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I don’t have a problem with solar and possibly some day with improvements in battery tech and lower costs it will be viable. What I have a problem with is our government giving away our money in the form of loans to their friends and then forcing a woefully deficient technology down our throats and charging us for it in increased costs from power companies.
If solar is going to make it find venture capitalist to fund it for profit.

There’s around 800MW of total Nameplate Capacity for all Solar Power in the US, around as much as for one medium sized coal fired plant. If all those Solar Plants produced at their maximum, which by the way means that a way has to be found to make the Sun shine for all night as well as all day, then they could deliver around 600Million KWH of power. They actually delivered 143 million KWH of power to the grids they are connected to. This gives them a power delivery efficiency of 23.8%, effectively meaning they too can only deliver their power for around 6 hours of each day. The rolling 6 month percentage only comes in at 13.1%, or around 3 hours a day.
Again, no Power Authority in its right mind would rely on Solar Power to make up part of the power they need, and anyway, it’s such a monumentally tiny amount that it’s not even looked at, let alone taken into consideration.
I compared all these Solar plants to one medium sized coal fired plant. This coal fired plant would have delivered 576 Million KWH, or just over four times as much power, That same coal fired plant would have delivered the same power as all those Solar Plants by 11AM on the 7th of June, or in just under seven and a half days.

Look at Solar Power : http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1_a.html Even with all the advances made in Solar Power in the last few years consumption of power from Solar generated sources actually fell, but then, who would really notice. This total amount of power produced from both solar sources amounts to 733 Million KWH, or 0.02% of the total power consumed in the U.S. To put that into some context, this is the same amount of power produced from ONE coal or nuclear plant every FIFTEEN DAYS. That is for every solar power plant in the Country. Solar power is currently delivering its power at the efficiency rate of around 12 to 15% at the absolute best, or around 3 hours a day. Try as you might it’s no point filling up the Deserts in the South West and in Texas with solar panels or mirrors, because there is no way you can then transmit that power the vast distances to where it is needed the most, in the North East. How much power would have been produced over the last few months of snow and blizzards in that North East? Zero. In fact, building them in the North East will never happen because of that. Are you happy with those figures from Solar power?

Add the solar to the wind, and the total still only comes to 1.62%. Almost nothing.

These renewable plants are in the vicinity of five to seven times more expensive to get to the power delivery stage than for any other plant. They are more maintenance intensive and they only last for a third to half the time as for a large coal or nuclear plant.

All that aside, that power delivery rate of only 20% at the absolute best should be enough to convince you that these things are next to useless. The only way they can even get off the ground is with the injection of huge amounts of money in the form of Government subsidies. The only thing that they can absolutely ensure is that the cost of electricity to the end consumer will be much more expensive.

This is one great big turkey that is never going to fly, no matter how much money you throw at it.

Taking into account that 20% power delivery rate, that means you will just have to rely on getting the required power for the remainder of the time from those other sources, so in all reality, the construction of these wind plants and solar plants at an alarmingly ever increasing rate will not really result in the saving of all that much in the way of Carbon Dioxide emissions anyway, as those coal fired plants will have to stay running to provide power for the bulk of the time these so called renewable plants are just not even working at all.