As a guy named "SolarPowered", I guess I just have to weigh in on this subject. [Linked Image]

First off, the name is in reference to a peculiar characteristic of my body. My body is solar powered--when the sun is shining, I'm bright and happy and energetic; when the sun goes away, I go into hibernation. I don't have solar power running my home, nor do I design solar power systems for people.

That said, I do have a pretty keen interest in the subject, and have been following it for a long time.

My take on solar power is right in line with what mostly everyone else here has been saying--at the current level of technology, solar power isn't viable as a mass replacement for other power sources. The economics just aren't there. To make it almost look economically viable requires large subsidies from the state in form of rebates for much of the cost of installing the system, and from the power companies in the form of "net metering", which is really a big loss for the power company.

One major issue that hasn't come up yet is the issue of energy storage--these solar power systems don't produce anything when the sun's not shining. There's really no cost-effective technology available at this time to store energy during the day for use at night. Most systems use lead-acid batteries. Like all batteries, they wear out eventually. When you amortize the cost of the batteries over their lifetime, it ends up that you're paying $.25-$.50 per kWH just to store the energy, not counting the cost of the rest of the system.

From what I can see, if we as a society decide that we must curtail the burning of fossil fuels, the only viable techology at this time that could replace fossil fuel on a large scale is nuclear power.

[This message has been edited by SolarPowered (edited 02-27-2007).]