I know HN has lots of American readers, so maybe they can explain.
Why aren't the vast majority of America's suburban single family dwellings using rooftop solar? Huge numbers of Americans live in these homes - they're not so much a thing, especially to this degree, in other countries and they seem basically ideal for rooftop solar.
Am I missing something here?
Rooftop solar in the US is incredibly expensive from most installers even as panel prices have come down and energy prices are typically low enough that the payoff time and up-front cost are seen as not worth it for many people. The US also has a lot of homes where (cheap) natural gas is used for cooking, heating, and hot water, which you'd have to continue paying for even after you installed solar panels or pay a lot of money to convert to electrical equivalents.
That said, I know a lot of people who have recently installed solar panels on their roof and it's increasingly worth it from a financial perspective. The other thing worth noting though is that while cool, rooftop solar really isn't the best approach to installing solar capacity compared to grid scale solar farms on land which also tends to be abundant in the US.
Most houses are old and many in shit condition, you'd want at least replace shingles before installing solar.
Everything becomes harder and expensive - no more standard gutter cleaning fee (200-300 bucks per average roof). For damp subclimates no more moss treatment possible.
For many houses you'd need structural engineer assessment to make sure roof can add such a load.
Many vents and outlets need to be relocated to cover large and nice area with the panels.
Dealing with contractors on standard things is such a pain already in US - expensive, many unskilled, trying to get more money out of your pocket. When they see someting expensive or non-standard their attitude changes even more.
The data that I've seen shows that the barriers to solar adoption for the average American home are high installation cost, low grid power cost, unfavorable net metering agreements for grid interconnect, and even some pushback from neighborhood committees (homeowners association aka HOA).
There are exceptions such as Hawaii where grid power is expensive and sunshine abundant, but the US is big, geographically diverse, and because of that adoption varies greatly on regional dynamics.
Tech workers located in South Africa and nearby regions suffer, because the power grid there is unreliable at best. Therefore, those workers may be required by employers to prove that they have arranged for reliable backup power and network connections in order to stay connected (nearly to the antipodes) and ensure that their performance is competitive with workers located in stable regimes with robust power grids and network backbones.
It may seem unfair or unnecessary for US employers to require US employees to have a UPS, solar array, a redundant network connection, etc. But if employers required these things up-front, surely some tech workers could step up to the challenge and perhaps even be distinguished from those who don't get it.
It’s expensive? We were quoted 60k last year. Maybe a scammy company but that’s a lot up front.
Some speculative answers based on what I know:
1. A lot of single family dwellings are occupied by renters. In this scenario, the renter has no ability to install rooftop solar, and the owner has no incentive to install rooftop solar because the renter is paying the energy bills. (The same goes for things like installing high-efficiency heat pumps etc.)
2. HOA regulations can block things like rooftop solar depending on where you live.
3. The up-front investment involved in rooftop solar can be prohibitive for many people. Things like tax incentives can help but we've been getting rid of those under the current administration, and tax incentives only go so far if your tax return is 6+ months away.