Re: Solar Panels Cost of Ownership

Solar pays off very well. Most system in California are totaly paid for and making money after 7 years or less. Panels are warrentied for 25 years , inverters 10.

If you do simple passive energy it pays off 4 to 8 times fatser so shade trees , awnings, insulation and other passive solar is great.

I combine both and made money in just a few years all tax free in savings with no subsidies and no net-metering. Now I have net-metering.

Todays solar panels use less silicon and make more energy than it took to make them in as little as 1 year. Solar panels also don't use water or create any pollution. The energy to run them is free (sun light).

  This is quite the opposite with nuclear and coal. Below is a great article from thje G8 summit. It was posted on NPR.

MARK HERTSGAARD: The catch is that Britain will not subsidize nuclear power. Private investors alone must pay to build and eventually dismantle any new nuclear plants. They also must help pay to dispose of radioactive waste.

This no-subsidy pledge amounts to a revolution in nuclear economics. Not one of the 440 nuclear plants now operating worldwide was built without sizable public subsidies.

Governments have subsidized nukes both directly — through R&D funding and cheap insurance — and indirectly, by allowing electric companies to pass billion dollar cost overruns onto consumers. The US government has historically spent 10 times more on nuclear subsidies than it has for solar, wind and other renewable energy sources.

Nevertheless, nuclear power remains forbiddingly expensive. A recent MIT study calculated that in the United States nuclear costs 50 percent more per kilowatt hour than natural gas. And it costs vastly more than the least polluting form of electricity: energy efficiency.

Investors know this. That's why nuclear power survives today only in countries like Russia, China and France, where state-controlled electricity systems can ignore market forces.

If G8 leaders want to honor last year's pledge to fight climate change, they need to understand that going nuclear would actually make things worse.

Because nuclear power is so expensive, it delivers seven times fewer greenhouse reductions per dollar invested than boosting energy efficiency does. Some say, why not have both? But in the real world, capital is scarce. To divert it to nuclear power when efficiency can work so much faster would delay our transition to a low-carbon economy when, in fact, we need to accelerate it.