lewrockwell.com — Technological improvements strengthen the Case for Solar. This year alone, the cost of manufacturing solar electric panels could decline two-fold, and oil will have to sell for under $100 a barrel to remain competitive. It was always immoral to pretend that "our" oil was under "their" land, but it's already not worth the effort of going to war over
Apr 30, 2008 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountApr 30, 2008
It's a bit early to declare solar power to be a success -- or even economically viable.I just got my electric bill -- $100. I did some calculations using the figures you supplied in your article & it would take me over 34 years to pay for the required solar collectors at the rate of $100 a month. And that assumes that the only cost to me would be for the collectors, (i.e., no installation cost, no maintenence, no additional hardware requirements, etc.) It also assumes that I could get that many solar cells on my roof. And it also assumes that I would pay no interest on the money it would take to buy these solar cells or, assuming that I found the money laying on the road, that I could make no interest on this money. None of these assumptions are valid or anything like valid.In the article, the author said that the solar cells would last 30 years. Thus I would still be paying for them for 4 years after they stopped functioning. Clearly, solar power is not economically viable. Nor will it be viable anytime in the near future. Perhaps we could do with a little less pie in the sky & a bit more realism.