re: Solar at an Arkansas high school turns budget from a $250K deficit to $1.8M surplus

quote:

---

Grok's fact check of your post:

---

Just because you can regurgitate and copy/paste an AI breakdown doesn’t mean you know what you’re talking about

The other upgrades done contributed far more to the cost savings than the solar. The original tweet and thread only credited solar

Propaganda

one that references Reddit and other social media sources? ooof

When can I get solar health car and auto insurance?

At a minimum, this link is misrepresenting the costs/payback. or they are just out right makign it up.


found an article on the size and "savings" for the solar array:

LINK

so the 5MWac solar array is "making" $500k year.

The article says that the site is also grandfather in to the 1 to 1 Net metering credit that is no longer in place.


What the article fails to show is the cost to construct the solar farm.is that solar farm will cost north of $10m to build and interconnect to the utility grid. And that is with the ITC credit that is gone shortly. so even with the old rules with ITC, that is a 20 year payback

so the article is stating the savings without factoring in the capitol upfront cost to built it. and this money was likely borrowed by the school district through bonds so there is an interest factor. also, there is a maintenance cost associated with maintaining a solar farm as well that will go against the savings.

Typically solar farms will last 25-30 years (barring a severe weather event) and the output will degrade about 0.5% per year.

But yea, if you make the initial cost of construction $0, and you are grandfathered into a 1 to 1 net metering deal that is no longer available you "make money"

However, with the ITC saf Harbor date of July 3, 2026 coming soon and no more ITC credits given for projects started after that date.

So once the ITC goes away, that $10m cost of construction goes to $15m and the simple payback goes from 20yer to 30year, which is the life of the panel. but the panels degrade 0.5% per year.......


THis is why solar is not sustainable without ITC subsidies....

Wait until the Solar Panels get old and are replaced.

Wonder how much the Federal Gov't gave in rebates in order to "Save the Planet".

quote:

---

Not quite that straight forward because of the way the ITC is monetized. It would be closer to 10MM going to 12.5MM if you pulled it straight back through to cost of construction but its really a cost of capital.

---

i tried to simplify it without having to get into Net Present value and avoided capital costs. also i am on the engineering side and not the financing (bean counter) side

quote:

---

Safe harbor can extend far past 7/3/26 as long as you meet the 5% PWT. My fund is projecting SH sales into 2029. Pretty much everyone is buying up equipment to qualify.

---

this is true, but if you miss getting the 5% safe harbor "costs incurred" by 7/3/26 then you have until december 31, 2027 to put the solar farm into service or you lose the ITC credit. if this is an "in front of the meter" farm, IE "selling back" to the utility company, then that is highly unlikely to occur with construction and the utility companies interconnect. if behind the meter then that can be done but still a lot of work. needs to be done in a short amount of time on big projects.

This school system has an "in front of the meter" farm that sells the production back to the grid. my point was, that come 7/3/26 these construction project will be less affordable without the ITC.

quote:

---

Wait until the Solar Panels get old and are replaced.

---

The inverters are far more likely to go out than the panels. The panels don't have a high failure rate unless they used some cheap chinese non-tier 1 junk.

quote:

---

Only saved 100K. Well 100K here and 100K there and pretty soon it adds up to real money.

---

Did anyone say money saved isn’t helpful?

Maybe try to understand the argument and why the original post is horseshite

quote:

---

The best they could come up with was an 800k surplus over 3 years

---

That's still pretty damn good, if true.

quote:

---

In addition to everything it has access to online versus regurgitating Politard MAGA hack talking points...oooh solar bad, fossil fuels good. frick off.

---

you’re so mad you posted leftist propaganda that you don’t have the brainpower to objectively parse out