I work in the industry. While this is theoretically true, in practice it is not.
First, bonds for decommissioning solar sites are required by many programs now. These usually cost 3-5% of total initial investment. Not insurmountable by any means.
In reality, these bonds are unlikely to ever be utilized. Most sites will never be decommissioned unless the owner wants to redevelop the land for something more profitable. The interconnection rights alone are worth way more than the cost of decommissioning.
Recently, repowering solar sites has become a hugely profitable endeavor. Most projects have a 20-30 year power purchase agreement, often at a fixed price per MWh. That initial price was set very high based on the massively more expensive cost of deployment (equipment and install cost about twice as much 10 years ago). Squeezing 20% more capacity out of these projects by repowering these sites with more efficient modules and new inverters, is often a windfall, given the falling costs involved.
That's not to say there are zero issues like the ones described. Like most early stage technology-heavy industries, early solar projects often utilized a lot of "innovative" technological strategies that dead-ended and are therefore much harder to maintain.
But overall this is just not much of an issue in practice.
10k is a reasonable guess for how much tax liability is needed, and it's not a huge issue, but it is an issue. Retirees and lower-middle income folks often pay less than that each year, as do folks with even lower incomes who inherited their homes.
Particularly if you go the hardware route, might be worth exploring this as an option for utility scale solar farm inspection. Quadcopter drones often have insufficient range for the larger farms, and solar companies are increasingly making full site scans a regular part of the O&M process (they have has been used in commissioning larger sites for years).
First, bonds for decommissioning solar sites are required by many programs now. These usually cost 3-5% of total initial investment. Not insurmountable by any means.
In reality, these bonds are unlikely to ever be utilized. Most sites will never be decommissioned unless the owner wants to redevelop the land for something more profitable. The interconnection rights alone are worth way more than the cost of decommissioning.
Recently, repowering solar sites has become a hugely profitable endeavor. Most projects have a 20-30 year power purchase agreement, often at a fixed price per MWh. That initial price was set very high based on the massively more expensive cost of deployment (equipment and install cost about twice as much 10 years ago). Squeezing 20% more capacity out of these projects by repowering these sites with more efficient modules and new inverters, is often a windfall, given the falling costs involved.
That's not to say there are zero issues like the ones described. Like most early stage technology-heavy industries, early solar projects often utilized a lot of "innovative" technological strategies that dead-ended and are therefore much harder to maintain.
But overall this is just not much of an issue in practice.