All the electricity you'll need for 40 years

I live here in Nigeria where electricity has been epileptic since I was born (I&#x27;m 23 now). Like, I live in one of the nicer suburbs in my state, but 12h of power isn&#x27;t guaranteed.<p>So, last year, I spent $7k on 8.4 KW of panels (400W * 21), an inverter, and 20KWh of batteries.<p>It&#x27;s been life-changing. I&#x27;ve been able to go completely off-grid. Like, I disconnected from the grid (i.e., my meter) completely. And my usage has gone up to around 50KWh daily (air conditioners, fridges, etc.) but it hums along day-after-day. That assurance that the power won&#x27;t trip off while I&#x27;m on a meeting with a client has done wonders for my mental health among others. Just reliable, stable power.<p>And, given that I used to pay $0.12 per KWh, the whole setup will pay for itself in 2.7 years. Just under two years to go.

This seems like a &quot;green brag&quot; without much substance. Great that this person is privileged enough to afford solar panels, I guess. Nothing to be learned here though: no wire diagrams, placement schematics, or BoM. Just someone telling everyone how green they are.

It&#x27;s nice to have solar panels, I have them too and while they do generate even more electricity than I need, they do so in around 6 to 7 months peaking in July. So in winter, it&#x27;s grid power and in summer I might need to pay to feed in the surplus. This is in the Netherlands. It&#x27;s kind of sad to see all that electricity unused in summer, and knowing I could have enough for all of the winter if only there was some way to store it, all of the 1MWh..

Average US home power consumption: 30 KWh&#x2F;day.<p>Assuming an average of 4 solar hours per day, you would need a solar system capacity of approximately 7.5 kW to 12.5 kW.<p>Individual solar panels produce 250-400 watts. So, conservatively, 50 panels. Installed, that&#x27;s currently about $25,000, including inverter but not battery backup. Battery backup will cost maybe $15,000 more. So, the whole installation is about $40,000. This is with no grid connection, power sales, or incentives. Not too bad. Costs about the same as a car.<p>Median US house price is $412,300.

This is cool, and I wish I had a setup like that, but the premise seems a bit hollow. Do they grow all the food they consume? What about the energy needed to produce the electric car, host the Substack? What about when they get sick? Do they stay off-grid, or do they go to a modern hospital, which can only exist because of urban industrial buildup.<p>It’s cool to live off grid, but solarpunk-libertarianism is a vibe, not a meaningful policy direction for modern society

I wish regulations where more lax in France. It was a battle with the town council to install 3.2kw of solar panels on the ground, I want to install 10 more but it looks like the ground option which is cheap will not be approved, I would have to out them on my roof which is costly and is not true south (and arguably, more visible).

Solar allows one to prepay for power. Would be nice to see more efficient financing for it.<p>Using solar to heat and cool, heat water and run your dryer is quite a bit more. And generally doing the HVAC efficiently requires a large investment in insulation. Those non solar costs may dominate.

$88 amortized over 15 years is only $16k. It’s really impressive they can get it done for that much, although I suspect labor has to be free at that cost. I’d be curious what batteries they went with and how it’s organized (aka the more technical side)

&gt; Electric vehicles are mainstream and last longer than their gas engine counterparts, with an estimated lifespan of 200,000 miles.<p>What&#x27;s this based on? Don&#x27;t many gas cars last that long? It seems like it depends very much on how well you maintain them.

Looking at the posted pictures, it seems like they&#x27;re living in heaven. Good to know the panels will be good for at least 40 years.<p>Still, I&#x27;m kind of left wondering, where will they be in 40 years. Can life really be so predictable?

That&#x27;s great. I wish we had more housing like this, especially if we could build them into little hobbit villages. I would readily live there

Just a note to the web designer: The footnote links don&#x27;t account for the fixed header, so the page always ends up with the footnote hidden behind the header when the user clicks one. Needs an 89 pixel offset.

People forget that solar panels don&#x27;t grow on the trees, battery packs especially have very large footprint and their manufacturing is resource intensive.

TIL mud huts are &quot;solarpunk&quot; and &quot;Pinterest worthy&quot; so long as you&#x27;re doing it in the US.