Does that include the batteries and inverters or just the cost for the panels themselves. I'd like to see batteries of any chemistry run that long without needing to be replaced.
Solar is OK for some stuff but I think it's only viable if you're way off the grid. From a total cost standpoint it's not a real solution.
I'm doing strict accounting here. Soup to nuts and everything needed included not just the convenient bits like that electric car nonsense. As if the tooth fairy puts electricity in the wall socket for the electric car charger to run on.
By the time it's all said and done those electric cars are the worst possible environmental disaster anyone could imagine as they run mostly by burning coal and not very efficiently at that.
From an environmental standpoint LFTR technology makes more sense as a real solution for the so called global warming nonsense but my main concerns are the high cost of fossil fuels including the cost to not only procure them but then ship that stuff by the train load all over the country. You get the reduced carbon emissions as a benefit plus it utilizes much of what is already in place at the power plant. Replace the fossil fueled boiler with a LFTR and you're done for a good long while.
As far a subsidizing goes we need to do less of it. Much less of it. Subsidizing airlines also helped kill off the once great railroad system we had that your subsidizing helped to create. When they quit subsidizing them, none of the airlines knew how to run a business. I used to like air travel but now rather than board an airliner I'd rather go to the dentist for a root canal. As far as economy and the enviroment which makes more sense shipping stuff by trane or by truck over the freeway system. Another of your subsidizing sucess stories.
Funny how they've killed off so many good things that we had in place with that great top level gubbyment thinking and now they're rushing to build it back as fast as they can and yes again with tax payer dollars. Who cares if they screw it up as long as they get the votes and it's not their money.
Nuclear can work as long as it's the right nuclear. Not the idiotic light water stuff that our great gubbyment got behind in order to produce enriched weapons grade material to the max then leave us with thousands of years of a toxic waste problem. Which BTW a LFTR can help consume and rid us of some of it by converting it to useful energy. A thorium reactor can't produce weapons grade material but it can consume some of it.
From engineering and economic standpoints actually neither technology makes much sense and you never get to a realistic ROI unless you have the gubbyment subsidizing it with taxpayer dollars which shouldn't be allowed. Same kinda thing as the great Ethanol debacle.
Popular anti-environmental standpoint, but false. With zero subsidy the cost to put solar on my home and provide 100% of my electrical needs is in the neighborhood of $12,000 if I install it myself. The system has a 25-year life, minimum, or about $480 per year. That's $40 per month, which is much less than my electricity costs.
That being said, it's not all about cost either. I know some people can only be motivated by money, which is precisely why there should be stiff carbon taxes. When utility customers start paying for the actual costs of their electrical consumption they'll start looking for substitutes.
The only promising technology for our energy needs over the the short term that I've seen and you never hear about it is Thorium. It handily solves some other stickly little problems we have too. You could easilty convert every fossil fueled plant we have running today with Thorium reactors and we'd be all set again. All you really need is a souce of heat. The steam turbines generators etc. all stay in place and work the same.
Let's see that go anywhere without any government subsidies.
You know that if it weren't for government subsidies there would have been no transcontinental railroads, no transcontinental telegraphs, and no electricity and telephone service for rural customers. Even the hardest core Libertarian has to concede that technologies become less expensive as production ramps up. The whole point of subsidizing solar and wind is to speed up the process of driving costs down, and it is working amazingly well. For some reason this makes some people unhappy. I guess it sucks to be reducing our carbon footprint. Maybe because as wind and solar capacity ramp up the opportunity to sell nuclear power as the holy grail diminishes? I don't know.
