The real story with Australian rooftop solar: Australian homeowners get rooftop solar installed in a week or less, for roughly $0.50/W, while Californians pay $3.30/W and wait months for interconnection

8 comments

1. > **David Roberts**: Six months. 50 cents a watt installed in a week versus $3.30 installed in six months. This is not abstract, this is literally — you are doing literally real live quotes.
   >
   > **Saul Griffith**: With a real life human being. Fortunately, PG&E is such a rapacious monopoly and their price of electricity is so high, it’s still worth doing it in San Francisco. That’s the crazy thing.

2. Despite being nearly 90 minutes, I listened twice. I think Saul Griffith might have been feeling a bit provocative and said some things that seemed a bit idealistic to me. We’d all like to wave a magic wand to make PUCs do their job, IOUs and AHJs do the right thing, but getting there is going to be more complicated.

3. I still don’t understand how it is so cheap there. It is not ONLY permitting and utility approval.

   I have self-installed systems and just the parts cost much more than 50 cents per watt. It is also tariffs, Australia’s closer proximity to China, using cheaper Chinese brand inverters, using cheaper racking, etc.

4. Similar in the UK except it usually takes a day or two or even half a day if it’s a small simple system.

5. I’ve done installations on houses in both countries. The red tape in the US is the biggest barrier. 6 months after Install, I’m still trying to finalize the rebates and tax credits. In Australia it was installed and fully completed within a month of getting the quote.

6. We don’t even have a federal solar access law in the US. Unless you live in certain states, your HOA or municipality can ban it and your utility company can refuse to do interconnects or net metering at all.

7. The answer is tariffs suck.

8. Is it true, Aldi offering Solar-Batterie install for around 7k in Australia?

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