"...then I'll cover the entire property with solar panels. What do you think? Pretty smart, eh?"
He assumed, as many do, that land is the primary cost of solar electricity generation. You need lots of it, true. Huge amounts. However, setting aside the cost of real estate entirely, solar electricity is still the second most expensive form of energy known to Man. What's number one? Nuclear, of course.
What makes it so expensive? Energy from the sun is free, isn't it? No coal or gas to buy? Sure, but all energy is free. You only need to dig it up or pump it out of the ground. The cost is all in collecting it, storing, transporting, and converting it into something we can use. The price on the other hand is determined by the market.
Solar panels for making electricity are still expensive. It's not a question of efficiency, either. You can get more efficient panels, but doubling the efficiency right now more than doubles the price of the panel. Laboratories are developing more efficient panels as we speak, and I can all but guarantee they will be more expensive, too. Will mass production reduce the cost of panels? It hasn't happened yet. Hopefully it will. Supply helps bring prices down, but demand can push them right up again.
When you buy solar panels, you also need voltage regulators and current converters (DC to AC), plus other bits and pieces. Add up all that, then work out how many kilowatt-hours the equipment will return over its service life (typically 20 years). You'll get 5 or 6 hours of peak output per day unless you pay even more for movable panels, increasing the cost even further. You'll still get at most 8 hours of output near the rated capacity. We're even ignoring the possibility of cloudy days! Now that's optimistic.
Therefore for at least 16 hours out of every 24, for the entire lifetime of this considerable investment, you are getting zero return. Nothing! Idle capacity.
When I work out the cost of the energy produced, I get unreasonably optimistic figures around $0.50 per kWh. Don't even think about maintenance costs, business overhead, transmission costs, land costs, or leasing the space on buildings. And forget about decommissioning and disposal - that's somebody else's problem, right? In addition to having invested all your money in solar panels, you'll still need some other way to make electricity at night.
Wind? That's gonna cost you, and it will STILL be intermittent. Batteries? You've got to be joking. The cost of batteries compared to their short service life makes that unthinkable. And don't get me started on the environmental impacts of battery manufacture and disposal.
When we consider the complete picture of Global Warming and Peak Oil, here's what I tell people to do to get themselves ready. Take your electricity bill, your water bill, heating fuel (gas or oil), and the cost of filling up your car. Throw your grocery bill in there, too. Now double each of them. Done that? Good. Now put another zero on the end of each figure.
That's what you'll be paying in another 20 or 30 years. When all resources taken together are that expensive, then solar electricity will start to look good by comparison. And, you might want to start now figuring out ways to heat and cool your home without electricity or fossil fuels. Building smarter buildings is a good start. Insulation. Double-paned glass! Thermal mass. Get used to it.
If I were to invest in solar panels, I certainly wouldn't leave them out in a vacant block. Too much opportunity for vandalism and theft. Put them on the roofs of buildings! The extra shade they provide will be welcome in a few years.
