LookAtItGo123 t1_j59opjn wrote on January 21, 2023 at 12:01 PM

Reply to comment by nintendomech in India installed almost 14 GW of solar in 2022 by Straight_Ad2258

Usd? Your house must be pretty huge, cost price per watt is about 0.2 usd, if you include shipping and distributor mark ups it's at most 0.5 usd. A 20 panel system of 550w each is 11kw which is 5.5k. A 12kw inverter is around 2k and a 10kw battery should be about 10k making your total cost about 18k usd and between labour and delivery and profit margins I'd say 25k is fair for a 20 panels system. So 75k should be for a 60 panel system and that's way too huge. A family of 10 probably wouldn't even be able to use it effectively enough.

nintendomech t1_j5al6jl wrote on January 21, 2023 at 4:33 PM

Family of 4. It’s a 5 bedroom 3 bath home. 2700sqft home so not huge and half of it is a basement. Really it wasn’t too many panels. It was 102% efficiency and no battery pack. It was at most a 30 panel system on my roof. I was like I’m gonna have to pass and not own my own grid.

For an 8 panel system it was going to cost me 30k. That was a package just to get my foot into solar.

Can you tell me where you found your prices or who was going to do the work for you? I was using blue Raven, but it was just so expensive. I didn’t want to do that. I was going to finance a sports car soon and I thought if I did solar panels, It would be bye bye sports car.

LookAtItGo123 t1_j5ay55t wrote on January 21, 2023 at 5:58 PM

I am a solar contractor myself. But considering that I'm from Singapore instead of the US its very different over here. Generally people stay in government housing apartment equavilents and the entire grid is owned and managed by the government so they pretty much got the monopoly on how much the selling back of electricity is worth.

Equipment wise, China and Taiwan is the answer. Even for brands like jinko where research is done in Germany, the entire manufacturing is done there. At the end of the day, the panels are pretty much made from sand into silicon crystals and I've sent a couple of different brands for lab testing since the tenders I'm working has it as a requirement, they all yielded results with less than 1% of variance.

Labour wise most of the workers here are migrant workers from places like blangadesh. Blue collar jobs are highly looked Down upon here and its valued cheaply as compared to places like nz or AU.

So yea overall a 20 panel system here in sg goes for around 20k sgd which is around 17k usd without a battery system. After factoring margins and logistics.

nintendomech t1_j5azga6 wrote on January 21, 2023 at 6:07 PM

It would almost be cheaper for me to fly a team over here with the parts and pay you all very well and still come out cheaper.

nintendomech t1_j5az0zn wrote on January 21, 2023 at 6:04 PM

Jesus FC. People be making like 50k profits. Thanks for the insight.

LookAtItGo123 t1_j5b0ry7 wrote on January 21, 2023 at 6:15 PM

Not entirely true, nor entirely false haha. I know USA still does manufacturing but if you looked globally, even China is starting to get out capitalismed. Myanmar is where the cheap labour is at now, though if we go further you'll just see child labour there. Welcome to late stage capitalism.

As for Labour, I believe Mexicans are your equavilents of cheap Labour. I believe in paying good honest money for good honest work, so I do it personally with my construction friends and share the profits equally after sales comms. A very rare thing where I'm from.

different places have different requirements. Your take out meals there generally fall within 10$ I believe while ours here is at 3$. At the end of the day I can't comment too much but USA ain't the friendliest place to start a business with all the overheads and taxes.

nintendomech t1_j5b3mm0 wrote on January 21, 2023 at 6:34 PM

We have a lot of Mexican labor in Washington state but where I live I’m some of the what feels like the first Mexican to the area. There are so few of us.