Everyone of us, in general, even though we don’t regularly follow, know that solar installation/system (for your roof tops) prices are dropping rapidly. If you are interested in the current state of solar, here is a good Vox report. If we dig deeper we will find that, the cost of whole solar panel plus installation process could go down even lower. The tech cost of panels/modules is falling rapidly in line with the forecasts but what the industry calls, ‘Soft Costs’ are not! So, what are soft costs?
- Education & Signing up customers: We are at a point in solar industry, we still need door-to-door sales staff to educate consumers, convince them of the benefits (especially when the grid prices are not exorbitant in US) and to sign up, which as you can imagine drives up the cost. Definitely, we can see how tech can play a role towards the education/analysis aspect of solar exploration phase of consumers. Sites like SolarPowerRocks and Google’s Project Sunroof provide sense of costs & savings. But we know word of mouth and peer effect are crucial in adoption, so a tech driven creative/social solutions are needed more to get the word out.
- Inspection & Installation: Typical labor costs are high but in addition to this, any national installer in US has to deal with widely varied inspection, interconnection and permitting regimes across states. This adds to the cost, when compared to having a uniform system nationwide. A new nationwide policy driven solution is needed. Perhaps a creative mind can come up with a policy that satisfies needs and variations of all states.
- Maintenance: Humans for now have to do this and hence the high costs will have to be incurred. Perhaps in the future a robotic solution will alleviate the costs.
Soft costs comprise 67% of the total US residential price and these costs are relatively high when compared to other advances nations, for example Germany and Australia. As states stop the subsidies and the module costs flatten, it is more than ever necessary to be creative to bring down the soft costs.
[Image Credit: Thanks to Skeeze via Pixabay]
Leave a Reply