Investing in solar power, would you do it?Follow

I'd honestly rather that a more normal tech development cycle occur. What we've seen in areas where the government does not get involved in direct subsidies is that the early tech is expensive, but those really interested drive it (by either buying the products or investing in the companies making them). As the tech advances an improves you eventually hit a magical break point where the costs come down sufficiently to increase demand enough to continue to pour money into more development, costs continue to go down, more people can afford it, and there's a veritable avalanche of public adoption. We've seen this process unfold with everything from vacuum cleaners, to washing machines, to televisions, to home computers, to cell phones and music players. There is no reason to assume otherwise with something like solar panels.


My concern is that if the government starts subsidizing the purchase of a given good too early, it ultimately retards technological development and true market success of the product. Imagine if the government had decided in 1990 to subsidize home computers. Would the continued development of faster and cheaper processors have continued? Or would the companies making home computers simply collect all the extra cash they were getting on the existing systems? The driver for improvement at that part of the development curve is to get a larger market share. To do that, they must bring costs down while improving performance. If you make todays thing profitable to a wide market, you affect the profit/development ratio in a bad way. Instead of a nice comfy curve, you end out with a flat return. Improvements wont bring much more market share for a lot longer down the line than otherwise. A lot of companies might simply stop where they are and invest their profits in something else.


Dunno. I just think that while it might take longer for initial large scale adoption, in the long run we're better off letting the normal process take it's course. If the government wants to put money into the R&D side, that's great, but I'm not a fan of subsidizing end purchases of new technology. I really do think it's counterproductive.

Not really, but whatever makes you feel good.

We have a project being funded in the Bay of Fundy, which has self proclaimed, the highest tieds in the world, giving them tons of flow to generate power. Seems to be working out great. The biggest issue is not disturbing the immediate ecosystem.

I don't even remember why I uploaded this image from a year or so ago, but here's what I was talking about.

Present a better argument. Oh and most people sell the house withing 5yrs. Chew on that before you start singing the praises of how cost effective it will be to spent 10k on solar panels.