: Why don’t all buildings use solar panels on their roofs to generate electricity?
In: Technology
A lot of large businesses receive subsidies for their energy to the point where they could not possibly recoup the cost of installing solar panels. At the end of the day, it’s all about money to big businesses.
For homeowners, a single family may use so little electricity where it would take decades to recoup the cost, or, again, their electricity is so cheap that it doesn’t make economical sense for them to do so. My electricity is about 24 cents per kWh after taxes, and the vast majority of it is generated from renewable sources, thanks to proper spending from my local governments, and my geographical location. So not only would I need to wait for 20-30 years to start to make my money back from my panels, but it also wouldn’t have much of an environmental impact.
Both of these combined also highlight economies of scale. It would make more sense for a dedicated company, or even a local government, to dump millions of dollars into a solar or wind farm, and then distribute the power out, than it would for individuals to spend thousands of dollars each to produce a much smaller amount of energy.
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