There is no place in the world, where there is an electric grid, that solar cells can pay for their capital, maintenance and installation costs. All this money is better spent on integrating home and business cogeneration units, such as those made by Capstone and Honda into the grid. Federal home and business efficiency laws and unthwartable cogeneration interconnect laws are required - not funding for grid connected solar cell electricity. ..HG..

Henry:

Does clean energy necessarily have to be cheaper than dirty coal generated energy and lowest cost imported oil and NG before we decide to switch?

If so, most innovations would never be used and we could eat our bananas during daylight hours only.

Fortunately, many of us are willing to pay more for better, cleaner goods and services.

@Henry "Does clean energy have to be cheaper"

The short answer....YES

The 'green premium' that has been on certain products for the last 3 decades has been elitist and the main reason for non proliferation.

They don't have to be cheaper, but they have to be competitive.

I have fluoresence throughout my home, I drive a 45+mpg car, I use my A/C as sparingly as I can. However, $30K to outfit my house with solar that has a 20+ year payback, just doesn't cut it!!!

Sorry Henry I meant Harvey

The good folks at MIT estimate that solar will match fossil fuel costs within 5 years. This would be a good time to develop products to take advantage of solar when that time comes.

Would you install solar on your roof with a 10 year payback? How about 5 years? As solar prices come down and oil continues to rise, the numbers will look much better.

5 years, the answer is a definite Yes
10 years, It's a maybe, I want my daughters to go to college.

I think the first time I heard 5 more years, 1983, Still waiting.

A solar car port 10 feet x 20 feet could produce 3000 watts of power. That car port could produce 15 kWH of energy in one day. That would be a 60 mile daily range just from solar energy.

I bit of quick math says that if a car gets 20 mpg, then 60 mile would take 3 gallons at $4 per gallon for $12. Let's say $10 per day times 365 days for $3650 per year.

Even if 3000 watts cost you $30,000, it would take you less than 10 years to pay it back even with interest on the money. The payback is better in this case because you are comparing it to high priced gasoline and not to moderately priced electricity.

Cars don't get 20mpg, SUV's do. The average car gets around 30mpg and mine gets 45. Sometime around year 8 you will have to replace all the batteries 5K and a new inverter 1K. Thats if nothing else breaks or gets broken, my local solar place only offers 4 year warranties. At least once is 20 years I will need to replace the roof. What is it going to cost to have the panels removed and re-assembled. You would also need an electric car.

I would love for solar to be practical. But it's just not.

This is push technology rather than pull.

i.e. the government is paying companies to create devices that may be OK. Or they may be devices no one will willingly buy.

Ditto for the algorithms, system integrations, etc.

IMO (assuming the feds should push solar) it would be better to subsidize solar consumption and let the customers and suppliers - the market - choose what works. I have the odd idea that the corporations and engineers can develop what will sell.

But the market is not everything. By spending the money in this way it stays in the US. And US technology is subsidized and perhaps stronger for it.

If, instead, we subsidize consumption then consumers and suppliers will choose if domestic product or foreign product is best. And trade agreements make it nearly impossible for the government to favor the domestic.

About cost. Many, many people in the US can readily spend $30K+ for home solar. And w/o batting an eyelid or borrowing a cent. I live among them in a perfect solar location. Yet few are spending the money.

I think the reason is simple: they expect a better deal later. Limited supply is keeping the price up.

Panel makers are running full speed and expanding plant around the world. No matter how many homeowners are willing to install solar today it won't increase total solar power generation until product is available.

Henry is absolutely right

For those of us that use natural gas (open flame) gas heaters Co-gen is doable and thermodynamically efficient.

I go further. There should be a ban on open flame gas heaters for space heating. The adoption of single cylinder residential generators, say 7.5Kw max should yield 22kw of waste heat. A high %age of that could be harvested for space heating in the home. The monopoly of wasteful central electricity plants should be broken.

Solar PV is a crock also. On terrestrial construction solar thermal holds some promise but it needs be done on the megascale like all these projects where the input commodity is cheap or free. Tide, Wind, Waves and Hydro.

BTW 110vac should also be reviewed for residential safety. Many appliances and most lighting fixtures could utilise 24v systems without exceeding 10 amps.

We could then get rid of all these wall 'warts' consuming phantom loads. Their purpose is to avoid the cost of UL/CSA testing on every low consumption product that comes in from China and South East Asia. But these 24/7 plug-ins are running up your electricity bill.
T2

Fuel economy averages around town nationwide are around 20 mpg. 3000 watts of PV would cost more like $20k and there are grants that can cut that in half. So now you are down to a pay back in 4 years. You tell me what the price of gasoline will be in 4 years and I will tell you where the price of batteries will be in 4 years. I bet you lose and I win.

I suppose the question a lot of previous posters are asking is can solar ever beat coal on price? I think it probably could soon, if given a chance.

In the southern states, a tilted panel at latitude will receive 7 kWh per m2 incident solar energy per day, on average, over the year. That's 2,555 kWh per year, incident.

Assuming 10% efficiency of cheap solar panels that's 255 kWh electricity produced per year per m2 of panels - a paltry $12.75 income per year if selling at 5 cents per kWh wholesale.

So it now all comes down to how much are the repayment costs on a 1 m2 solar panel? Can they be less than $12.75 per year?

For Nanosolar at 99 cents per watt, it's about $100 per m2 of panel. Say an extra 20% on top of that to cover grid connection etc ($120 per m2 installed). A 25 year capital repayment "mortgag-e" on 1 m2 of cells would therefore cost only $10 per year. So theoretically at least, solar could produce at less than 5 cents per kWh if the installation costs can be kept within 20% of the cell costs.

Alternatively, the solar concentration / thermal people are already saying that their technology will be cheaper than coal when scaled up properly.

The problem with waiting for prices PV and other renew ables to fall is that will delay the development time that may prove to be the most expensive option in the long run.
Where would we be if we waited for space missions to be commercially priced?
all emission reduction strategies since the beginning of the industrial revolution?
This is really govt showing leadership to achieve social outcomes.

I just had a quote done in April, my state will only let me use one of three (approved) solar venders, and they are all the same. I do not have a McMansion, I have a 3 bedroom house, under 2K sqft. I have the ability to run a low consumption swamp cooler 6 months out of the year. All my appliances are less than 5 years old with energy star ratings. The quote I got would cover 80% of my families electrical needs for the year. After ALL Federal, State and City rebates and tax credits.

Bottom Line......$28,468

Financed over 4 years.....$34,000

clett mentions in passing one factor that could easily be changed, namely the price of electricity assumed in these calculations. If we required utilities to buy back Solar power from individual customers at the prevailing *retail* rate instead of the wholesale rate it would make the economics of home Solar much more attractive. Utilities already pay enormous prices for electricity on the spot market, as much as $5000 per MW-hr; buying it at, say, $200 per MW-hr ($0.20 per kW-hr) would be a win for them as well as the seller.

i think your avg mpg is high.

my 2004 jeep grand cherokee barely gets 15mpg (that according to its own electronic estimate, which is far lower than the sticker said it would get). this is with tires slightly over-inflated and recent tuneup.

from wiki:
An average North American mid-size car gets 27 mpg (US) highway, 21 mpg (US) city; a full-size SUV usually travels 13 mpg (US) city and 16 mpg (US) highway. Pickup trucks vary considerably; whereas a 4 cylinder-engined light pickup can achieve 28 mpg, a V8 full-size pickup with extended cabin only travels 13 mpg (US) city and 15 mpg (US) highway.

There is no place in the world, where there is an electric grid, that solar cells can pay for their capital, maintenance and installation costs. All this money is better spent on integrating home and business cogeneration units

An investment in PV or wind power eliminates the future price of fuel from the cost (and availability) equation for energy. Your costs are due to the need to pay interest on the invested money, which is negotiated up front. This can become cheaper than even cogeneration if the price of fuel goes high enough.

Southern California and Hawaii already has grid equivalent costs solar and solar prices continue to fall.

Here's an actual example,

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2326042,00.asp

Joseph,

I was going to suggest some steps to bring down the costs, but Typepad blocked it for some reason...again.

If the national average around town miles per gallon is lower than 20 mpg, then the payback is quicker. It is not splitting hairs and getting the absolutely precise number, it is looking at the relative payback times of charging a PHEV/EV with solar.

If cars are 21 mpg and trucks/SUVs are 14 mpg and small SUVs are X and crossover SUVs are Y and you only have 10% small SUVs and crossovers and on and on...by the time you are done being so exact you have missed the point entirely.