If the taxpayer wasn't funding your solar panels, it would be financially unviable.

Sadly, solar power at this level will always be pointless- far better to spend our taxpayers' money on something meaningful (e.g. a good power station) than waste time and money on subsidising PV panels on individual houses.

I wish you well with your payback in 12 years!

I hope governments (US and UK) stop subsidising these panels and let them succeed or fail on their merits, instead of an opaque quasi-benefits system.

Is solar power a viable power option: 1000km x 1000km of Sahara solar power is enough to power the world

Can I vote for Theo to "help" manage X now?

I'm still amazed that RISC OS fonts looked so good back in the 1980s... that's 20 years ago.

Word in Windows still gets its kerning wrong.

That's the problem.

Most of the pros on here can write good-quality, secure code, in PHP, RoR, whatever.

It's the external libraries which are the gap. For example, look at phplist, which is used in many places. Now, every installation of it needs to be upgraded. Now. Right now.

Unless you're a 100% fulltime sysadmin, you haven't got the time to be reading the security lists hourly and upgrading phplist etc when required.

The OP is really asking: how do I make sure phplist and the other hundred Ruby gems or PHP add-ins are up-to-date and safe? And keep them that way?

That's the first info I've seen on these implemented on a larger scale.

However- presumably the ground will heat up with these systems. If it's one house in a million, it won't be noticed. But say if all of London switched over, the ground might increase by a few degrees.

Does anyone know what effect this would have? We already have the "urban heat island" effect from lots of ACs and tarmac/concrete... this could just make it worse.

I've no idea if there would be an appreciable difference, but I haven't seen any analysis of it.

So you'd be happy to block in all your windows with energy efficient materials to reduce heat loss?

(Unless you live next to a concrete prison) there's always going to be a point where you say "no, I don't want power that much that I would spoil the view".

Anyway, wind power has SO many problems (e.g. power distribution, only working when windy & warm enough etc) that I really can't see how it would function in a purely objective free market ie one without "green grants".