this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
217 points (98.7% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
7054 readers
349 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
FWIW, I'm in the process of starting a grid-tied solar installation. Total cost, without batteries, will be about $70,000. That's a 17kW system, that should produce an average of 30kWh/day in the winter.
If I had been doing this last year, it would have been sharply less; tariffs and the drive to kill solar has driven costs up, and the end of the solar tax credit on 31 December means that everyone that wants to do it is trying to do it now, which drives up labor costs.
DIY install would cut the cost dramatically, the markup on labor was already fucking insane. You can get a roofer to do the install for the brackets and an electrician to certify the cabling for fraction of what solar installers want to do it.
Plus the equipment is dramatically cheaper doing it that way too. Go checkout https://signaturesolar.com/ and see how insanely larger your system could be for 70k lol.
Just as a quick example you can build a cart that is
27kW of solar input
24kW of inverter output
55kWh of storage
For about 30k then add 5k for cabling, lugs, fuses and breakers, and I'm also assuming you'll need the lug crimpers and other such tools amd 5k for the mounting hardware, unless you happen to be or be friends with a welder then you can find a steel yard and make your own mounting hardware for pretty cheap.
So tldr for 40k you can have a system that wildly outclasses that 70k one from an installer. It's not particularly difficult work to do there are a million extremely great tutorials available out there both in text and video form solar is mostly DC so it's just positive to positive negative to negative. You can always have an electrician handle the final connection to the actual breaker box of the house and it will still be dramatically cheaper than having solar installers do the whole thing
Reference links for that price
2x Solar pallet
4xWall mount battery
2xstackable 12k inverter
Only if you’re in a place that lets you do it DIY. My county does not allow me to do any solar on my own, whether it’s tied to the grid or not. If I could do what you’re suggesting and hire a roofer to install the brackets, then install the panels myself and just hire an electrician to finish tying the wiring into my panel, I would do that in a heartbeat.
You’re absolutely correct in saying people can save a ton of money with DIY, but people also need to check their local laws and make sure they’re able to do that.
Grid tie i fully understand being regulated heavily but man i wish i could punch and then bury alive any officials that regulated offgrid self consumption. Like fuck off its basically just a larger version of those computer battery backups you can get at bestbuy lol. Or better it's just a larger jackery battery and solar, they gonna fucking regulate those too? We can't have people being self sufficient that would be just awful
If they catch you using it to be self-sufficient instead of paying the electrical company? You bet your ass they will