument, but isn't this where your scenario diverges completely? OpenAI's "means to an end" is further than you state; not initial advancement but the control and profit from AI.
Yes, they intended for control and profit, but it's looking like they can't keep it under control and ultimately its advancements will be available more broadly.
So, the argument goes that despite its intention, OpenAI has been one of the largest drivers of innovation in an emerging technology.
At that same link is an account of the unlawful activity. He was not authorized to access a restricted area, set up a sieve on the network, and collect the contents of JSTOR for outside distribution.
He wasn't authorised to access the wiring closet. There are many troubling things about the case, but it's fairly clear Aaron knew he was doing something he wasn't authorised to do.
> He wasn't authorised to access the wiring closet.
For which MIT can certainly have a) locked the door and b) trespassed him, but that's a very different issue than having authorization to access JSTOR.
I submitted several scientific/research papers my wife wrote or co-authored in the late 90s early 2000s and they were all flagged as AI written by multiple tools. It was good for a laugh.
Boeing merged with Lockheed/Martin when L/M was in serious trouble and rumors say it was pushed by the DOD because of all the L/M defense contracts involved. This then lead to the worst parts of L/M (management over engineering) gaining a foothold at Boeing (Engineering over Management).
The rest is a long, slow, decline into Boeing being what L/M was when they needed to be rescued.
I thought the real damage of management over engineering was done when they merged with McDonnell Douglas, and it was the MDD managers who got put into all the cushy higher level jobs?
I think the key is to have leaders that have passion for the product and aren’t just interested in making profits and increasing stock price.
When you look at people like Gates, Jobs, Musk, Huang, they are cutthroat businessmen but they also have passion for their products. When I listen to interviews with a lot of US car CEOs, they seem to be interested only tangentially interested in cars, it’s just all numbers.
We are in the 45 million. When we moved here over a decade ago we were told by TDS that they were expanding their service and should be able to provide us with 50Mbs 'soon'. 10 years later we are still 5Mbs (3 in real-world situations). With no plan to expand here ever. Fortunately, the local electric company got a grant and is rolling out 1Gbs fiber to 100% of their customers. TDS couldn't do it because it wasn't 'profitable'. The electric company is fast-tracking the build-out and we should have service less than 18 months after they started.
I got 1 gig fiber to the home just this last year thanks to a an electric company fiber co-op. Couldn't get DSL before because the lines were so degraded and no one offered it. Until now the only available internet was wireless in a highly forested area.
A not-so-secret dirty little secret is that many of the reputation management agencies also own many of the public records websites that publish mug shots, court records, and so on. When you hire them to remove that information from the internet it puts you into a cycle of being removed from one or two of their website and added to something else.
You end up in a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. Complete with monthly fees.
Similar to a mafia coming to your small business and telling you you need to pay to stay open, otherwise they’ll make sure you. Still just the cost of business? Seems more like a power imbalance.
In many cases, the potential problem may be caused by the same party that offers to solve it, but that fact may be concealed, with the intent to engender continual patronage.
Lol those orbs! Oddly, Worldcoin's main exchange is Binance which stopped doing business in USA so I couldn't get a bag. Up almost 10x. Not bad for a sphere that proves "personhood". With AI making actual people vs machine created more difficult to discern, it may have evermore applications.
You know, those entities that hoover up any and all info on you, that you cannot opt out of, maintain information whether its accurate or not and refuse to delete obviously erroneous data, then release it *all* to the world by being extremely poor stewards of said data, then charging you for credit monitoring for the rest of your life, since your immutable info just got shared with assholes.
Guess who owns most/all of the credit monitoring entities?
Luckily you can mail them a permanent opt out for most of that stuff. IIRC, it removes your name from the searchable list of info 3rd parties use for marketing.
Additionally, if you haven't, freeze your credit at all bureaus including LexisNexis.
I've frozen all of mine, because thanks to Equifax, I don't have a choice.
I wish you good luck opting out. I'm not talking about what the law says, I'm talking about how they act.
Technically, you can dispute incorrect info. What that dispute amounts to is the bureau asking the entity if it's accurate. No proof needed. If they say it's accurate, then you're stuck with it, until you jump through many, many more hoops.
This sounds awfully familiar, like the window repair guy breaking windows or the tire salesman dropping boxes of nails on the road. The only difference is both of those things are illegal.
The lesson for the modern ago. Don't put stuff into digital form if you want privacy!
Some places don't allow use of smart phone. They actually ask you check your phone into a coat check type thing at door! One journalist friend often leaves the smart phone at home.
This sets a terrible precedent. For most, a phone is all or a combination of; house keys, car keys, bank cards, medical records, photo albums, etc. Giving all that up to a stranger (albeit behind a passcode) is a step backwards in security and privacy. An alternative that I have witnessed is places place your phone in a lockable bag that you then carry with you. They unlock the bag when you exit.
> Giving all that up to a stranger (albeit behind a passcode) is a step backwards in security and privacy.
putting all that on a device that you don't control and that "strangers" at apple or google can access or make changes to at any time, and without any notice to you and without any permission from you sounds like a step backwards in security and privacy.
Cabaret at the Kit Kat club in London places a sticker over any camera lens. The Burnt City, an immersive theatrical experience, makes you place your phone in a pouch that is then sealed with a tamper evident fastening before you enter the venue.
More like : If it is not explicitly illegal and aggressively enforced by someone, a business will attempt it, regardless of whether it makes money or not.
Years ago Google banned BMW (I think) for their then very spammy tactics. Then they were forced to restore BMW because people searching for BMW expected to find BMW in the results.
The Google spam team has always been underfunded, and understaffed, and when the choice was 'do the right thing about spam' vs 'do the thing that is profitable', they always choose profit.
the solution there is to not ban sites, but simply deprioritise them for a while. you get caught being naughty, your entire domain gets hit with a nasty downranking that gradually decays. put a little flag next to the link explaining to the user why the result is so low. except that the second thing will never happen because it seems that Google policy is to keep search users as powerless and uninformed as they possibly can.
At 58, and playing 'video' games since the late 70s, I'm happily pulling the average age of gamers higher every year. Better than that, at 58 we just started work on our first video game that we have talked about making for over 20 years.
