• JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
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    1 month ago

    Here in Belgium there used to be big government subsidies for solar panels 5-10 ago.

    Now the same wattage battery + solar setup without any government subsidies is a good chunk cheaper than that time with the large subsidies.

    Pretty cool and shows the power of government renewables subsidies. A huge percentage of houses in Belgium have solar panels now.(and electricity still costs 0.30€/kWh average because of fossil fuel energy lobbies)

    Now that there is a local industry around it, most renovations and almost all new builds include them.

    • bobalot@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      4 million households in Australia have solar panels.

      They are great value.

    • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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      1 month ago

      As your northern neighbors. We did subsidize it too, but now the privatized energy companies started whining that there wasn’t enough capacity, so now they charge you for creating free energy

      • ammonium@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        You guys shouldn’t complain, you still have saldering (net metering) ánd get money for the electricity you have left which is still a huge subsidy.

    • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      electricity still costs 0.30€/kWh average because of fossil fuel energy lobbies.

      This is the price of guaranteed electricity delivered to your doorstep. We can’t get rid of gas fired power stations and kms of electricity grid network yet.

      • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
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        1 month ago

        Only partially true. The solar panels almost all inject power back into the grid. Power companies started complaining about their profits when they had to actually pay the users for their power that they generated so now home power generating houses get paid pennies on the dollar for delivering power and reducing the power capacity needed by the power companies and of course the power companies didn’t lower prices at all, so they are just sucking up the difference in pure profit.

    • Wahots@pawb.social
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      1 month ago

      That is surprisingly expensive there. I think it’s like 12¢/kwh here (though we have block one and block two prices depending on how many kwh you use in a month, so it could be a higher rate if you are eating through tons of power).