Re:Absorbed not necessarily equal to electricity (Score 1)

I live in California and have been looking at solar panels for my home for a while now; The whole notion that it costs $25000 is nuts, unless you only shop at home depot or are putting a commercial sized install on your roof; Case Study: 20 Kyocera 205w panels - $12250 Inverter, brackets other hardware - $2500 Total hardware cost $14750 Permits $400 About 50% the cost of solar install is labor, which for the most part can be completely eliminated. Most panel manufacturers noticed this and started to include features that that anyone can install them. For instance, the panels now just 'snap' into place and are connected via a twist lock cable; Twist lock cable connects to inverter. No conduit to run, no knowing your + from your -'s. The only thing you will need someone for is to connect the inverter to the grid, which will cost about $300-400. So now we are at about $15500 (ball parking this one); now the fun part, incentives. 15500 - 30% federate tax rebate. 10850 - 3410 (PGE Solar rebate 1.10 per watt of generation potential (varies pending on house location shade etc; so we will go with a 1kw penalty as an example. (1.1*3100 = 3410) ---------- $7440 So your sunk costs at this point are about $7500; not $25000; your payback based on this will be how much power you actually use. Plus you should factor in +Home resale value, inflation over the next 5+ years, utility rates over the next 5+ years. Either way, you are looking at about a 5-7 year repayment period now a days, vs. the 10-20 it used to be. Plus these are polysilicon cells which have a power generation guarantee for 20 years; after that the cells start to lose efficiency much like a laptop battery until the panel is scrap. Over all useful life of a poly Si panel is about 30-50 years depending on environment.