At that price it should save money after one year. But you’re right to care about perverse incentives; it’s hard for governments to get that right for the same reason it’s hard to make an AI that doesn’t reward hack.
One year? Someone up the page said theirs would take 8 years to pay for itself, and the article says:
Installing a solar system and complying with other energy-efficiency measures required will add about $9,500 to the cost of a new home, according the the California Energy Commission. That would be offset by about $19,000 in expected energy and maintenance savings over 30 years, the commission estimates.
That sounds like the cost of installing a system on top of an existing roof. I’m talking about instead of — PV panels are US$0.23 per watt, which is about a tenth of what you just quoted for a 4kW system. That said, I know almost nothing of the soft costs, only that soft costs in the USA are vastly greater than soft costs in the UK, which isn’t very helpful in a discussion about California.
Yeah, maybe. It also works if you finance the panels into the mortgage (one estimate I saw was $40/month) and start saving on electricity costs right away (same estimate said $80/month).
