“Some people simply CANNOT accept innovations in technology...all they do is bitch, rather than try to figure out a way to hot-wire their car, or find a solar farm to recharge it.”
LOL! Our rural county allowed one solar farm to be built. It was about two years ago and it has been nothing but trouble. The small area it was supposed to provide power for has been getting practically no service from the project. In addition it is an eye-sore taking up a lot of acreage. Last year, the county declared a moratorium on any new solar farms.
But if someone does solar for his own use, researches his own power needs and his situation to see if solar would work for him (paying particular attention to the prepper forums and blogs because those folks who do solar do it with the real world specs in mind to get real world results), buys them himself and installs them himself and configures them himself (or hires a professional to do so), then he's more liable to get good results because he's got a vested interest in making sure solar gives him the expected throughput and is taken care of to last a while.
That's not a solar vs coal argument or solar vs natural gas argument. That's an argument that each of us should do what we feasibly can to make ourselves a little more self-reliant and rarely trust a bureaucrat to do what's best for us. With that mindset regarding energy, since I can't mine my own coal or drill my own natural gas, I chose to install and configure solar for our particular energy consumption habits and convert my two natural gas appliances to electric ones and do other energy improvements to my home. The end result is I buy on average only 18% of the power I need from the grid because solar provides the rest. There's no way a solar farm in my area could give my neighborhood that kind of throughput and be worth the cost, even with the same weather patterns I have.
Likewise my wife and I are doing more gardening each year (I don't know if we'll ever get up to producing 80% of our food LOL). And we're looking at capturing our own water (I probably won't go there, but I'm giving it a look).