OK, I'll wade in here, given I work in the science / energy / solar efficiency space.
Several people have made negative comments about the solar feed-in tariff as it is effectively subsidised by the government and hence by people who do not have solar. They've been red-thumbed for that, despite making a very valid point.
As a short-term model for providing cost-effective energy it is badly flawed.
Afterall, why on earth is the government funding lots of little installations (very few of which are on the perfect orientation / perfectly unshaded, etc) instead of spending the money direct on a couple of big solar farms which are much more cost effective the build and have efficiencies of scale.
The answer is that these schemes are designed to fund the solar industry through the "valley of death".
Simply, they can't become economically viable without there being big demand to drive down the costs.... and there cannot be big demand without them being economically viable.
So the government steps in. However, virtually all the governments in Australia have forgotten that this was the main idea. So they've gone from paying LOADS of money on the feed-in tariff, to paying very little overnight. This has effectively killed the solar industry in NSW, VIC, SA, WA AND the UK! What they should have done was gradually stepped down the feed-in tariff over a long time...
...provided of course that the desired end result was a massive government subsidy to make roof-top solar economically viable, which I think is a pretty poor aim. That subsidy could have paid for so much more power generation.
So hence I am against roof-top solar for environmental and macro-economic reasons.
I've also just bought a 4kW system for my parents' house in the UK, as it makes a lot of financial sense for me personally - why wouldn't I sign up to lots of other people giving me money for 25 years?
For anyone interested in learning a bit about the big picture for renewables vs cost I recommend starting with David MacKay's book "Sustainable Energy Without Hot Air". It can be downloaded for free from here:
www.withouthotair.com/There's also an Australian focused version of this called Australian Sustainable Energy By The Numbers by Peter Seligman which is free for download from here:
http://energy.unimelb.edu.au/index.php?page=ozsebtn
!
. Since installing my panels I've had from $24 rebate up to $99 rebate. No actual bills at all. Living right down on the south coast I didn't expect them to be that good, but even through Winter we get a small ($24) rebate. Only Mrs Piranha and myself in the house now.
