Texas looks _almost_ as underserved by solar as AZ/NM in that map, TBH.

Idaho is as well.

AZ just has some of the dumbest rules in the US WRT to solar. It's a state where every home should have solar panels.

Lot of people died for that pragmatism. Froze to death in the outages of winter storms or overheated in the summer ones. Sustainability was the last resort.

American solar installer companies do seem to charge way more than European or British ones. I got 3.9kW installed almost ten years ago for just £5500, including all the paperwork for feed-in-tariffs. It has long since paid for itself just in subsidy, let alone actual consumption.

One of the things I like most about balcony solar is that you can DIY it (at least, in the places I know that have approved it) instead of getting scammed.

There are so many scams in the solar industry. I feel like a ton of installers joined just to make a quick buck with no effort.

Sure it isn't up front, and there's probably something to be said about scammers seeing green with subsidy money.

But the very idea of not being dependent on the grid or fossil fuels, if one can afford it and costs are comparable, should sell itself.

But my dad watches Fox News so he brings up lies like how bad wind turbines are for the environment (coal anyone?) or how we shouldn't make ourselves dependent on China for solar (as if we aren't dependent on a lot of bad hombres for our current energy mix or as if receiving solar makes us dependent at all).

---

Edit: HN's conversation throttler childishly patronized me for "posting too fast". At least do me the honor of telling me you don't like what I'm saying, instead of telling me I'm posting too quickly when I'm making 1 message/hour.

---

In response to dataflow below:

It still reveals an ignorant cult-like derision for renewables that isn't explained by reality. The people who gleefully mock the issues with renewables do it because they have been trained to want renewables to fail, and to see active support for renewables as a signal for softness and liberalism.

Do they build a lot of cinder block homes with flat, tarred roofs?

I don't know anything about Alabama but in California you generally can't create off-grid developments without permission from a local authority, because it's a recognized problem that "off-grid" systems are often under specified, leading to danger for the occupants. And nobody really wants off-grid to proliferate because it would tend to concentrate the costs of the grid upon the remaining users who will be the ones least able to afford it.

For a place that was two miles from a power line, I would think anyone would approve of off-grid.

Oh yeah, it's just the initial cost goes up and the payoff time becomes longer. And you were one of the people who had installed solar panels, the rewards for it are reduced.

Don't you have to replace the batteries every few years though? That should be factored in the equation.

Well also the desert southwest is still relatively sparsely populated, so rooftop solar won't show up as much on a map like this. Plus their power is cheap(er) than CA.

But yeah, you'd expect some bigger utility-scale installations.