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Rooftop solar panels can and will work. The reason why solar cells are currently cost prohibitive has nothing to do with not being able to power an entire house (although it some circumstances it can) or tying it to the electrical grid. In fact, that's the cheap part of the operation as rooftop solar panels have fewer transmission and distribution costs due to not needing to send the energy over hundreds (or thousands) of miles worth of transmission lines. Utilities are required by federal law to allow customers to connect small scale alternative energy sources to the their local grid, and for PV panels or wind turbines the process is fairly simple.
That's not to say that the large scale farms don't have their advantages as they do, but it isn't the only way to go. The first obvious advantage that these power plant sized fields have is economies of scale during the manufacturing and installation. Secondly, and just as important in my mind, the large scale plants lend themselves more naturally toward solar concentration techniques (for both solar thermal and PV cell setups) that are difficult to achieve with local generation due to the added weight and (in most cases) solar tracking requirements. The reality is that both methods hold plenty of promise and are going to dramatically increase in viability and use over the next decade and beyond.
The large costs today for solar cells are due to the manufacturing of the material (more so in first generation or "traditional" solar cells) or the material cost itself (more so in the second generation or "thin film" solar cells). You're right in that it usually requires government money to get the ball rolling, but the cost per unit of energy for solar has sunk considerably over the last decade or so when comparing to fossil fuels (and people seem to forget that coal and the like get subsidies as well), and will continue to do so with the amount of attention the subject to receiving.
ARe you sure about the tying into the grid point?
I ask because there are several fairly notorious cases in California of homeowners who sued PG&E when they found out that they were going to be charged thousands of dollars for that because it turned out that in order to connect them to the grid so they could sell back excess power, there was a need for a large transformer to be installed. And that transformer was very expensive and NOT part of the solar installation.
PG&E was refusing to foot the bill and the homeowners were suing to require PG&E to foot the bill. As I recall to date the outcome in every case has been homeowner wins, PG&E pays but that of course doesn't mean the connection is trivial or cheap it just means we all pay for it with higher PG&E bills in California.
Maybe that's changed but I recall several such cases in the news in recent years.
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Yes, utilities are required under the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978, so I'm guessing that's why PG&E got sued. Solar panels need a grid tied inverter in order to hook up with the utility (although of course solar panels almost always require an inverter anyways since they produce DC), so I'm not sure what the deal is with these large transformers without looking into it further.
Edit: I looked at the cases that I think you're referring to. In that situation, the person or group was installing extremely large solar panels, which is why the transformer was required. The vast majority of household solar panels (for now and the foreseeable future) would not be nearly that size so they would not need that large transformer.
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I guess you hate strict pollution controls, more fuel efficient cars, smoke-free restaurants, medical marijuana, gay marriage, the hands free cell phone driving law – and hey, where do you think most of the porn is produced… LOL…
I really hate the smoking ban in NV. So many places shut down their kitchens to keep smoking allowed for gaming that thousands of Nevadans lost their jobs.
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Yes, utilities are required under the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978, so I'm guessing that's why PG&E got sued. Solar panels need a grid tied inverter in order to hook up with the utility (although of course solar panels almost always require an inverter anyways since they produce DC), so I'm not sure what the deal is with these large transformers without looking into it further.
Edit: I looked at the cases that I think you're referring to. In that situation, the person or group was installing extremely large solar panels, which is why the transformer was required. The vast majority of household solar panels (for now and the foreseeable future) would not be nearly that size so they would not need that large transformer.
Actually I probably should have said inverter not transformer because I wasn't sure what the exact part was called. There were several cases the first one I recall was in the Santa Cruz mountains. the guy was on the news over and over look I live amongst trees, I am as green as they get and I have this extra power to sell back but PG&E won't let me. Made a great story until you heard that in order to do that they had to install this very expensive part and he was refusing to pay for it. Just seemed like it was a bit unfair to stick the utility with the bill when that just means everyone pays more for their utility bills. I seem to recall one of his neighbors was pretty ticked off and on the news several times saying hey he chose to install solar he should pay for it.
Interesting that there was one that was large enough to need a transformer.
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