The root of this endeavour is to be found in The Most Serene Republic's log for today. The results of that root are as follows :

IP MAC # mI LGen TZ 128.135.118.179 00:1D:C0:04:6A:98 189 235 MWh US/Central 128.135.118.180 00:1D:C0:04:6B:14 126 169 MWh US/Central 141.239.148.243 00:1D:C0:01:74:E6 10 20.5 MWh US/Hawaii 165.124.180.22 00:1D:C0:04:6A:8C 92 79.8 MWh US/Central 184.23.25.241 00:1D:C0:00:EB:6D 28 44.2 MWh US/Pacific 198.108.25.193 00:1D:C0:04:12:9B 2 1.97 MWh US/Eastern 64.30.126.213 00:1D:C0:04:57:A9 60/30 49.9 MWh US/Pacific 65.183.143.207 00:1D:C0:02:EF:CD 20 26.8 MWh US/Eastern 66.91.168.133 00:1D:C0:03:6C:A3 18 35.8 MWh US/Hawaii 69.146.54.20 00:1D:C0:03:AB:02 24 55.9 MWh US/Mountain 69.91.192.223 00:1D:C0:04:5F:B0 48 62.8 MWh US/Pacific 70.167.75.146 00:1D:C0:04:6A:01 44 92.4 MWh US/Pacific

Most of the afflicted items (9) are running software version R3.7.28 (88072d) built on Fri Feb 05, 2016 03:46 PM PST ; a couple are running R3.7.27 (bed096) made Tue Aug 11, 2015 11:33 AM PDT and one R3.7.26 (7888b3) made Mon Aug 25, 2014 01:56 PM PDT.

Here's the complete and detailed list of their activity (tsv) : solar-lulz.txt

As you can see, the units are not particularily reliable, there's a long litany of possible errors (how the fuck do you get the frequency out of range on a solar panel is anyone's guess, but maybe they recycle old Sony tv sets or something) and they are encountered regularly.

In terms of actual economic utility, the situation is grim : a total of 143 800-00065-r03 units together with a further 45 800-00038-r08s, all installed on August 10 2012 managed to produce a whopping 235 MWh in the intervening 1`699 days. That's about 0.731kWh per unit per day. A microinverter is typically rated for about 200W, which means an efficiency of about 15%. I guess there's no sun where these people live ?

Except they live everywhere, from Hawaii and the West Coast to Flyover America to East Coast. None of the examples fare any better ; of the 662 individual microinverters we sampled not one actually rose over 25% efficiency. In fact, people regularily pay to the tune of $11`760 in cash for installing an item that will produce less than one cent of revenue per day on average during the next five years! At which rate the investment will amortize itself sometime after the supposed problem all this wastage resolves has long solved itself!

To recap : "solar power" costs more in energy alone to merely produce the hardware (we're not counting the minerals, just the energy to assemble all the stuff together) than it will ever output over its lifetime. Then there's the cost to decomission the things, then there's the actual wasted raw materials that compose them, etcetera etcetera.

This can not be underlined thickly enough : the best way to save energy is to... not buy nor install solar panels.

For every Watt of energy an installed solar panel ever produces, it will have consumed about three Watts of energy. You are actually saving two Watts by not putting one in. Running your fridge with the door open in front of the electric stove with the oven door open for the rest of this year is more economical, financially, more efficient, energetically, and more environmentally friendly than installing one single microinverter.

Please, for the sake of your children : stop doing stupid shit like installing solar panels. Do some reading instead. Try doing some math. Please ?

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