A few weeks ago, someone showed me their electricity bill and asked a simple question:
“Should I go solar or not?”
We tried to answer it. Opened a few tools. Got lost immediately.
Everything was either:
too technical
too US-focused
or trying to sell something
So I’m building something very simple:
You drop your location anywhere in the world
Add your bill and a few inputs
And it tells you clearly if solar makes sense, what it would cost, and what you’d save
No signup. No leads. No installer push.
Just an honest answer.
Before I go deeper on this, I want to sanity check:
Would you actually trust a tool like this?
Or would you still go straight to an installer?
Why is there no simple way to know if solar actually makes sense for your home?
byu/Automation_storm inenergy
Posted by Automation_storm
11 Comments
If you can afford it you should, heard it last up to 30 years, it’s an investment.
High level its really all about how confident you are in not moving.
i feel like this is the 15th tool advertised on reddit just this week
What will it cost to install solar at your house? The price can be anything from <$1 per watt for DIY to >$3 per watt for a professionally installed system with lots of regulatory hoops to jump through and a big mark-up.
I plan on doing my own and it will have a decent ROI, but I can’t just pop over to my local price gouging installer and tell them that I want to pay $15K for a 20kW array, microinverters, and installation. I mean, I could, but they aren’t going to DO anything for me besides laugh.
I would not trust another app that tries to sell me something.
Id rather get local offers, and use a calculator.
Hard to know the price of power in ten years. But there are a lot of homeowners now that wish they’d installed solar ten years ago.
Do you have mostly electric appliance? Or are planning to switch to electric, Especially heating and cooling? Yes it makes sense
No, then it doesn’t really make sense.
It’s that easy.
Drive around the area you live in and talk to people. If lots of people have done it, it probably makes sense.
There are 4 competing subsidy schemes in my home town (~1200 people) and the next town over also has 4, 2 of which have different rules compared to mine.
That’s 6 rules across 2500 people.
World might be a bit too big to tackle as a first project.
Does the sun shine on your roof?
–> it makes sense to solar.
Everything else is politics and finance bullshit from (too many) shitty solar installers.
… anywhere in the world … what it would cost …
Yeah, good one.