Solar Power Still Sucks in a Big Way

 Jimminy First, let me just say that you have come a long way despite all your obvious handicaps. Second, graduate high school, get a job, move out of your parents house and get your own place.  After that, take your own money and buy some solar panels, and let us know how that works for you. Using the Gub'ment as a proxy to tax the poor in order to fulfill your personal alternative energy fantasies is about as selfish as it gets.

 checker99 Did you not read what i said?

 Jimminy I'm sorry, I forget about your handicaps -- let me spell it out for you in a simple way so you can follow me. Solar Panels do not 'pay for themselves' unless you include the Gub'ment subsidies generously provided by taxing the children and grandchildren of the poor and middle class. Even with these Gub'ment subsidies, Solar to Electric only pays off in the 15 to 25 year time span, which is an abysmal ROI.If you're really looking at saving the environment, those dollars the Gub'ment spends on solar power could do much more good elsewhere -- for instance educating the children in this country about Return on Investment and Lost Opportunity Costs, or better yet understanding written English.Still, I fully support YOUR right to invest YOUR money into all the solar panels YOU can afford to buy, and I certainly hope you put your money where your mouth is and invest in the same folly you are advocating everyone else's money for.

 checker99 Urgent needs such as that bag of chips you are about to eat?

 Jimminy Urgent needs such as attempting to educate the youth in this country ...

 Tyler with Affordable 

If it needs a government subsidy, its a scam.

 ed nonymous 

Like oil?

http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/

 ripper3000 Apples and Oranges.  Oil gets subsidies come only in the form of tax breaks, and those tax breaks amount to something like 5% off their tax bill.  The petroleum industry paid some $100 Billion in taxes last year, instead of the $106 Billion they would've paid without those 'subsidies.'

 ed nonymous  Tyler with Affordable 

Actually last year the oil industry recieved 72 billion in subsidies. Less than 1 billion went to solar....with out any incentives solar systems priced at current competitive rates will lock in a per kWh cost significantly less than what you are paying to your utility...commercial solar farms net a 10-15%  annual return on the investment annually based on total price without incentives. Do some research and know what you are talking about before you hate on something with great potential to stop rising energy costs, localize energy production (think of how much is spent on transmission lines across the country), we could actually stop invading other countries and killing people for energy, when you have no moving parts and require basically no more input to produce energy other than sunlight energy rates will be able to actually go down as the solar infrastructure pays for itself in 18-20 years without incentives and 4 years commercially and 7 years residential with incentives not 60. 

sad face.

I'm glad that they work well for you! Congrats!

I just ran the numbers with the technology I was able to find online. If you have better resources or if you find a problem in my calculations please let me know. In other words, if you would like to constructively contribute I would be very happy to hear from you.

Thanks.

OK, I ran YOUR numbers on the calculator YOU linked to, and it shows

1/10 the cost of what you claim it is!!

Perhaps you only get 1/10 the sunlight as we do. I had to guess since YOU HAVE NOT FULLY DISCLOSED RELEVANT FACTORS (especially average hours of direct sunlight per day).

More important than finding new sources of energy, is not wasting energy. HAVE YOU FIGURED OUT WHERE YOU ARE WASTING ENERGY? Have you looked at what is consuming what?

You may claim that solar panels does not work for your location - fine. HOW CAN YOU EXTEND YOUR SPECIFIC CASE TO THE GENERAL CASE OF EVERYONE ELSE? And this is overlooking the fact that your specific case is missing some of the most important details.

Have you ever taken a class in logic or critical thinking?

What do you really have against solar panels?

Roger, the first person with any sense

Haha, a very interesting point. I think we really need a manhattan project level initiative to really take on energy. Personally, I'd like to see Thorium Nuclear reactors take over and we can continue to work on solar in the mean time.

There is no problem with anyone investing their money in solar, where I disagree is 1) that its a good idea, and 2) that the Gub'ment should put any tax dollars into someone's personal solar investment.

Oh Rian, I didn't say we don't have an energy problem. We do, I think it should be our number one priority to get off of fossil fuels. But there are more options than just solar, which really is just too expensive to be practical (currently). Look at nuclear for instance http://www.world-nuclear.org/images/info/finlan... It make clean cheap power. France uses only nuclear power and sells it to their neighbors. They even recycle 99% of their nuclear waste so they don't have a waste problem. The only reason the US has nuclear waste problems is that it's illegal for the US to recycle our waste.

Enter Cold War.

Japan and others have found nuclear to be anything but clean and cheap on the long run.

Assuming your statement of 99% of nuclear waste is recycled is accurate (not). What does recycled mean? Is it a serious hazard for 100 years rather than 1000 or 10,000 years? And what of the other 01% (or did you really want us to think of 99% as 100%). Next time you get on an airplane, ask yourself if 99% success is good enough. If it is not for an airplane, why would it be good enough for nuclear?

Back on topic, regarding the practicality of solar panels: just because something is not personally practical to you, does not mean it is not an important solution to others.

Again, I find a great absence of insight in your postings.
Again, you appear to be unable to differentiate between short-term and long-term factors of an issue.

 Are you aware that the carbon is only a tiny fraction of what is erroneously called greenhouse gas? Has it ever occurred to you that if we have a warming period water vapour and several other contributors increase , in other words global warming causes increased levels of greenhouse gasses. Even if we eliminated all carbon emissions it would have little to no effect. The only thing that has been proved about global warming is that it has been much, much worse in the past, there has been  NONE in the last few years and when those who promote it get caught red-handed cooking the books to scare people with it the press ignores it and academia pretends it never happened. Politicians  are firing scientists who disagree with them about this, think about that, it is happening and it makes no sense.
Read the Communist Manifesto or
 www.amazon.com/Rules-Radicals-Saul-Alinsky/dp/0679721134
All you have to do is scare people who never bother to do the research and you can grab control.  Few seem to remember that 98%  of Austrians voted Hitler in to office because he promised to save them from the economic crisis, never let a good crisis go bye.
Even if you have to create it.
America has more energy than all the world combined, if we don't start using it and exporting it we will be choosing our own Hitler before long.

That's right, wait for the entire planet to be screwed first. Choke and die before change.

That is a fantastic point. I didn't think about Hawaii. We didn't include the increased price in solar though. It's probably quite a bit more expensive to get in Hawaii. Plus it seems like they could do tidal power generation for quite a bit less in a place like Hawaii. Or even better they would probably save a ton of money by doing geo-thermal. They're in the best spot for it.

Tidal and geo-thermal are both large-scale projects, though. Completely different from installing a personal solar system on your own house.
I agree though that projects like that would make a huge amount of sense for Hawaii, which has limited enough land as it is (community-scale solar projects can take up huge swaths of land).

As far as ways to personally get involved in (and encourage) this sort of project, that's why Tirzah and I subscribe to Xcel Energy's "Windsource" program. It ends up costing us $5-20/month extra on our electricity bill, but guarantees us that 100% of our electricity is purchased from wind farms. I believe that the best way to get renewable projects to a point where they outpace traditional fossil fuel generation is by voting with my wallet. Free market FTW.

Looking around http://news.discovery.com/tech/ultra-micro-urba... this is pretty cool. Based on their numbers it would cost me around $6000 hardcost to get rid of half my electric bill which isn't too bad. If the government subsided it like they did solar then it would be like $1500 bucks. Not bad at all.

 Actually geothermal is quite successful in some applications on a small scale. Not geothermal as in using underground hot springs but geo-thermal heat pumps can make sense. My Uncle bought a cement tank designed for a septic tank and placed it in the creek next to his house and placed the coils in it . The neighbours reported him and it was a riot as you might guess.
 The thing has been operating for ten years and it works beautifully.

The money given in tax rebates does not magically appear. There is no Solar Energy fairy!  How does forcibly taking money from other taxpayers to offset the loss make it any less a loss?
It is about as logical as the battery factory they built for electric cars that have to be artificially propped up with money extorted from taxpayers as well.
If we used the oil God gave us responsibly we could put people to work , pay down the debt , and produce billions for research. This insanity of using money we don't have to prop up technology that is not ready for prime time is criminal. We are stealing from generations yet unborn .