Reddit reviews LiFePO4 12V 100Ah Lithium Iron Phosphate Battery Pack, Light Weight LiFePO4 Battery for RV, Solar, Marine, and Off-Grid Applications

>This is the most ridiculous argument I’ve ever heard.

57% of US Greenhouse emissions come from transportation and electricity. Both you can absolutely change yourself. Nothing is stopping you from buying an EV and solar panels with a storage system. And in fact it is cheaper to do so now.

Lets focus on electricity, the average daily electricity consumption of a US residential utility customer is 10 kWh. (Which is very high, but whatever) that means that in a year it will be 3650 kWh. If we price it at 13 cents per kWh that's 475 USD per year. Or a total of 38K USD in 80 years (average lifetime of american).

A 5KW solar panel array will cost you 4.1K USD, in a good day it will produce about 25 kWh. Those will last 25 years. (they will still work after 25 years, just that their output drops about 1% each year).

A 10KWh lifepo4 battery will cost you 4.8K USD. This one will give you 10 000 charge cycles with a 65% DoD (that is about 6.5 kWh each night from the battery), 10 000 charge cycles is 27 years. In reality it might last longer because I don't think you're going to pull more than 6kWh each night out of the battery.

The reason why the battery is 10 kWh and the array produces 25 kWh is because it is an off grid system, so you need the extra to get by during cloudy days and the extra size of the battery helps with the cycle life. If you're going to be on a grid tie system you don't need the battery, and the array can be much smaller.

Giving that the average american lives about 80 years, that means that the battery and panels would have to be replace 3 times (in reality you don't really have to replace it all, those products will still work after 25 years, just that their output power and capacity wont be the same).

Either way, multiplying the total of the panels and battery (8.9K USD) by 3 gives 26.7K USD. 30% less of what you would otherwise pay on electricity with the somewhat overkill conditions I used. And of course you don't have to go and dump 8.9K USD at once, you can start with a small system that can be expanded in the future.

And I haven't touch wind power, microwind turbines are cheaper than solar panels and don't need as much battery storage. If you live in an area with average wind speeds over 8mph they are absolutely worth it.

Edit: Just in case, I know I didn't add the cost of the inverter and the solar controller, those two don't have that much of an impact in the total either way.

Worth noting that even though a grid tie system sounds better than an off grid one, it's got several issues, at large scale it isn't easy to implement because the utility company will have to deal administrating the extra production of the solar panels (which doesn't match with the peak hours of demand), also if the grid goes down you can't get power out of the panels as well. It all goes down. And finally you might end up paying back to the electric company because they usually pay you less for the kWh that you produce, as well charge you more in peak hours.

Edit2. The batteries as well can be gotten way cheaper by buying them used, there are lots of those. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L43bArxyszU

Edit3: Here are the panels and batteries that I used for my calculations.

https://www.amazon.com/Richsolar-Polycrystalline-Efficiency-Module-Marine/dp/B07DNP14JY/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=100W+rich+solar&qid=1565595960&s=gateway&sr=8-3

(50 of those for a 5KW array).

Battery: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PV5FCYX/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_pMruDb244PVQ

12.8V 100AH (1.28 kWh) 600$. (8 of those for 10 kWh). Need BMS.

I also realized of an error in the calculations and the total of the panels is way less, either way even with the mistake it was 10% cheaper than the grid.