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Discussion (88 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
So they look good and the potential buyer sees something that looks to be in good condition and working well.
Theoretically, the price of the house before cleaning should be equal to the value if the house after cleaning, minus whatever the cleaning costs. In reality, you'll get much less for your house without cleaning it, because human emotions.
A family came for the tour and before walking in the father put his hand on the rail, looked up at the house, and said "this place seems well maintained". Then they bought the house after a small pleasant (for us) bidding war.
The contractor earned his high rate and then some.
If I tour a house with pet urine stains all over the carpet, it's only logical to conclude that the owner is likely not maintaining the rest of the house to a very high standard.
It doesn’t prove that you’ve been generally on top of things for the lifetime of the house but the inverse situation where you couldn’t clean one time for guests sure doesn’t.
A few things we changed right away: - new mailbox (replacing a rusted 30+ year old one) - lots of landscaping work (the majority of which I can do myself) - installed a wine fridge (I always felt it gave the sense that the kitchen was upgraded when we were touring places) - replaced old door knobs with modern matte black levers; ~$50 each
The house was built in 1968, so it's been interesting to think about all of the small things that make it feel dated that can be changed for not much money.
I was in a buying situation where my old lease was expiring soon, I had a second kid on the way, and the last thing I'd have wanted is to buy a place where I'd have contractors milling around for weeks or months to make various repairs. I was willing to pay a hefty premium for a place that's in a move-in condition.
I don't think this extends to "you'll get $10k less if you don't vacuum", but it's a common courtesy on a million-dollar transaction to maybe not leave a mess.
It's trust, because if the previous owners can't even bother cleaning it up, what else might their neglect have done to the house? Maybe I'll need to change the house wiring, verify if any new paint job is hiding mold or infiltration... All that is the cost of uncertainty and uncertainty grows with distrust.
This is the latter.
See also: stereotype accuracy
I'd say it's also "because the kind of people who clean and tidy things also maintain them"
Obviously it's not infallible. But even if the owner only cleaned their stuff now that they are selling it that still tells you they are the type of person to take action where it's beneficial
Cleaning in general is also usually a core part of maintaining something. Dirt and grime lead to wear and tear.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_staging
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhBBUFuTwR4
The reason it’s popular is because most people don’t understand the economics at all. Someone can go door-to-door in a neighborhood offering to clean solar panels and making huge claims about improving efficiency so much that you can’t afford not to do it.
Homeowners who invested $30K in solar panels think of a $300-600 charge as an easy choice to keep their investment producing money.
My parents had someone going around their neighborhood trying to charge $50/panel for cleaning. They didn’t even climb a ladder. They sprayed washing solution from the ground. Most neighbors declined, but you could see the guy spraying down a couple roofs.
Easy way to clear $1000+ per day for knocking on some doors and pointing a hose at a couple rooftops, at least until the public figures out the scam.
The drop off after cleaning could well be because some of the initial boost could come from the water cooling off the panels: solar panels become less efficient at higher temperatures so the drop of after they're all cleaned could be them warming up again after the water has evaporated.
The rudimentary nature of the setup makes me think there isn't something like a single conductor 12awg (or euro equivalent) copper wire that bonds to all panels and a basic $30 rod.
The equipment grounds should be tied together to prevent any difference in potential though.
But this is an array that looks a bit remote from any structure, and even if the electronics themselves are utterly, perfectly safe, the bonding wire will cause the panel frames to be at the potential of the inverter’s ground, and the soil will be at whatever its local potential is, and this may be different, resulting in a “touch potential”. You can mitigate this with a supplemental ground (or whatever your jurisdiction calls it) closer to the panels. There are fancy ways to do this particularly well to improve safety in the event of a fault.
If you are contacting the actual power wiring of the solar array, something is wrong. If you are feeling capacitive coupled current from the power wiring of the array, then I imagine this means your inverter has crappy filtering, and again the only way you would feel it is if the panel frame isn’t at the same potential as the local soil.
Oh, and if you live somewhere prone to lightning, you probably want to give a possible lightning strike to the panel a better route to a high quality ground than through the bonding wire to your house.
(In fact, in many parts of the world, including IIRC 48 US states, the power utilities may operate their distribution networks with a current carrying wire (combined neutral and ground) that is grounded at multiple points along its route, which will generate substantial leakage current through the ground. The exceptions are IIRC California and Wisconsin, and IIRC those states have their rules to help protect cattle from becoming part of an undesirable circuit while being milked. In CA at least, all the distribution transformers on the poles have at least two bushings on the primary side, and this is why. I believe this is California General Order 95, rule 33 [0].)
[0] https://ia.cpuc.ca.gov/gos/go95/go_95_rule_33.html
When I check on the VRM portal it makes a difference, and since I am so dependent on them all year round, I have no problem giving them some attention from time to time. Ten mins well spent.
And about the washing, I wonder if it would be worth it to automate the process with a spray of water periodically? You can still wash the panels but I suspect it won't be necessary if there isn't too much dust accumulation? Isn't rain supposed to wash away the dust? What am I missing here?
I do a similar procedure for my house windows. I use a squeegee on those but probably not necessary for panels.
I don't have numbers, but I suspect it alleviates issues with dust buildup and temperature.
The dirt may not be piling up, but it's far from clean.
I'm thinking the best thing to do would be put a large battery in between the grid and my home and selectively recharge the battery with the solar. I believe that setup circumvents the fee since the only thing using energy is the battery, as though it were an off grid setup. I might consider not putting the entire home behind the battery but just the largest energy hogs, like the HVAC or others.
Does this make sense, are there existing setups like this and what are thoughts about something like this?
Thanks
You can do a whole home backup + solar panel input (aka ESS+PV) but it's much more expensive in parts and installation and is more complex. If you don't add grid interconnect it can be much cheaper as you can use "off-grid" parts (grid interconnect requires more expensive parts certified for certain standards).
But some jurisdictions may not allow cheaper "off-grid" parts/systems to be connected to the grid, even downstream. So an alternative would be to install a transfer switch, where you manually switch from the grid to off-grid. But then you literally have to choose whether you use the ESS+PV or the grid at any given time and manually throw a switch (you can't use grid to charge your system). And yes you can set this up for only specific circuits/appliances. Again it depends on your state and local laws.
AI can do most of the research for you. Keep a Git repo and add documentation and details to it over time, and you can build up an analysis of what works for you based on all available options, price comparisons, energy requirements, and local/state laws. It is unfortunately quite complicated because there are many options but not all will apply to your location. And before you do any of this, do a solar site survey to see if you can even reliably generate enough power from the sun!
Of course, you can math that any way you like to make the numbers bigger or smaller, depending on whether you're representing the buyer or the seller of the system.
But if cash is tight, yeah, not so much.
But, the real factor in all of this is how valuable the time required to clean the panel is.
Messing around with ground panels is lower risk and safer than roof panels where tool extenders and ladders start to become involved. If you have roof panels, you are the biggest danger to your panels (and yourself.) Don't try to clean them, spray them, knock snow off of them. I was told this multiple times by my installer. :)
So, at least in our case, definitely worth it.
However if you are using a string inverter you will want to wash all the ones on the same string in one go if you can, you don't really want them generating different voltage or you will miss out on a lot of power.
> This is the yin and yang of market-distorting incentives. Today's incentive to install solar becomes tomorrow's disincentive to upgrading it.
I am not sure what author is trying to hint. But solar does not need artificial subsidies, and can pay for itself!
There are no subsidies in UK! Homeowners get so much money, because of all that sunshine and wind energy, their house generates! UK goverment just run out of money, when energy got expensive!
UK goverment needs to step up, to replace gaz with renewables!
You can not expect homeowners to sell energy bellow market price!
That's true now, but wasn't true when those panels were installed. There were subsidies available to get the market kick-started.
They consist of an extra payment for every kwh you generate on top of the payment for delivering the power to the grid. The amount varied depending on when you signed up to the scheme, but at certain points it was as much as 50p/kwh (+ inflation, so more than that now).
I think he is describing a subside that some governments gave years ago: you installed for example 5K, and get paid for whatever they generate at 300% market price, for a long time (25 years?). Today you find out that upgrading panels would made perfect financial sense, if you were selling at 100% and are going to sell electricity at 100% (you will be doubling the output for a tenth of the inversion 15 years ago), but as the subsides of 300% no longer exist, you will be actually losing money by upgrading.
InSight was stationary and not so fortunate. But, the ground team got quite creative with its robotic arm to try and manipulate the sand that had accumulated on the solar panel, and gained a little bit more power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InSight#Surface_operations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_regolith
Oh, also, I've noticed that at least with my panels, bird poop seems to be particularly bad. The dust that accrues doesn't seem to do much, but even a relatively small bit of bird poop will be almost as bad as weeds. Fortunately it's not terribly difficult to clean once it's dried.