> environmentalists were like, "hey look, free energy,"

It's not free. It costs trilliions of dollars to build and maintain. I think it's worth it. But one place where the climate-change movement lost the plot was in underplaying costs and overplaying the doom.

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scoofy an hour ago | parent [-]

If I install solar panels, a battery, and a next gen breaker box in CA, even with premium equipment and no subsidies, I'm looking at a max payback period of like 20 years, right? At that point yea, it's effectively free energy.

Is it an investment? Sure, but it's an investment that trivially pays for itself.

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VK-pro an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I’m sleep deprived so maybe not the right words, but isn’t there an implicit IRR that a household would maintain and usually a 20 year payoff would be maybe not the first use of investment dollars? I feel maybe that’s more the problem here with renewables. It’s cheaper but not cheap enough to put the dollars there instead of somewhere else

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JumpCrisscross 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> isn’t there an implicit IRR that a household would maintain and usually a 20 year payoff would be maybe not the first use of investment dollars?

Yes. Also, the risk for industry is going all in right before a new technology comes out. At that point, you either write off your original investment and deploy the new kit. Or you accept a structural energy-cost disadvantage.

I am massively pro renewables. But you have to ignore a lot to pretend it's without risk.

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scoofy 28 minutes ago | parent [-]

The system already pays for itself. The only thing you lose if a new technology comes out is opportunity cost. You also likely don’t want to be an early adopter of the newest tech anyway if this is a concern for you.

This doesn’t really make sense to me as an objection, so maybe I misunderstood.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> system already pays for itself No, it yields savings. This is a massive difference. > You also likely don’t want to be an early adopter of the newest tech anyway if this is a concern for you This is a real concern for any long-term investment, particularly when we're talking at utility/industrial scales. Dismissing it like this is basically arguing that solar is too new to be properly talked about, which is nonsense.

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scoofy an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, the payback period is like 5 years if you count all the subsides. My point is only that, you can effectively take most of your house of the grid, even in an urban area, with a relatively short payback period, and an almost guaranteed return.

Is it the most profitable place for investment dollars? Probably not, but it's effectively risk-free, and there are plenty of knock-on benefits, like having power in a blackout, and having the option of getting an EV in the future.

I think most sensible people who are even moderately risk-averse would think that's a fairly winning deal when we're only talking about a small amount of up front capital.

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an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

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