The article provides an introduction to photovoltaic local solar power systems, primarily from a cost standpoint. There is some good information on some of the economics, but the story does not make note of the fact that after payback, there are still 10-30 years of free solar power from the investment. It does not put forward the scenario of coal and oil and natural gas increasing in cost more drastically, and getting a significant payback from generating costs of solar being significantly below parity with coal. The article ignores the environmental benefits of avoiding air polution, avoiding mountaintop removal, avoiding nuclear power plant hazards, and mitigating global climate change.

Good, slightly breezy set of questions and answers that I think many consumers have been formulating in their own minds. It would be nice to see some projections about the use and relative cost of solar power 20-30 years out. Further it would be nice to see some comparisons of the total costs of oil and coal and that dirty schlub shale oil.

A good story about solar energy constrution costs. This article focuses on the nut and bolts of getting a solar system and putting it in place. While solar energy is free when the sun shines, purchase and construction costs are real.

Not bad for as an introduction to PV solar, some important topics as net metering are absent.

Well, if it's in the Wall Street Journal, it means someone up there is interested. I wonder what Warren Buffet is buying these days. What the article ignores is the long term costs of finding more fossil fuels and the long term costs of using them up on power generation. What it also doesn't go into is where costs might be now if we'd taken seriously the first oil shock in the 1970s, rather than spending 30 or so years thinking that we could have all the fossil fuels we wanted, cheap, forever.

This article is surprisingly good considering the source that tends to be more big oil, big, coal, big nuclear and Bush/Cheney. Although accurate as far as it goes, it is limited by the fact that only grid tied solar energy systems are considered . As a 25 year purveyor and user of such systems, this is not the best way to go. When your energy system can put power back into the grid, you are giving control of the asset (that you paid for) to the power company, who are actually your competitor in this case. They control how large a system you can install, how much they give you for power; they can even confiscate built up surpluses after a set period of time. The alternative is using the grid only for backup and having a means ... More »

How much investment has it taken in coal and oil in their beginning decades? Does the author expect every aspect of renewable energy to be free? Moreover, he is current on the technologies involved? Are silicon wafers the instrument of choice for mass energy collection? I have strong doubts about this author's information and perspective. From a conservative standpoint, do nothing come hell or high water.