Solar power is a lot of hype. It costs more than double what metered power costs by the time you pay for everything, and then just when you THINK you are going to save money on “factory power”, a panel fails and you have to buy a new one.
They only last about 5 years if that.
Sure, you can run a house on solar and windmills, a good battery bank and a back up generator, but it is far more expensive than grid power, and a lot of work.
Plus, none of this is practical for urban living. Nobody would like to listen to their neighbors windmill swooshing away, in fact there are by-laws against them in most laces.
The problem we have is that most of the journalistic class is innumerate, so actually calculating the sorts of things you guys have pointed out is pretty much impossible for them to understand, much less do themselves. As a result, we still get fed all these warm and fuzzy solar power stories.
Not at all. It can done very inexpensively. Any fool can spend $70,000 but it takes a little knowhow how to get the same thing for $5000.