I hope prices continue to fall at pace. The issue -- just like buying an EV -- has always been that it's affordable for those with spare money to invest up front and not those without -- e.g. who are paying off massive mortgages. So the rich get richer so to speak. I know this is a negative way to look at it, but it's the reality of the situation in many parts of the world. The cheapest most polluting cars are owned by the folks who can't afford to buy an EV. There needs to be better schemes to make solar a must-do financially. These 'balcony solar' initiatives are certainly a massive step in the right direction.
So not true. My husband and I bought our solar (in the Bay Area) on a household income of $55K a year. We got a tax rebate from the government, and took out a HELOC on our house which I paid off early. If you're paying off a massive mortgage, that's on you. We bought the cheapest house we could (a foreclosure) and the interest rate in 1992 was 9 3/4%. Read it and weep. We re-financed twice, down to 7 1/4% and the second time about 2003 for 4 3/4%, that time a 15 year mortgage for $5 a month more, and paid the loan off two years before my husband retired. We never took any money out of the house. This was is Berkeley, one of the most expensive markets in the Bay Area, which is saying something else again. We got our EV two years ago, but my son has not paid for gas since 2015. You need to know how to spend your money.
I think it's great when people share their experiences about how they have lowered their carbon footprint. In doing so it can be helpful to consider that personal circumstances can vary enormously, so a strategy successfully used by one person may not work as well for someone else.
As a case in point, my house isn't well suited for solar, so now that I'm retired and have more flexibility about where to live, I am planning to move to a more solar-friendly location and downsize enough to free up money to add solar. It's unclear yet whether the marketplace will cooperate with that plan, but I am cautiously optimistic.
It would be great if incentives were more clearly focused on the lowest income folks, especially those who have to commute. Far more impact on emissions that way here in CA, I think.
What a brilliant essay! I just realized (I'm really slow, I admit it), that unless you've endured government violence (think Berkeley, 1969), you really can't comment in an intelligent way on what we're going through now. But I was a teenager in the Sixties, and I came out of it living what I now realize has been a revolutionary lifestyle. A lot of it had to do with my "waste not, want not" background, but my diet changed somewhat, I only bought from the Co-op, farmers markets and small businesses, I didn't drive until I was 34 (and I don't drive anymore), I sewed most of my clothes, thanks to my Dad, who gave me a sewing machine for Christmas when I was 15), and my husband and I put solar on our roof 10 years ago, my son has not paid for gas since 2015, and now we have an EV and a solar storage battery too. I re-landscaped our yard, native plants in the front and vegetables and fruit trees in the back. It's the Bay Area, so we still have lettuce, carrots, celery, kale and peas, as well as satsumas and lemons, in the backyard. But most of the comments I see on Substack are from people who are just clueless. Over the last six months I've gotten my news from Substack, and I just can't stand it anymore. I think what you espouse is the way to go, and that's what people need to realize. We need to pull away from this national "government".
Thank you Bill and commenters for giving me a lot to consider about incorporating solar into my life. After reading your post, I took a new look at my half a dozen plants, 20 and 30 years old, that seem to be happy living in my north- and northwest-facing windows. As I was thinking about a fruit tree or vegetable that could grow with them (since tariff-taxes are inhibiting fresh imports), I heard Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins trying to convince us that "the groceries" are priced just fine, that $3 can buy you a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla, and one other thing." So, here's DJT's new cognitive test: "chicken, broccoli, tortilla, and uh, one other thing."
Plug in solar is very interesting, but I have two technical questions.
1. Does the power from your panels get deducted from your bill without a special meter?
2. What happens when the power goes out? Rooftop panels, and also generators, have a disconnect so that you are not connected to the grid when the grid goes down. It seems your panels would still be connected, which seems dangerous?
Balcony solar systems are designed specifically to prevent them from feeding power back into the utility grid. This is why you should not need a utility interconnect agreement to install one at your residence. Thus, your savings consist of reducing what you would have used from the utility. This is why some people choose to also install a battery. If your electricity consumption is virtually $0 during the daytime because you are at work, you want to store your solar collection in the battery so you can use it when you get home in the evening.
ok, i answered my own question of how much this would cost. if you go to brightsaver and get the 2300$ system which looks like Bill's, and gives you 600kwh per panel annual savings, it would take about 5 years to recoup your cost IN SAN DIEGO, where the expensive electricity is about 40 cents kwh. so actually that's not ideal as most renters would have moved on. if price comes down by 1/2 it's very smart, however.
Or simply plug the panels into a battery or power station and plug your appliances into the battery. Prices for the portable type power station batteries are falling fast.
However, your grid question is a good one. I assume there is some protection in the system or they would not be legal in Utah and in Europe.
Yes, I would also like to know if you get a discount on energy or if plugging in is just like adding power to your homes outlets and not actually adding energy back to the grid.
I have 3 batteries that are designated for different appliances and no grid connection for my solar. I do not have plug-in but I am interested in it as a convenience. I only have a solar garden, and not a permanent roof system.
I also looked into it and could not find a single safety issue reported with these types of batteries.
Sounds to me from what Bill and others state that you never actually add energy back to the grid with plug-n power (the whole point of not needing the utility permission), you just substitute some of the energy you would get from the grid with that you generate. As a result, you lower your electric bill by the amount you DON'T buy from them because you had plug-in solar.
The current US Admin is ceding world leadership in PV solar developement and world deployment to the PRC. China now has over a TeraWatt of PV solar online with more coming. We are behind and falling further behind monthly if not weekly.
I live in Australia and have rooftop solar and an EV. I also have a bi-directional charger which enables me to export spare power to the grid for which I get paid. I rarely draw power from the grid and if I do it is to change the EV and the price of power in the middle of the day is zero. My monthly electricity bill is always negative so I’m paying nothing to run my house and car. I estimate that this is saving me $7,000 per year (for the rest of my life). This is the future!
Bill, we have had solar panels and batteries since 2019 and they're great! I realize we're lucky in that we could afford them (and that miraculously we managed to get through Southern California Edison's obstacle course), but at last there's an affordable alternative, and hurray for that. Let's make sure everyone can take advantage. I'm ready to roll up my sleeves.
Perhaps we should not talk 🦜 too loudly about this do it yourself ☀️ solar technology, for fear of TRUMPTY Dumpty issuing an executive order against it. Where is that lady lawyer from the television 📺 show " Landman" who specializes in tirades humiliating 🛢️ oil ⛽ company executives ❓❓ Even the Exxon CEO says Venezuela oil is a wonderful opportunity for somebody... Somebody else, not 🚫 him ‼️👌👹
This kind of municipal aggregation of energy customers was made possible by the 1990s utility deregulation law(s). Unfortunately, it took about 20 years, by my count, before it was put into practice.
Thank you for all you do! My enviro focus is on reducing plastics and waste, but I love receiving your sub stack and hearing about all the great things going on in solar.
As usual, I highly appreciate your newsletters. With regard to the main theme of the current newsletter, namely, the plug-in solar systems but also other solar systems as well, I do have a question. Since most of us get electricity from our local utilities, I would think that most of those utilities provide "energy storage banks" that record the energy from our resident solar system when that energy exceeds our current usage. Then, when our resident solar system produces less that we are using, energy is drawn from the "energy storage bank." For those residences, It would seem to me that residential battery storage would not be of any value. If I am wrong about this, I would like to know so I can plan accordingly.
Paul, I can tell you how it works for us in Maryland. We have a 72 panel solar field in our front pasture that feeds into the local utility system and we have a net meter on our house that runs in the negative 10 months of the year. We have had the solar field since 2012 and updated some panels when advances in generating capacity made that sensible. For December and January we generate most but not all of our electricity needs and have a modest bill.
This year we had nine Enphase house batteries installed in our basement that are directly connected through transformers to our solar field. Our batteries remain fully charged by the solar field and automatically switch over to be our sole power source if there is an interruption in service from our utility company.
We could completely disconnect from the local utility and be self sufficient, but as you pointed out, it’s really 6 of one when you are accumulating a power credit and we want to continue the relationship with the utility because of the winter gap. Having the option is a very secure feeling and provides additional security when planning for a future where climate chaos will mean long periods of outages in all kinds
You raised a good point and I’m glad to share our experience. Maryland has a legislative mandate to reach a renewable energy goal by 2030 and they require residential solar to be connected to the grid to help meet that goal. (!) So the only way to be energy self sufficient
is with the house batteries. We live in a very rural location and in the last 5 years have experienced many more and longer power outages because of downed trees and extreme weather events.
Solar power may sound appealing, but if it can only survive through government funding, that's a sign that it isn't economically viable. Constant subsidies don't create efficiency; they mask it and direct resources according to political priorities.
Central bank monetary policy
compounds this waste. Artificially low interest rates, fractional-reserve credit expansion, and liquidity injections encourage malinvestment and waste scarce resources. Government intervention replaces economic calculation with bureaucratic planning, while inflation erodes purchasing power and drives up input costs across the economy. The result is higher prices, wasted resources, environmental destruction and the illusion of progress.
Great, hopeful article, Bill, thank you. Southwestern states like New Mexico and Arizona should be all over this.
I'd love to see some financial device that uses a small percentage of savings on electricity bills in the US to fund solar panels and installations in some of the poorest areas of the nation and world – think Native and Southern communities in the US, Haiti, Madagascar, Somalia, Liberia, etc. $3000 for one unit in the US could do so much more elsewhere in the world, and help them leapfrog the fossil fuel predators.
I hope prices continue to fall at pace. The issue -- just like buying an EV -- has always been that it's affordable for those with spare money to invest up front and not those without -- e.g. who are paying off massive mortgages. So the rich get richer so to speak. I know this is a negative way to look at it, but it's the reality of the situation in many parts of the world. The cheapest most polluting cars are owned by the folks who can't afford to buy an EV. There needs to be better schemes to make solar a must-do financially. These 'balcony solar' initiatives are certainly a massive step in the right direction.
So not true. My husband and I bought our solar (in the Bay Area) on a household income of $55K a year. We got a tax rebate from the government, and took out a HELOC on our house which I paid off early. If you're paying off a massive mortgage, that's on you. We bought the cheapest house we could (a foreclosure) and the interest rate in 1992 was 9 3/4%. Read it and weep. We re-financed twice, down to 7 1/4% and the second time about 2003 for 4 3/4%, that time a 15 year mortgage for $5 a month more, and paid the loan off two years before my husband retired. We never took any money out of the house. This was is Berkeley, one of the most expensive markets in the Bay Area, which is saying something else again. We got our EV two years ago, but my son has not paid for gas since 2015. You need to know how to spend your money.
Well. That’s an n of 1. You did well. Congratulations but you can’t expect your case represents the majority of people in the world!
I think it's great when people share their experiences about how they have lowered their carbon footprint. In doing so it can be helpful to consider that personal circumstances can vary enormously, so a strategy successfully used by one person may not work as well for someone else.
As a case in point, my house isn't well suited for solar, so now that I'm retired and have more flexibility about where to live, I am planning to move to a more solar-friendly location and downsize enough to free up money to add solar. It's unclear yet whether the marketplace will cooperate with that plan, but I am cautiously optimistic.
Well said, Steve! Nice work.
It would be great if incentives were more clearly focused on the lowest income folks, especially those who have to commute. Far more impact on emissions that way here in CA, I think.
"Balcony solar" for your car? 😀
Haha -- that'd be ideal! :)
What a brilliant essay! I just realized (I'm really slow, I admit it), that unless you've endured government violence (think Berkeley, 1969), you really can't comment in an intelligent way on what we're going through now. But I was a teenager in the Sixties, and I came out of it living what I now realize has been a revolutionary lifestyle. A lot of it had to do with my "waste not, want not" background, but my diet changed somewhat, I only bought from the Co-op, farmers markets and small businesses, I didn't drive until I was 34 (and I don't drive anymore), I sewed most of my clothes, thanks to my Dad, who gave me a sewing machine for Christmas when I was 15), and my husband and I put solar on our roof 10 years ago, my son has not paid for gas since 2015, and now we have an EV and a solar storage battery too. I re-landscaped our yard, native plants in the front and vegetables and fruit trees in the back. It's the Bay Area, so we still have lettuce, carrots, celery, kale and peas, as well as satsumas and lemons, in the backyard. But most of the comments I see on Substack are from people who are just clueless. Over the last six months I've gotten my news from Substack, and I just can't stand it anymore. I think what you espouse is the way to go, and that's what people need to realize. We need to pull away from this national "government".
Impressive!!
Thank you Bill and commenters for giving me a lot to consider about incorporating solar into my life. After reading your post, I took a new look at my half a dozen plants, 20 and 30 years old, that seem to be happy living in my north- and northwest-facing windows. As I was thinking about a fruit tree or vegetable that could grow with them (since tariff-taxes are inhibiting fresh imports), I heard Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins trying to convince us that "the groceries" are priced just fine, that $3 can buy you a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla, and one other thing." So, here's DJT's new cognitive test: "chicken, broccoli, tortilla, and uh, one other thing."
Plug in solar is very interesting, but I have two technical questions.
1. Does the power from your panels get deducted from your bill without a special meter?
2. What happens when the power goes out? Rooftop panels, and also generators, have a disconnect so that you are not connected to the grid when the grid goes down. It seems your panels would still be connected, which seems dangerous?
Phil:
Balcony solar systems are designed specifically to prevent them from feeding power back into the utility grid. This is why you should not need a utility interconnect agreement to install one at your residence. Thus, your savings consist of reducing what you would have used from the utility. This is why some people choose to also install a battery. If your electricity consumption is virtually $0 during the daytime because you are at work, you want to store your solar collection in the battery so you can use it when you get home in the evening.
joe, what balcony solar do you recommend and which batteries? bill doesn't say.
ok, i answered my own question of how much this would cost. if you go to brightsaver and get the 2300$ system which looks like Bill's, and gives you 600kwh per panel annual savings, it would take about 5 years to recoup your cost IN SAN DIEGO, where the expensive electricity is about 40 cents kwh. so actually that's not ideal as most renters would have moved on. if price comes down by 1/2 it's very smart, however.
Or simply plug the panels into a battery or power station and plug your appliances into the battery. Prices for the portable type power station batteries are falling fast.
However, your grid question is a good one. I assume there is some protection in the system or they would not be legal in Utah and in Europe.
Yes, I would also like to know if you get a discount on energy or if plugging in is just like adding power to your homes outlets and not actually adding energy back to the grid.
I have 3 batteries that are designated for different appliances and no grid connection for my solar. I do not have plug-in but I am interested in it as a convenience. I only have a solar garden, and not a permanent roof system.
I also looked into it and could not find a single safety issue reported with these types of batteries.
Sounds to me from what Bill and others state that you never actually add energy back to the grid with plug-n power (the whole point of not needing the utility permission), you just substitute some of the energy you would get from the grid with that you generate. As a result, you lower your electric bill by the amount you DON'T buy from them because you had plug-in solar.
Talk to your power company.
The current US Admin is ceding world leadership in PV solar developement and world deployment to the PRC. China now has over a TeraWatt of PV solar online with more coming. We are behind and falling further behind monthly if not weekly.
I live in Australia and have rooftop solar and an EV. I also have a bi-directional charger which enables me to export spare power to the grid for which I get paid. I rarely draw power from the grid and if I do it is to change the EV and the price of power in the middle of the day is zero. My monthly electricity bill is always negative so I’m paying nothing to run my house and car. I estimate that this is saving me $7,000 per year (for the rest of my life). This is the future!
Yes, having solar gives one a sense of empowerment and a way to not feel helpless under our leadership's bizarre nonsense.
I would love to see the plug in solar take off and become "official" as far as being legal in more states.
Bill, we have had solar panels and batteries since 2019 and they're great! I realize we're lucky in that we could afford them (and that miraculously we managed to get through Southern California Edison's obstacle course), but at last there's an affordable alternative, and hurray for that. Let's make sure everyone can take advantage. I'm ready to roll up my sleeves.
Perhaps we should not talk 🦜 too loudly about this do it yourself ☀️ solar technology, for fear of TRUMPTY Dumpty issuing an executive order against it. Where is that lady lawyer from the television 📺 show " Landman" who specializes in tirades humiliating 🛢️ oil ⛽ company executives ❓❓ Even the Exxon CEO says Venezuela oil is a wonderful opportunity for somebody... Somebody else, not 🚫 him ‼️👌👹
Maybe 🤔 you ⌚ too much television 📺 ❓❓‼️👌🐯
The heat content graph gives new meaning to the phrase "boiling the ocean."
Another method of solar solidarity is the fact that Cambridge, MA has a renewable electric offering that is less expensive than the utility.
https://www.cambridgema.gov/sustainable/cleanenergycambridge
This kind of municipal aggregation of energy customers was made possible by the 1990s utility deregulation law(s). Unfortunately, it took about 20 years, by my count, before it was put into practice.
Now that it has, I really appreciate it.
Thank you for all you do! My enviro focus is on reducing plastics and waste, but I love receiving your sub stack and hearing about all the great things going on in solar.
As usual, I highly appreciate your newsletters. With regard to the main theme of the current newsletter, namely, the plug-in solar systems but also other solar systems as well, I do have a question. Since most of us get electricity from our local utilities, I would think that most of those utilities provide "energy storage banks" that record the energy from our resident solar system when that energy exceeds our current usage. Then, when our resident solar system produces less that we are using, energy is drawn from the "energy storage bank." For those residences, It would seem to me that residential battery storage would not be of any value. If I am wrong about this, I would like to know so I can plan accordingly.
Paul, I can tell you how it works for us in Maryland. We have a 72 panel solar field in our front pasture that feeds into the local utility system and we have a net meter on our house that runs in the negative 10 months of the year. We have had the solar field since 2012 and updated some panels when advances in generating capacity made that sensible. For December and January we generate most but not all of our electricity needs and have a modest bill.
This year we had nine Enphase house batteries installed in our basement that are directly connected through transformers to our solar field. Our batteries remain fully charged by the solar field and automatically switch over to be our sole power source if there is an interruption in service from our utility company.
We could completely disconnect from the local utility and be self sufficient, but as you pointed out, it’s really 6 of one when you are accumulating a power credit and we want to continue the relationship with the utility because of the winter gap. Having the option is a very secure feeling and provides additional security when planning for a future where climate chaos will mean long periods of outages in all kinds
of weather.
Hope this is helpful.
Thanks so much. I get the extra security provided by your batteries.
You raised a good point and I’m glad to share our experience. Maryland has a legislative mandate to reach a renewable energy goal by 2030 and they require residential solar to be connected to the grid to help meet that goal. (!) So the only way to be energy self sufficient
is with the house batteries. We live in a very rural location and in the last 5 years have experienced many more and longer power outages because of downed trees and extreme weather events.
Exciting, encouraging solar news on a grey day here in icy Britain— my weekly dose of The Crucial Years is a tonic. Thank you.
Solar power may sound appealing, but if it can only survive through government funding, that's a sign that it isn't economically viable. Constant subsidies don't create efficiency; they mask it and direct resources according to political priorities.
Central bank monetary policy
compounds this waste. Artificially low interest rates, fractional-reserve credit expansion, and liquidity injections encourage malinvestment and waste scarce resources. Government intervention replaces economic calculation with bureaucratic planning, while inflation erodes purchasing power and drives up input costs across the economy. The result is higher prices, wasted resources, environmental destruction and the illusion of progress.
"Constant subsidies don't create efficiency; they mask it and direct resources according to political priorities. "
You mean like the massive subsidies that fossil fuel receives? Check out the amount of money the Feds are paying coal power plants to keep running.
https://www.imf.org/en/topics/climate-change/energy-subsidies
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/republican-spending-bill-fossil-fuel-subsidies
https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-subsidies-fossil-fuels
Renewables/storage/interconnect are the cheapest unsubsidized electric generation there is.
Renewables with storage cheaper than conventional - https://cleantechnica.com/2024/08/12/solar-photovoltaics-with-battery-storage-cheaper-than-conventional-power-plants/
Comparison of costs of electricity generation by source – Annual Energy Outlook 2023 https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/electricity_generation/pdf/AEO2023_LCOE_report.pdf
Cost of solar electricity beats fossil fuel costs even without tax credits: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/07/01/solar-cost-of-electricity-beats-lowest-cost-fossil-fuel-even-without-tax-credits/?ct=t(dailynl_us)
Lazard 2025 LCOE (unsubsidized) of various electricity production - renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels & nuclear - https://www.lazard.com/media/uounhon4/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2025.pdf
Yes, exactly.
Great, hopeful article, Bill, thank you. Southwestern states like New Mexico and Arizona should be all over this.
I'd love to see some financial device that uses a small percentage of savings on electricity bills in the US to fund solar panels and installations in some of the poorest areas of the nation and world – think Native and Southern communities in the US, Haiti, Madagascar, Somalia, Liberia, etc. $3000 for one unit in the US could do so much more elsewhere in the world, and help them leapfrog the fossil fuel predators.