Solar Power

Our state has now decided to "invest" heavily with our money in field that has no future - namely PV cells for producing solar power in PA.

My father works in a solar energy related field. I have looked into the cost and benefits of enabling my house for solar power. I would love to be able to use solar power for my house, but absent massive government subsidies, such an investment would not even come close to breaking even. It barely breaks even in places like California where you have government subsidies and an area that has a much higher solar energy rating. There isn’t a single square-inch of land in Pennsylvania that is above the middle range for PV solar radiation.

Government should never be involved in trying to jump-start businesses. Privately-owned banks and other means of raising venture capital exist so that people can borrow money to start-up businesses where they think they can earn a living and make some money. The market decides whether they succeed or fail.

Government should never be involved especially in jump-starting businesses that have no potential for survival without massive government subsidies, which is exactly want PA’s non-existent “solar energy industry” will need for decades to come. PV cells have more or less reached their limit as far as the potential to turn solar energy into electricity. Solar energy will only become viable in PA if a completely new technology comes along that makes it cost effective.

In the meantime, our state will have spent millions of our dollars to subsidize the production and purchase of PV cells that will never be cost-effective. In ten years they will be in our landfills as yet another monument to legislative smoke and mirrors. Most of these clowns got their start in government because the couldn’t handle a real job. Now they can’t resist manipulating a system that they never understood.