Solar rooftops gain traction as electric vehicles owners look to skip paying for electricity or gasoline: ‘Solar just makes sense’::Residential solar is gaining traction in the U.S., with about 4.5 million homes now with solar rooftops.
Solar rooftops gain traction as electric vehicles owners look to skip paying for electricity or gasoline: ‘Solar just makes sense’::Residential solar is gaining traction in the U.S., with about 4.5 million homes now with solar rooftops.
Rooftop solar makes sense as a government project because it increases resilience and does something productive with all that otherwise wasted surface area. Also, as a homeowner, a government run rooftop solar program like what I suggested would piss me off a lot less than what we have now, what with the scammy private solar contractors and inscrutable “incentive” programs.
Unless the property owner is managing maintenance etc. directly themselves, it would be a herculean task to support and maintain thousands of small installations spread out across the country instead of a handful of solar farms.
Maintenace and repairs can be managed through the utility companies, which already do so for many pieces of hardware on their customers’ properties just fine. The government might also offer property owners a higher payment if they accept certain responsibilities.
Maybe it’s different in the US, but where I live the utility company only services the main fuse that supplies the property. Everything else is done by electricians paid for by the owner.
Where I live in New Jersey, the utility company not only owns and services the meters, it also leases, sells, and services various home appliances, like furnaces and water heaters.
Rooftop solar means managing hundreds of small installations. You need every one of them to have small inverters instead of one big one. Each of those installations will be a custom job to fit it to the roof. You will likely need to upgrade your electrical service, as well, typically from 100A to 200A. The first few people in the neighborhood can do that, but as soon as everyone does it, the power company needs to upgrade the lines coming in.
Rooftp residential solar is the worst, most expensive way to do it.
Having enough land for solar is not a problem. With the amount we use on raising beef cattle, eating a few less burgers a week would open up plenty of land. Even without that, there’s plenty of dual-use ideas for covering parking lots, roads, irrigation canals, and even some types of farming.