Why Don’t We Put Solar on ALL Rooftops?

Car park solar panels are even better idea than rooftop solar.

The question should be, renewables, or fossils. Stop putting up roadblocks

A friend has 3/4 of his house south oriented roof covered with solar panels.
Heating is done by heath pump with geothermal probes that work perfectly well for air conditioning in summer.
His own electricity production corresponds to his annual consumption - not enough in winter, to much in summer he can sell back to the grid.
That is in Switzerland.

How many houses in USA have roofs sufficient for producing the electricity for a family including an electrical car.
Shopping centre roofs and parking that could be covered, produce more electricity than used.
Especially as most of the USA is further south, gets more sunshine than for example Italy, part is even as far south as Northern Africa.

It doesn't make sense to compromise agriculture or natural ecosystems to build solar farms. We should look to areas that already exist, especially ones that would benefit from the sun and rain sheltering effect. Yes, I'm talking about parking lots! Create electricity, charge cars and protect us from the heat and rain while we run from lot to store. We have too much real estate dedicated to parking lots anyway, so let's utilize them better! And while we're at it, why not the median strip on interstate highways?

For the past 10 years I have been pushing for making it standard to have every new house built to have its own solar panels.
It’s an average of 5% the cost of a new home. It’s not like people would not be able to afford a new house and the have to move into the inner city 😂😂😂😂😂.
And every time I brought that up to NYSERDA higher up they looked at me like I am a moron.🤦‍♂️

Flying over the eastern LA basin I've noticed hundreds of wear-houses out there, practically as far as the eye can see, all with flat roofs and lots of sun exposure. Basically none of them have solar, I don't know any real why they all can't be covered in solar!

Just do it.

Look at the beautiful farmland that will never be productive again. Green energy is a joke

"We the government decided to put solar panels on your house and will charge YOU the consumer, and the one that has the solar panels on your home, a premium price, because YOU have to pay because YOU benefit from it."
Say hello to reason 1.

"We the government decided to put solar panels on your roof and send that energy to the grid, then you can buy that energy at the usual price that increases every single year and never goes down."
Say hello to reason 2.

"I refuse to put a government microphone on my roof!"
Say hello to reason 3.

"I refuse to put solar panels on my roof and then get fined if I want to modify my roof, or be rejected by the city's planning board, because no one can touch those solar panels"
Say hello to reason 4.

"What if the solar panels will suck up all the sunlight from the sun!?"
Say hello to reason 5 (yes, I know this one is US specific).

"My city's planning does not allow me to."
Say hello to reason 6.

Residential rooftop solar may not make financial sense on account of the arrays being too small but there are so many parking lots where they could be installing these panels rather than wasting land (especially developable land near cities) on them. We could even suspend them over roads.

In Australia our roof top solar take up is so common that it produces too much power for the grid to handle. They are about to introduce a 'tax' on the excess power houses feed into the system between 10:00am - 3:00pm. We'll be charged for any excess power we feed back to the grid between those times.

Biggest deciding factors:
Battery Capacity increasing, price decreasing.
Solar Panel Efficiency Increasing. (How much power it can absorb)

Then, users could literally do more, with less (in terms of space required.)

Why. When the question is "why", the answer is usually "money".

What about heavy metal deposit from covering a large area with solar panels filled with it? Takes a few panels that cracks and water moving these heavy metal into the surrounding soil or worse. After 40 years. All the panels ends up in land fills...

This video struck me as a more or less “word salad”. I feel like maybe you don’t understand the problem well enough to explain it.

I was on a bike ride recently and rode past a brand new development, houses side by side baking in the sun and not a single roof with solar. Not sure how practical it is, but it seems to me solar panels could be incorporated into our building codes. Perfect opportunity to complete the installation when the house is under construction.

A series of problems with rooftop solar that rules out many roofs and raises questions about any rooftop solar installation.

1) Most existing commercial flat top building do not have adequate structural strength to handle wind loading on solar panels on the roof. If you are building a new building that can be designed into the structure - assuming other issues do not suggest not to do it.

2) Roofs are expensive, and roof leaks are often far more costly than roofs - especially for manufacturing or storage facilites that require things to be kept clean.

The best way to prevent roof leaks is to never put a hole in a roof. Rooftop solar puts lots of holes in roof - and there is growing evidence that many solar installations cause roof leaks down the road - requireing the solar panels to be removed, the roof (and perpahs other parts of the building) to be rebuilt, and then deciding if you want to reinstall the solar panels.

One very secific worst case story from near where a brother lives involved an 8 year old solar roof on a new house. The mounts leaked so badly that not only did the roofing boards have to be removed (leaving just the rafters) but the attic insulation and 2nd floor ceilings had to be replaced as well. Just the repairs to the house - after removing the solar panels cost 150% of the cost of the solar installation. The house owners did not reinstall the solar panels.

As for the contractor... not the only problem house and had already gone bankrupt.

While in theory if you use really good sealant and really good techniques and methods you can prevent the roof leaks for the 20+ year life of the panels. The reality is installing solar panels is most often done by the fastest and cheapest installation methods possible. In my area it seems that I cannot even find a solar installation contractor over a decade old. All the older ones have gone bankrupt due to issues with their installations in the past.

Another problem, it few people install a base roof that will last 20+ years to start; and few people installing solar are doing it on a brand new roof. the most common re-shingle job in our area lasts about 15 years before needing replacement (and poor quality jobs often by year 10). That means that you have to tear off and reinstall the solar panels as part of a roofing project - which appears to be very expensive.

Now perhaps in certain areas where it never (or almost never) rains these concerns on leaks are not an issue. But for most parts of the USA and Canada get a fair amount of rain.

So there are a lot of reasons why rooftop solar is not even close to a slam dunk.

Utilities don't want it distributed on roofs, but that is a much better and quicker solution

In India, by June 24 the total installed rooftop solar cap was 11.6 GigaWatt around 15% of the total solar cap.

For a decade I have always wondered why they don't just cover every roof with solar cells instead of having them on land. There are sheds, factories, etc that are not residential, that could be covered with solar cells as well as houses.

Most populated parts of the earth are not suited for solar, at least with the current technology. I live in Seattle with many rain, clouds, and dark days. Solar panels put out nearly 0 power during those times. I paid 10 grand for a 3200-watt roof mount system. I save 300 per year in energy costs. Lousy return, very few folks will do that. If I put that same 10 grand into the S&P 500 10 years ago, I would have averaged 1000 per year (not the 300 I now save) and would still have the 10k cash. Solar does roof damage and requires constant cleaning to keep them at max efficiency. They increase insurance costs and have high maintenance, and roof repair costs.

A great success, however, was my Daiken heat pump. 3500 dollars in cost, which saves 900 dollars per year in heating energy over my previous wall heaters. Contra-negatively, if I had put the 3500 into the stock market I would have made nowhere near the cash I made from the energy savings from the heat pump. Go figure. Some things in life are great successes and others are failures. Solar does not work in northern cities like Seattle, Portland, Vancouver (Canada), Chicago, or New York. However, heat pumps are great in virtually any city.

Question, given how much the UK invested into "smart motorways" had we instead fitted the central reservation of the M1 with solar panels in a horizontal orientation(to stop shading) over 300 miles of solar panels. yes, we have crashes that would interrupt sections but easy worked around with isolated sections, in fact put short term battery packs on the bridges, sidings etc. there is plenty of room if we look

How about covering certain areas of the Interstate highways?

Love your info and input. Please continue.🙂

I think the key problem here is that the cause of climate change is the rooftops. Single family homes are incredibly inefficient and suburban sprawl is killing the environment.

DIOS mio el gobierno frena el desarrollo de su propio país, que triste!.

When I bought my solar the break even date was seven years and five months. Since then the increase in electricity rates has shortened the break even time to just over six years and the proposed rate increase next year will make this year my break even date. From then on it will be paying me.

Why nobody talks about tidal wave? Sea waves is 24 hours available without any disruption

YIMBY is a thing :)

How about saving electricity? And Not generate more than minimum required to save human life from extreme life threatening needs. An economical stress test to see how miserable would it be to live with little to no electricity supplied??

This content is pure gold! Subscribed instantly

I'm fine with single use solar farms in desert areas with little to no wild life like Dubai. Otherwise dual use is the way to go to preserve natural habitats.

I''ve got a south facing roof and a field that is always sunny when the sun is up and shinning I'd put solar on if I had the money for it.

Large building coverage would make sense to me first. Think factories, schools, etc. They have large roof areas in one place. This should reduce the engineering, purchasing, and maintenance costs since it is one site with much surface area of panels, compared to individual residential roofs. Also they could have industrial scale inverters/converters.

I live on a tropical island and I noticed many installations going up at schools. They use air conditioning and lightning almost exclusively during the day when solar generation peaks.

Because not all rooftops were built with latitude to support solar panels. Duh! I live in Brighton, England. Most of the houses here are between 150 and 200 years old.

No, because they flood the grid during spring and autumn, and unless the grid can turn them off they drive out all other producers by pushing the price negative - barring the fossil fuel and nuclear plants needed to maintain grid frequency.

Once you fill up approx 65% of demand (the rest allocated to FF and Nuc for frequency control) there is zero space for wind and large scale solar to make revenue. This destroys the economics of these plants, especially the capital cost per MW able to be sold. So unless gigantic subsidies are provided they will not be built. Australia is running into this problem right now.

It is totally impossible to actually run a modern economy using intermittent and unreliable generators. The fundamental issue is the ability of renewable generators to produce at 100% and then very low or 0% a short time (tens of hours) later.

Why not use solar roofing tiles, instead of panel as an afterthought.
That means every square inch of roofing can be used.

I fail to understand why they need to clear cut everythging for these solar farms. its 2-3 contact points along the ground and maybe a trench to bury some cables. of there's a tree in the way, they can jsut not put a solar panel there.

The biggest barrier to rooftop solar is the electricity utilities won’t be able to monopolise energy generation. That is a terrifying notion to greedy executives and shareholders.

Back when solar was first being promoted a power company approached me with a contractual offer to put panels on my roof and give me a 20% discount.

Since it was an idea I was promoting, I accepted.

The shame of it is those panels have never produced power as the project was unfinished. Now they are too old.

I think we would be further ahead on our goals if such policy had been carried out properly.

My town wants $3000 worth of engineering stamps to put 3kW of solar on my roof, which makes the process nearly impossible to scale into. You either have to go all in on a big solar project or nothing at all because of govt red tape.

Cover the Parking lot$!!!!!!!

Sharing my exchange with Microsoft Copilot …

Average U.S. household uses about 877 kWh per month, or 29 kWh per day.

Assuming 50 Victron Lithium NG batteries (25.6V/300Ah) in parallel; the maximum energy which can be provided is 384 kWh.

384 kWh can provide enough energy to power 13 households per day. Obviously, battery is not an impediment.

But solar panels can be, approaching the size of gypsum board. In sunny California, up to 8 panels may be required in support of 29 kWh daily requirement. Could be less, depending on the design. But probably more in not-so-sunny states.

Thus technologically, it is possible to be off the grid totally. Geographically, not so much. We’ve got to wait and see.

If you ask, I can provide a copy of the copy/pasted transcript.

Ponchit A. Medina
Architect, retired

I totally agree with rooftop solar, now the government is in the market in Australia putting solar and wind everywhere and are in competition with home owners that have rooftop solar while energy prices are getting higher and higher, homeowners are getting less and less for selling energy to the grid, I predict will eventually turn to zero and new taxes have been put in place punishing homeowners with roof top solar.

States are purposefully going slow on solar development. That has been obvious for decades now. The oil cartel is too strong

ANY argument against solar is specious and comes from propaganda or brain washed people.

Deserts and forests are not empty land. Destroying this land for solar panels is NOT GREEN! I hate seeing the beautiful desert being destroyed by solar fields and wind turbines. It is eye pollution in the worst way. Then there is the change in the land itself; the environment is destroyed. About 15 years ago we did an experiment to see if we could operate a 3000 SF with entirely solar power. After covering the entire back yard, shop, garage, and house, there still wasn't enough power to run the entire place 24/7. The newer solar panels are not that much more efficient, plus they deteriorate.

Please take a look at the impact of distributed solar + batteries considerning the total factor cost vs having to install new transmission infrastructure. A resilient, distributed solar system could be a lot more competitive when you consider the total system cost.