[Pontiac]

No adult believes that solar can offer any more than 8-10% of our total power needs at any time in the forseeable future.

No realistic adult who has looked at the date would expect solar to supply more than 1% of the nations energy supply.

The only place that solar makes economic sense is in areas where it is too expensive to run an electric transmission line.

Even if you can not reasonably run a transmission line to your site it is still more than likely cheaper to have your own diesel generator (and more reliable unless your weather is unusually good).

With out government subsidies solar can not possibly compete with conventional electric generation technology.

Solar is a nitch technology good for powering calculators, watches and phone charges and not much else.

[copaliscrossing]

Solar is a nitch technology good for powering calculators, watches and phone charges and not much else.

But but but but.....my liberal friend who just dumped a bunch of money into solar panels on his roof tells me that if everyone did what he did it would revolutionize the energy industry...lol. Stick it to "the man" (oil/gas man that is).

Of course I had to guide him through the whole "length of payback" conversation and I really flustered him when I told him that his idea wasn't really "fair" to the lower class/poor people because they cannot afford what he has. I also told him to forget about the whole subsidy thing (which helped him afford his system) because his "hero country" Germany is giving up on the whole solar subsidy thing because it is tanking their economy and we just cannot afford to do that at this point. I piled it on when I said "I feel really sorry for all those poor people that cannot have what you have" and that really flummoxed him.

I finally told him that it was fine if he and others wanted to do that as a hobby and he wanted to be the "solar preacher" on facebook but it is nothing more than a small drop in the big pond of the energy picture and it is no where near scalable.

[presidio9]

One thing that I’d like some help understanding is the life expectancy of the Solyndra “ladders for lizards” and their cost effectiveness. Say I’m the COO of a small manufacturing firm. Let’s put it somewhere outside of Phoenix to make this a fair argument. Say I choose to install the Solyndra panels. At what point, if ever, do I recoup my investment? Or will the reward my shareholders get be the warm feeling that they have contributed to future technological advancements that may one day make solar sort of competitive (and in the mean time helped fund the salaries of the people who choose to work in a negative profit industry)?