Solar savings not in this life time

Smart Energy Views:

FindSolar.com, operated by solar industry interests and the DOE, has a handy Solar Estimator that calculates an estimated cost for a home solar PV system and provides a list of contractors in your area. It uses some curious formulas that I don't quite understand to calculate positive ROI, but it provides some interesting insights.

Some manufacturers also have calculators, including BP Solar USA, Sharp Electronics, and Kyocera Solar. And the PVWatts.org calculator estimates how much solar power you can generate for any given U.S. location based on a number of variables.

Where I live in Tennessee is listed at the high end of "good" on the "solar scale" of available solar energy. But a 3 or 4 kW system that costs $40K or so will only generate about $35 per month worth of electricity. That's a payback of about 95 years!

...

That is one reason why environmentalist and liberals are trying to drive up the cost of energy so that solar may someday make sense. If you assume that the average electric bill is only $140 a month which is admittedly a low estimate and you put in enough solar to cover the complete average usage rather than a quarter it would take you nearly 400 years to get a payback assume the equipment lasted that long. We know the purchaser would not.

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