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Photovoltaic tax information

By purchasing a photovoltaic installation you become an entrepreneur from a tax perspective. This means that firstly the earnings that you generated from the photovoltaic installation is recorded for income tax purposes and secondly your new photovoltaic industry is subject to VAT.
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The same would happen were an American set up a large system and directly supply electricity to their neighbors in exchange for money. That money, that income, should be reported and would be taxed.

If, in fact, a utility were to pay an American for electricity fed into the grid as opposed by doing net metering the income received would be a taxable event. The system would be treated partially as a business and, just like in Germany, it would be possible to depreciate the commercial part of the system to offset some of the income tax.

This tax stuff has nothing to do with system installation cost. If you are able to get within ten percent of the German average you are doing quite well and should be gaining a lot of business.

But if what you are doing is misrepresenting the actual cost of German solar then you’re likely to earn a “used car salesman” reputation.

When comparing apples to apples on costs, Germans are only 8.2% lower than what I am selling a system for here in the Minnesota…there industry has much greater buying power and I am a 2 man shop so I think I am doing pretty darn good.

The US has no VAT.

As for your list of costs not included (scaffold renting, etc.) – really?

Here is
actual German installation times:

This German install consists of 18 modules (3.24kW) installed in 32
person hours (2 people times 2 days times 8 hours each day). Our
company installs 20 modules in the same 32 hours so it looks like the
installation time is very close between the two countries. This is a
far cry from 7.5 total person hours being reported lately in the graphs. It’s now
obvious that there is a huge error in the transferring of information
or someone is trying to scare potential customers into not buying
solar PV by making them think the US dealers are ripping them off.
Can the people that write these articles please seek those who can
offer an apples to apples comparison, as accurate information is key
to our societies’ advancement.

30% of installation cost? For a run of copper from roof to ground and a ground spike?

Or is this simply a third wire run to the service box and tied into the existing ground system (which should be even less).

“Now let’s add on profit and overhead per hour of $30.00 and yes, it should be per hour, not per job so that everyone makes the same amount of money in the same time period.”

No. A fair profit per system is all that should be paid. Not a ‘cost plus’ system.

Yes, i hope the DOE goal of getting solar to that level will involve a LOT of red tape cutting!

It is plain ironic that the Department of Energy wants to drop the prices to below $2.16 a watt when it cost us more than that to install because of other Department’s requirements and regulation.

I am also comparing this to Germany which is by no means is a Banana Republic and has high quality standards, strict labor laws and much regulation in place.

Bob’s post-coffee math has been known to wander away from spot on accuracy.

If you’d like to cook the numbers for yourself and compare you can do it here…

http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/tech_lcoe.html

I knocked Fixed O&M, Heat, and Fuel Cost to zero. I think the other numbers are in my above post. 4.2/24 hours = 17.5% capacity.