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Power The Almighty Buck

30 Million Solar Homes Would Create 1.77 Million Jobs and $69 Billion In Energy Savings, Report Finds (cleantechnica.com) 318

A new report (PDF) from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) finds that installing rooftop solar panels and community solar systems to serve the equivalent of 30 million American homes would create 1.77 millions jobs and $69 billion electricity bill savings over the next five years. CleanTechnica reports: In addition to creating 1.77 million new solar jobs and reducing energy bills by $69 billion, the report found that enacting the 30 Million Solar Homes policies would over five years: Eliminate global warming air pollution equivalent to closing 48 coal-burning power plants or taking 42 million cars off the road for a year; Increase new solar capacity nationally by 151 GW; and Power the equivalent of 20 million households in marginalized communities with local solar.

In the report, these economic and environmental benefits are broken down by state and congressional district. An interactive map further illustrates the local impacts of the 30 Million Solar Homes proposal and gives viewers an opportunity to share the report with their elected officials.

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30 Million Solar Homes Would Create 1.77 Million Jobs and $69 Billion In Energy Savings, Report Finds

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  • Wars for Oil (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Monday July 19, 2021 @09:10PM (#61599491) Homepage Journal

    For less than the cost of the Iraq War, every house in America could have had a solar and battery system installed.

    Obviating the need for Wars for Oil.

    But, no. That's not benefiting the "right" people.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      For less than the cost of the Iraq War, every house in America could have had a solar and battery system installed.

      Not at the time of the Iraq War. The technology wasn't up to it yet. You could do solar - but at a CO$T that was prohibitive. The tech has improved drastically in the ten-to-eighteen years since then. (Especially photovoltaic solar panels, which are semiconductors and have been riding their own variant of Moore's Law, and are now cheaper than grid power.)

      I don't like the Iraq war any more t

      • You could do solar - but at a CO$T that was prohibitive.
        That is nonsense. The lower cost we have right now is due to scaling world wide production. Would have scaled the same way 15 years ago,

        • You could do solar - but at a CO$T that was prohibitive.

          That is nonsense. The lower cost we have right now is due to scaling world wide production. Would have scaled the same way 15 years ago,

          Economy of scale was only a part of it. The cells we have now are a lot more efficient, producing far more power for a given area of cell. That also factors into the drop in price per watt. A substantial amount of those improements were NOT available at the time.

          Economies of scale also require engineering improvemen

      • This warning about war gets mentioned so there is no excuse for it to happen again, which it would if we do not get off burning fossils for energy and transport
      • It's not just the solar panels that have improved, either, although they have very much since then. And it's not even the solar controllers, although those have improved somewhat in that you can get decent ones cheap now. But the batteries have improved phenomenally over that time. LiFePo4 batteries practically didn't exist back then. They are very stable, reliable, and as of late they have become fairly affordable. They have excellent lifespans, very stable chemistry, and non-toxic electrodes, and offer hi

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      The "war over oil" was nonsense since the first time it was uttered.

      Saddam did *not* invade Kuwait because he wanted to drink the oil.

      He wanted to *sell* it.

      To the west.

      And the US could *trivially* have negotiated a sub-market rate for the oil--instead of the expected long lived price increase that indeed happened.

      Reasonable minds can endlessly debate whether or not we *should* have invaded [and that debate is starting on its fourth decade . . .]

      There is also plenty to criticize about how it wa conducted, a

      • Saddam invaded Kuwait because they were selling cheap oil. US decided it's not ok to fuck with someone who is selling them cheap oil. It's naive to think that US cared about Kuwait for purely humanitarian reasons.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by tragedy ( 27079 )

        I think people too often get confused about how oil wars work and then they make statements about how it can't have been a war for oil since prices for consumers went up. That makes several faulty assumptions. One of those assumptions is that fighting a war over X is a rational way to obtain X. If you've ever seen children break a toy while fighting to posses it, you might understand that fighting to posses or control something seldom actually works all that well.

        The other faulty assumption is that the war

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        A sub market rate would have screwed all the oil producers. The US wanted long term stability in the oil market and suppliers who would play ball e.g. only selling in USD.

    • Do you have a new moronicism planned for when the oil market crashes, and the rate of wars stays the same?

  • No. (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
    1.77 million jobs would drastically raise wages (supply and demand would kick in, more demand for workers means higher wages). This will not be allowed.

    The C-Levels, who have been running the United States as a centrally planned economy since the 80s, have put a lot of work into tamping down wages from their post WWII highs. They'll be dammed if all that hard work is going to go to waste just so we can have clean air and renewable power.
    • 1.77 million jobs would drastically raise wages.

      Not if they're jobs for "undocumented immigrants" at sub-par pricing.

    • ...and how exactly will 30 million installations create 1.77 million jobs?

      Everyone take a step back, put on your critical thinking cap.

      16.95 solar installations creates 1 installation job, apparently, so one person can do about 17 per year, about 3 weeks per installation.

      Seems about right, yes?

      This provides 1.77 million jobs if you consider a job to be exactly 3 weeks long, not a second longer.
      • what about the jobs that are needed for that installer to do the job? Someone has to sell it, administer/arrange it, make parts like inverters, transport parts for it etc etc
  • I agree everyone should go solar. But, if it saves money, it's likely someone is not getting paid. Net job loss?

    • But, if it saves money, it's likely someone is not getting paid.

      TFA doesn't say solar panels save money. It says they save on "energy costs" but ignores the cost of the panels since they aren't "energy".

      Basically, the $69B is the amount you would save if the panels were free and automatically installed themselves.

      Net job loss?

      We could require the installers to be blindfolded and to wear boxing gloves. That would double the labor required and thus "create jobs".

    • by chthon ( 580889 )
      Rent seekers? CEOs who will need to earn less? Shareholders? Cry me a river over them...
    • It depends. If it saves you $10 on your bills a month you might save it or visit Starbucks slightly more often and create jobs there instead. Saving doesn't necessarily mean fewer jobs.
    • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

      But, if it saves money, it's likely someone is not getting paid. Net job loss?

      Durwut? Replacing coal and nuclear would be the greatest jobs boom in history. And after that's done - you could always move on the US joining the 20th Century and building a high speed rail network.

  • Tariffs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Monday July 19, 2021 @09:29PM (#61599539)
    Even this report says the jobs are primarily in installation and maintenance, we don’t even make panels in the USA anymore [theatlantic.com] and yet we still have substantial tariffs [greentechmedia.com] on panels. Which is it? Save the world or line the pockets? Because the amount of money is a zero sum game and if we are serious about rapid adoption the last thing that we need is artificial price inflation to slow sales. Get rid of all tariffs and if the remaining couple of panels made by US companies need an advantage to stay remotely competitive, hand out a few subsidies to them.
  • by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Monday July 19, 2021 @09:31PM (#61599545)
    What am I missing here, Is solar really that expensive that you need 1 full time person for every 15-20 homes installed? that sounds incredibly bad efficiency.
    • by Nkwe ( 604125 ) on Monday July 19, 2021 @09:50PM (#61599589)

      What am I missing here, Is solar really that expensive that you need 1 full time person for every 15-20 homes installed? that sounds incredibly bad efficiency.

      Depends on how you count and how you look at all the related labor. A solar install has a sales office and associated staff. Once a system is sold, there is a mechanical / electrical engineering effort (design documents, roof load calculations, electrical load calculations, electrical design), acquisition of permits, logistics in scheduling the materials and crew to the install job, the actual install job, inspections. The solar panels, roof racking, inverters, meters, and other electrical components need to be made by someone, shipped, delivered, and inventory tracked. A (proper, permitted) solar install is more than a guy slapping a couple of panels on the roof and plugging them in. When you add up all people involved in getting 15-20 solar installs done end to end, I can see it being a year's worth of aggregate labor. Think of it this way - a full time person puts in about 2000 hours a year. For 20 solar installs it would be about 100 hours effort / labor across the entire supply chain per install. That doesn't seem outlandish to me.

  • What are the homes on the north side of the hills going to do for power?

    • I assume, they will finally will make a bold step.
      Ask the local utility to finally connect them to the grid!

    • You think solar is the only solution? do some research first
    • What are the homes on the north side of the hills going to do for power?

      Onshore wind, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear fission. Also, they will have batteries so that they can buy the excess solar power from people on the south side of the hill and sell their own energy back to them at night. With a markup to cover their costs and make a profit.

      When the people on the south side of the hill see their solar panels reach end of life in 20 or 30 years they will catch on to how they've been taken for suckers after seeing the replacement costs. Then they will use onshore wind, geoth

    • by stooo ( 2202012 )

      They can simply move to the southern hemisphere.
      North = sun then
      Win, Win, Win.

    • Aim windmills towards MacMann.

  • ... creating 1.77 million new solar jobs and reducing energy bills by $69 billion,

    Reduce energy bills by $69 billion over the next 5 years? Hmm... they must not be calculating the savings using SolarCity/Tesla solar roofs.

    Tesla Drastically Increases Price of Solar Roof [slashdot.org]

  • by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Monday July 19, 2021 @10:09PM (#61599609) Journal

    ... installing rooftop solar panels and "s to serve the equivalent of 30 million American homes would create 1.77 millions jobs and $69 billion electricity bill savings over the next five years.

    69 billion over 30 million homes comes out to $2,300 per home - over five years, or $460 / year savings.

    Somehow I expect that the solar upgrades would eat a LOT more than $2,300 per home. Just for starters, those 1.77 million workers (assuming they're full time jobs) will want more than $3.90 per hour.

    Or is that "savings" number what's left of the money that would have paid the old electric bill after the solar equipment manufacturers, contractors, and laborers are paid off instead? That might make a LITTLE more sense. My electric bill runs near $220 a month (at silicon valley's socialized electric rates, without air conditioning). So $460 is a little over two months of it. Ten for them and two for me over five years. Alternatively, they get the full old bill for 4 years and two months and then I start to get "free" power.

    That is starting to get into the vaguely plausible range, but still far off from sanity. If it all went to labor the1.77 million workers would be paid about $19/hour. That bill was for 29.3 kWhr/day, or 5.86 kW of panels assuming 5 solar hours per day. If it all went to solar panels they'd run 37.2 cents per watt. Since panels were 30 cents per watt the last time I looked, there's a lot more to an installation than bulk panels, and the contractors and laborers will want to be paid. So the numbers still don't seem to make sense.

    And what's a "community solar system", commissar?

    • Community Solar [solarreviews.com] aren't search engines wonderful
    • The cost to do it is predicted to be $137Billion. [ilsr.org]

      If the 30 Million Solar Homes package is implemented as a whole, the federal government would invest a total of $137 billion over the next five years to help deploy local rooftop and community solar systems across the country.

      Work you numbers from there.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Your government is currently pumping $1,900 billion into COVID relief stimulus.

      The only question is what you get in return for that investment. Rooftop solar would be a good investment because it would mitigate huge future costs (climate change) and create a lot of jobs (less welfare, more economic activity).

      It's not just the solar panels themselves that are a benefit, it's the infrastructure upgrades. It's a great opportunity to transition your grid to one that supports micro generation and long distance t

  • I am reminded of a trial balloon for increased ethanol production from the (first?) Bush administration.

    The additional corn production for the plan would have required something like 175% of the arable land in the US. I forget the figure, but it was more than all of the farmland . . .)

    So what multiple of available solar production will this take?

    And if it were attempted, what would this multiplication of demand do to prices?

    And how many would be in homes where it would actually make sense? I looked at it when I had to redo my roof, but with an annual electric bill of $1,300, it makes no sense if I can't go off-grid for $10k.

    hawk

  • by SubmergedInTech ( 7710960 ) on Monday July 19, 2021 @10:31PM (#61599647)

    During summer days, we're already overgenerating during the day, and then on flex alert to avoid blackouts from 4pm-10pm.

    Adding more solar won't help. In fact, it'll make the problem worse by making other forms of power less economical. Doesn't matter if the wind blows between 9am-4pm if we already have plenty of power from solar panels.

    The difference in net metering will also make household solar itself uneconomical. We already earn $0.24/kWh for the solar we overproduce during the day, and pay $0.40/kWh in the evening. With more overgeneration, that'll shift. I expect in a few years power will be $0.05/kWh during the day and $0.50/kWh in the evening / at night (when we'd really like to charge our EVs). Payback time for solar panels will rapidly exceed their lifetimes.

    What we need is *storage*. And a lot of it. We don't have enough lithium to make EVs *and* powerwalls for everyone anytime soon. But pumped hydro (and in fact, any hydro) doesn't count towards meeting our legislated green power goals.

    • by psergiu ( 67614 )

      Oh, you are getting PAID for the power you put back in the grid in California. That must be nice. Here in Texas you need to pay a monthly fee just to be able to put power back into the grid without being paid for it.

    • Between the 2030 and 2050 deadlines a lot of lies about renewables will have to die soonish.

      The cheapest way to kick the can down the road for now is to build gas power plants for backup power where necessary and then pretend 100% hydrogen conversion and the hydrogen economy will be solved down the line. More power from gas and renewables will meet near term goals without actually building storage.

    • We don't have enough lithium to make EVs *and* powerwalls for everyone anytime soon.

      I'm going to keep banging on about nickel-iron batteries for home use and large scale grid-levelling. No lithium, and they tolerate over- and under-charging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • I've long been intrigued with them.

        But what are the gotchas? I seem to remember two from looking at them. These are from my memory, so forgive me if I've got them wrong.

        I think one was less peak current output. Not a huge deal, as presumably you can work around this by using your array at 48v and/or just expanding the array to more cells. Neither of these should be a big deal for static installs.

        The other was electrolyte maintenance? Needing to regularly add water or something to keep the electrolyte i

        • That's my understanding too - lower peak current, and if overcharged they require topping up with water due to the H2O being electrolysed.

          This is why I would never suggest Ni-Fe for mobile applications - the lower peak current would render it useless. Reduced cranking amps is probably why they fell out of favour as automotive starter batteries too.

          For grid storage it should be fine - just keep stacking more in parallel :-)

          The electrolyte issue seems like it could be automated. In the 21st century we pump mu

  • If, over 5 years, you save $69 billion. And you have to employ 1.77 million people to do so. Then you have about $8k to pay each person, minus any material costs. Can these people not do math?
  • This won't happen. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MacMann ( 7518492 )

    Could the USA replace coal power plants with solar power? Sure. There's enough cheap land, enough materials, enough labor, and sufficient desire to lower CO2 emissions to make this happen. While it is physically possible to get some large portion of our energy in the USA from solar power (with "large" being anywhere from 20% to 80%), and the rest from wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass, it won't happen. That's because solar power takes at least ten times as much materials, labor, and land as nuclear f

    • In my opinion bulk material and labour have the potential for over an order of magnitude savings in them. Thin the glass, thin film, high voltage, mounting systems from thin plastic pillows filled with expanding foam. Installation on prepared land should just consist of rolling out giant rolls of PV, inflating the pillows and connecting HV cables to the grid inverters.

      That just leaves land, plenty of that.

      • In my opinion bulk material and labour have the potential for over an order of magnitude savings in them. Thin the glass, thin film, high voltage, mounting systems from thin plastic pillows filled with expanding foam. Installation on prepared land should just consist of rolling out giant rolls of PV, inflating the pillows and connecting HV cables to the grid inverters.

        That is speculation. There's also a high probability in these new materials finding uses in wind, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear fission. If somehow someone finds a new material that is suitable to anchor solar panels from being blown away in a storm, takes an order of magnitude less labor and mining raw materials, then what is stopping people from using this in making the anchors for windmills? Or in making a dam to hold back water? Or as a biological shield material in a nuclear reactor?

        That just leaves land, plenty of that.

        In the USA the

    • Your blogs only link to other dead blogs for sources.

      Also this from the self published book guy:

      The conclusion so far: covering your south-facing roof at home with
      photovoltaics may provide enough juice to cover quite a big chunk of your
      personal average electricity consumption; but roofs are not big enough to
      make a huge dent in our total energy consumption.

      Sounds like solar is pretty good in that regard.

  • At what cost? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tiqui ( 1024021 ) on Tuesday July 20, 2021 @03:43AM (#61600109)

    It's always easy to tell people how many jobs will be created by spending some money, and doubly so if your planned activity has no incentives for efficiency. It's also always easy to get people to cheer for "free stuff", as long as THEY are not the ones paying for it (if "free" was actually possiblr, that is).

    One problem is that the money has to come from somewhere, and that ALWAYS turns out to be average ordinary working people - NEVER the ultra-rich who have a double-pronged protection, first by having lawyers and accountants, and second by contributing cash, free corporate jet flights, and other benefits to politicians. These solar panels will not be paid for by mermaids, leprechauns, or unicorns - the money will be taken (directly by higher taxes, or indirectly by taxes on businesses which pass those through to their customers as higher prices) from average people, many of whom cannot afford solar panels for their homes.

    The second problem is that there's no such thing as "free" [in the beer sense, not the speech sense, though the latter seems on the decline these days]. If something requires matter or energy, then it cannot be "free" - it will take effort to obtain and transport it, it and that effort has a cost. If something requires human labor, it cannot be free - even if you are into slavery and think you can force somebody to work for no wages, you'll still have to provide stuff they need to stay alive and perform the work. Whenever somebody offers something for "free", what they are really saying is that the person getting the item will not have to pay for it, because somebody else is (willingly or unwillingly) picking up the tab.

    The sort of people who write reports and papers like this one rarely stupid and lacking in comprehension of the details of what they are advocating for, to the contrary, they are usually well-educated and clever propagandists who are intentionally providing only one side of the ledger, which is not an honest accounting practice.

  • Not that I wouldn't welcome free solar panels for off-grid power, solar panels are not even remotely carbon neutral when you factor in the production process.

I'd rather just believe that it's done by little elves running around.

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