Comment by kragen
4 months ago
Your comment appears to be unrelated to Pakistan and, due to the confusion of units, has been reduced to nonsense. Moreover, your implied calculations don't work out.
If we assume that you meant €7000 for 6 kilowatts peak (not 6 kelvin wurtzite henries or 6 kilowatt hours, neither of which is sensible) the probable answer is that your relative paid 25× the current market price for their solar panels and therefore got 25× the payback time. However, if we assume €0.12/kWh and a 20% capacity factor, 6 kilowatts peak would average 1.2 kilowatts, which is 10520 kWh per year, which works out to €1260 per year, which would be a payback time of 6 years, not 15 years.
Moreover, another way of saying that the payback time on a durable investment is 15 years is that the investment returns 6.7% per year. That would be a highly profitable investment, even without government subsidies.
sorry yes. He told me, installation is 6,000 W and is about 91% efficient at peak. 12 460W panels. panels point in optimal direction. In spain he sells excess to grid at €0.04 per KHW. Lowest cost of importing is €0.085 for KHW at night, about €0.22 at peak hours. He ran the numbers on power not bought (self consumption) + power sold, over a year. He said it comes to about €500 for the year. He added this really surprised him and he started asking around, and this seems to be typical for rooftop solar in the Canarias.
That's a 7% yearly ROI, which is a pretty decent number, better than you'd do on average in the stock market and more predictable. If he had a little storage so he didn't have to sell any, it would improve further. But also 6000W of panels in the low-cost category now costs €300: https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis...
You need more information to calculate the ROI. I gave you the peak efficiency, Which comes from clean panels and no clouds. The average efficiency is closer to 70%. While the canaries are pretty sunny, the panels get dirty very quickly (fine dust from Sahara), Actually, if you count cleaning costs, the ROI goes down even more. And also consumptions is at its peak in the evening when there is no sun. He was thinking about getting storage, A Tesla Powerwall 3 installed is about €11,000, No way that is worth it. My impression is that places where ROI is much better is also places where you get more than €0.04 per KWH.
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> the probable answer is that your relative paid 25× the current market price
Where do I get 450W panels for $12 each?
pvXchange, but they're €23 because you fucked up the math: https://www.solarserver.de/photovoltaik-preis-pv-modul-preis...
€12 would be 44× cheaper (7000/6000/(12/450) ≈ 44). Maybe in a couple of years.
I assumed 7k installed, so roughly half for the panels.
So how many do you need to buy to get that €23 price?
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> You seem to have created this account just to troll
I find it fascinating that someone is willing to pay for accounts to swing opinions or seed FUD on a topics like solar panels.
It’s happening here, it’s clearly happening everywhere on every topic.
Or someone who lurks here, but never posts. Not everybody has an account here. I was just curious because I was talking my friend who has the solar just earlier today and he was a bit upset when he ran the numbers.
HN accounts don't require payment.
Someone is paying either real people to do this kind of thing, or for bots or LLMs to do it.
Someone wants to sway opinions, and they think it matters enough.
(Accusation removed from parent.)