IHMO we are decades away from peak oil. Prices now are high only because of clever supply side maniputalion. The are some very large and signifigant finds happening recently, not to mention in the US we have 2-300 years of coal that could supply ALL of our energy needs ... coal can be made into desil so while I know WHY you think the way you do, the realitly is things aren't so end of the word as some would like to have us think

As for solar, it was 2.50 watt three years ago, with the trippling of production, any slack in demand could have a collapse in prices ... I wouldn't buy panel now unless it was to feed some subsidy based system, I think in a year, prices will be much lower than today ... windsun is also seeing prices starting to break down

IMHO, we are not 'decades' away from peak oil. Maybe 10 years if some global economic slowdown happen, as it seems now. If not, I expect it happen within 3 years. Just my opinion of course... What I have heard the latest "great findings" are just drop in a bucket: Maybe can sustain earth consumption half year the most!

But even if we can use the coal, oil sands, oil shale etc. unconventional sources to replace the fossil fuels what we are going to do with global warming due to greehouse gases? Many experts agree that earth can not sustain much more greenhouse gases without catastrophic changes in atmosphere. Once a certain level has passed the process starts to feed itself... thus is unstoppable at that point. US EPA web site has nice charts to see how significantly the industrial era has changed atmosphere contents and temperatures:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/recentcc.html

I do expect that within 2 years both EU and USA will put more pressure to cut down the CO2 emissions, which means reduction in fossil fuels use.

The problem is that China, India, and other nations are becoming the heavy manufacturing for the US and EU... All that is happening is that we are transferring our "pollution" to other countries that are not even signatories to Kyoto and other treaties (or at least, don't have the environmental enforcement that is in the US and EU).

Solar is neat and wonderful... But if people are serious about limiting CO2 (I am not a believer in man-caused massive Global Warming), the only near term engineering type solutions out there right now are nuclear and/or massive cuts in consumption (by US and EU) and/or population reduction.

I agree with one thing--this is not going to be a pretty in the decades/century ahead for vast numbers of people.

-Bill

To steer the discussion back to PV ROI, I've had the lcuk and pleasure to listen and work with Andy Black, the preminent authority on PV ROI in the world today. Andy is very familiar with the N Ca PG&E territory, so those in this thread arguing about price/KWH, TOU, basic ROI versus other more accurate financial models should dig in to the voluminous info Andy has documented in this area.

Since I can not add to what Andy already says on this subject, here's a good starting link:

http://www.solarliving.org/workshops/te ... 3&pageid=3

Andy has previously published in SERG as well. Check for older pubs to see articles he's published on ROI from 2004/2005 timeframe:

http://www.norcalsolar.org/

It is almost a year from this post I made and everything is going pretty much as I thought last December...

I agree that it take a while to get your money back on such projects. There is something satisfying about the fact that you know you are getting some energy from the sun.