As I’ve mentioned here before, I am a subscriber to Scott Adams’s Blog and while I don’t participate in the comments there…yet, I do often finish his posts with some interesting thoughts in my mind. One thing that Scott and I have in common is an interest in solar power. If you don’t believe me, check out these search results and read some of the articles that are found.

As Scott is building a home with solar panels, Jason recently discussed how, even with Japan’s Solar Subsidy the price of solar cells is out of reach for most average consumers. As I was working up a comment to respond to Jason’s post, I decided to write this post of my own.

You see, I’m somewhat envious of Scott Adams in a way: I’d like to have solar panels to use to power my residence. Not only could I feel good about doing something positive for the environment, it could potentially be a way to save some money…if things would work the way I would like. My ideal situation would go something like this:

I purchase some high-quality solar panels and have them installed on my roof where they can begin producing electricity any time the sun shines on them. Then, when the panels are producing more electricity than I am using, the excess is sold back to my electric company. However, since the solar panels would only be producing electricity during the day, I would still need to purchase from the electric company at night.

At a minimum, I would want the panels to produce enough electricity during the day to compensate for my electric use at night. The end result would then be a nearly non-existant electric bill or perhaps even a refund from my electric company each month. My savings would then be the total cost of my current electric bill plus or minus any amount that is exchanged with the electric company.

Here’s the kicker though: in order for this to be economically feasible, the combined monthly savings over 3-5 (maybe 10, but that seems like a stretch) years would have to add up to the inital cost of the solar panels. In addition to this, the life expectancy of the solar panels needs to be taken into account. My personal thought is that after offsetting the initial cost, the solar panels should have at least 2-4 years of life left during which time they are still producing power and the previous “monthly savings” would actually be money in pocket.

Unfortunately, from the small amount of research I have done so far, this is not going to be a reality for me any time soon. At this time, the cells I have seen are far too expensive and no where near efficient enough for this to happen. Therefore, I am going to have to side with the argument that Jason makes saying that solar power is currently far too expensive for the average consumer to implement, even with subsidies. Perhaps I should attempt to contact Scott and find out some specifics on the cells he is installing to see if they would fit the bill.