[LuxMaker]

A lot of people seem to be against solar citing cost, but they seem to be full of it.

[driftdiver]

Full of it? U must sell solar. Solar for electricity generation is a joke.

That new technology, nuclear, is the way to go.

[marron]

Not full of it. It is expensive and takes up enormous amounts of land. I’m aware of a couple of projects near some property of mine that will take up several thousand acres for a few hundred megawatts, which is (in my opinion) stupid.

But the costs are coming down, and the way Walmart proposes to go about it makes sense. I’ll be following their experiment, as I’m sure will everyone else. If anyone can make it work it will be them. And as more people use it, the costs will continue to come down.

Solar will always be a niche source. That is its value. Use it where it makes sense. Don’t try to make it more than it is.

[InterceptPoint]

Interesting article but not entirely accurate. For example:

Third, there's the problem of excess. If the installation produces too much power, it will means to sell it back to the grid. And this will require complex metering, and America's power grid could hardly be called high-tech or flexible.

At least here in Southern California, solar panel systems are routinely installed with the necessary electrical interface to allow pumping energy back into "the grid". In the daytime the electrical meter simply runs backwards. At night you draw from "the grid". The Southern California Edison system just looks like a gigantic capacitor. The deal with SCE is that you can zero out your electric bill but they won't pay extra if you run a positive balance. In any case it doesn't look to me like "complex metering" is a problem.

[Reeses]

If the advertising value was added in, something like a flying blimp windmill anchored in their parking lot might make financial sense, at least until the green fad is over. Solar panels are really boring.

[Fractal Trader]

I find it doubtful that this will ever be economically feasible. Shell recently got out of solar, saying that it would take a quantum leap in technology for solar energy to be profitable.

[Buckeye McFrog]

I hate shopping at WalMart since they’ve gone green.
Unless it is full sun thru their skylights it is too dark in there now to see what I’m buying. And I HATE the new low-flow mens room. It makes hand washing a 20 minute adventure.

[Secret Agent Man]

Actually, it could be a great business decision.

If a whole area loses power, and people still need to buy things, guess where they are going to go? To the one (or few) place that has power and lights, and working registers.

It’s not a terrible idea from that point of view. Plus their perishables will still have refrigeration.

[GOPJ]

If it deems the results acceptable, it plans to roll out solar panels on the roofs of all its stores.

Ummmm, they should sell them to their customers too...