I think you might be wrong about subsidies for solar energy.

The subsidies within the realm of this topic — home installed solar energy — consist of just one, and it’s not actually much of a subsidy, just a tax credit. There’s a $2,000 tax credit available for the installation of a home solar generation setup, and that ceases to exist come December 31.

Here are a few I found that seem to be still in effect:
http://www.dsireusa.org/library/includes/incentive2.cfm?Incentive_Code=US33F&State=Federal&currentpageid=1

http://www.dsireusa.org/library/includes/incentive2.cfm?Incentive_Code=US03F&State=Federal&currentpageid=1

http://www.dsireusa.org/library/includes/incentive2.cfm?Incentive_Code=US36F&State=Federal&currentpageid=1

http://www.dsireusa.org/library/includes/incentive2.cfm?Incentive_Code=US06F&State=Federal&currentpageid=1

http://www.dsireusa.org/library/includes/incentive2.cfm?Incentive_Code=US31F&State=Federal&currentpageid=1

http://www.dsireusa.org/library/includes/incentive2.cfm?Incentive_Code=US02F&State=Federal&currentpageid=1

http://www.dsireusa.org/library/includes/incentive2.cfm?Incentive_Code=US05F&State=Federal&currentpageid=1

To know that we’ll never again be without water is enormously valuable. Not only would I pay a premium for that, I will.

I find it most useful to design/build by task. So the next installation will likely be a stand-alone PV system to pump potable groundwater. It will be a modest system that assures the flow of water and uses tank storage as a sort of buffer for the hours of no solar. So regardless of technology advances the task of providing water is complete.

It’s often said that the bulk of the power is the cheap, easy part: it’s that last bit of demand that’s enormously expensive to provide. That requires firing up (and owning) additional equipment that’s only used a handful of times each year. The cost savings of no longer having to maintain (or acquire) that equipment could be enormous.

I’m aware that demand of course fluctuates, and fluctuates greatly. As I perhaps did a poor job of explaining in my original post, what I’m interested in are the differences that would influence the price of the power if active solar (and wind and what-not) became truly ubiquitous. Would it appreciably increase the demand fluctuations? If it did, that would mean either larger batteries or more reactors/furnaces/solar collectors going unused at off-peak hours, and each of those comes with a significant cost.

Even in this scenario, the costs might be made up by having the distance that energy travels at most times decreased. I really have no idea. I just think it’s interesting to ponder.

What are the costs of storing that energy, or should the state just pay to ground it because that’s more cost effective than storing it? In a more foreseeable example, what would it do to operating costs of the power plants if demand fluctuated wildly based on cloud cover, and from day to night?

Ben, these problems (and the others you describe) are actually already dealt with by power plants. (I made a project of learning about Virginia Tech’s power system while I was a student there, and the head of their plant explained to me that it’s all an analog for how power worked on a larger scale.) The amount of juice that’s demanded constantly fluctuates, though there’s certainly patterns to it. The entire state will not simultaneously become cloudy but, rather, demand will ramp up steadily, presumably from west to east. Even the supply of power fluctuates, as different qualities of coal are burned and boilers are fired up or shut down, depending on demand. And storage of electricity is actually a construct; demand will always exceed the home-generation capacity, so it will simply be redistributed into the network and consumed immediately.

Have you considered the value of having your own source of reliable, surge-free power? For example, do you despair so about the lost value of your automobile as it rusts and yields to entropy? Those things never really pay for themselves, yet provide value that we find financially acceptable.

Bubby, yup, I’ve done all of that math, but it seemed a bit tedious to explain it here. :) I know you’ve been there, done that with all of this, so I can’t see that you’ll learn much from my plans here as they unfold. :) A premise of all of this is that 50% number that I’d mentioned early on, wanting to only provide for the base load, and not attempt to allow for the peaks. Though, really, if I could resell this stuff, I’d move up from a 2-3kW to a 5-10kW setup — sort of the electrical equivalent of raising some goats and chickens to sell at the farmer’s market. :)

What’s tempting to me right now is, as a part of the house construct, build in only the inverter and some wiring to eventually switch some of our major appliance to DC. Then we’ll add the PV arrays gradually. I’d rather add them gradually, anyhow, because I don’t want $15k of arrays to all age out at once.

Other considerations:
-You didn’t include the tax benefits of rolling your solar system purchase into your mortgage – that will allow you to recoup costs through mortgage interest tax deductions. Same thing for the more expensive appliances that will allow you to better leverage those precious solar kw h’s.

-Much of the installation work is just labor; installing panel mounts, trenching wire, pulling wire, building system enclosures, that you can do yourself. Act as your own GC and you can purchase the components yourself.

-Go solar for your base load needs and augment with utility power for peak loads. Base load would be lighting, control circuitry, water, telecom, computer etc. Build in system expandability and assume that panels and incentives economics will improve in coming years.

-Until the nation, and Virginia in particular, decides that clean energy is a valuable option worthy of incentive, you are under no obligation to personally fund clean, sensible energy policy. Isolationist is just another word for “pioneer spirit”. Wagons Ho!

That’s not really to discount much of what you’ve said. I’m just musing on the relative value of a kWh that I know will be there when I need it, versus a fair-weather kWh, and what the storage costs of those fair-weather kWh would be.