Anything free is usually abused as it is conceived as having no value. Somebody has to pay for this stuff and it is difficult enough to persuade the public to pay the taxes for current necessities. It's probably a good idea but it seems unattainable considering current attitudes towards taxes.

Reply To Sand : I agree that people see something that is free has no value, but this the 'free' solar panel does have value. It cut cuts down on carbon emissions.

Attitudes are changing, even America at the recent Bali conference 'had to' recognise that climate change is real and something needs to be done. With adequate education and political will many people would be willing try these 'out of the box' ideas.

As for taxes, increased taxes are inevitable if nothing is done about climate change and the damage it causes.

The old value systems are changing and I believe that many people would be willing to try out such a device in their homes just out of the goodness of their heart.

I am, of course, totally sympathetic to your desire to do something about the abuse of power systems but the attitude of the USA at the Bali conference indicates that the country is more or less controlled by corporate indifference to appropriate measures. I admire your optimism but have no faith in the forces in power of the industries that might take effective steps in this direction. When global warming really starts to take effect and people around the world begin to panic and move in mass to safer and more productive areas there will be real conflict but by that time it might be too late to do anything constructive to turn the situation around. The prospects are dismal.

politics aside, your idea of distributing power production and putting it in the hands of everyone I think sounds way-better than it would actually be.

The first problem is that solar energy is not cost effective at this point. A 24 x 24cm panel available commercially (www.mcmaster.com p/n 69205K51) can produce six watts. Costs $143.00 us. Put that through an inverter and you'll lose a watt. Inverter cost? $50 us?

Next is maintenance--to get six watts, this unit has to be clean and has to be aimed at the sun. If you make sun-tracking drive mechanisms, this is more cost. What about when it breaks?

My point is, if you want solar photovoltaic to work, you'll be more successful using a power-plant mentality, not wasting tax dollar for some government entity to complete with the private sector.

Also, the reason solar isn't used now is purely economic. The people making power now already know what is cost effective and what isn't. Their jobs depend on it.

Finally, on the politics of Bali, I support the USA's attitude because it's pragmatic. The countries that are promising reductions are mostly lying. If I told you today that you couldn't drive your IC car to work tomorrow, what could you do? It's just cheaper to use petrol. And the suppliers of it will do all they can to assure it's cheaper until it's gone. Again, their jobs depend on this.

Transportation is only 25 percent of the CO2 people produce and people only produce five percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere.

Reply to Hrench : I have in my possession a small solar panel that only cost me 10 English pounds (20usd) (including the profit from the middle men). It is used for topping up car batteries. It's output will be small but millions of them, everywhere and anywhere near a power socket would make a great difference. Cost per unit will decrease rapidly with so many units.

I don't know the cost of a power station, several billion dollars ?. Several billion dollars worth of solar panels that collect energy for free and can be easily replaced (if damaged) and recycled does not seem at all a bad idea.

We are talking about very simple basic solar panels, durable, with simple circuitry, no over engineered overpriced consumer products. Sun tracking is over engineering.

An X Prize reward should be offered for any engineer who can design such a solar panel.

Or this idea could be thrown into the Open Source community who can think out of the box away from government and corporate mentalities and ideas of the past.

It's does not matter who gives the panels away. The person who has the panel would not be paid for it's output, as it would be minimal and not worth collecting in payment. But the power company, government or whoever would reap millions of watts per year for nothing, so everyone wins, including and most importantly the planet.

I did a search to see about your $20 top-off charger. I found them that do 45 milliamps at 16 volts. That's just over half of a watt. Not very useful.

Reply to Hrench : Yes, but if as with Moores Law in computers, the basic technology is there and the capacity can be doubled each year, if there was the political and scientific will.

Obviously many people are still tied to the internal combustion engine and horrified of change and the new paradigm of the 21st century. Not referring to you personally, one comes across this everywhere :-)

Give an engineer an X Prize of 10 million dollars and solutions will start to appear.

My assertion that everyone can contribute to providing free solar energy in their homes to the common good and the needs of the planet is sound.

How long does it take for a solar panel to replace the energy required for its manufacture ? Some say it will never happen.

Sunlight is dilute, compared with wind, waves, hydro, etc.

I have an engineering background, so I hate to say that conservation is the quickest and cheapest way to go, but that's the truth. We humans are faced with two principles which our conservative friends are trying to ignore. These principles are known as the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics. Read them and weep.

Reply to Belmont : I know nearly next to nothing about the Laws of Thermodynamics.

I suppose you could say that of any energy making device. I cannot believe say, a coal fired power station could be in anyway efficient because of the way it damages the planet, even though comparatively speaking it might be more efficient than a solar panel.

There will never be and can never be a 100% or more efficient power plant. I do understand that bit :-)

As I said in the first instance the solar panel must be very simple and basic. Engineers, forgive me, have this tendency to over complicate and over engineer devices they design, it's in their very nature. This must be resisted at all costs. No complicated design circuits, no exotic materials, recycled materials, no moving parts, minimal repair needs. No complicated infrastructure to maintain the system.

Local communities once they have the design could make their own panels, no massive manufacturing facilities, thereby cutting down on transport energy input.

We are talking really simple low cost panels. If the solar panel is designed as such then the power input to create and 'maintain' them is also decreased and so is the payback time for the power it creates.

This would be true engineering at it's finest.

Rather than put one small panel and one inverter per house, it would be more cost effective for a government to install a quantity of larger more practical panels on public buildings such as schools or arenas, as well as being slightly energy efficient. As always, that is after reducing existing energy needs first.

While the energy used to create an alternative power system could be considered an issue by some, it is all in perspective. I don't see it as that big of an issue, if the immediate concern is to alleviate the electrical infrastructure and add some, although minor, capacity.

They don't cost $143... there are no actual costs beyond labor and resource. So if it's possible, expect china to pull it off. I bet they really cost <1$. Just because our system can't achieve it don't mean it's impossible.

Reply to SAINTHUCK : One doesn't need to go to China, local communities, could with a very simple design, produce and manufacture their own. Most consumer products have enormous costs associated with them, patent fees, marketing, middle men, local taxes, supply chain, transport costs, the list goes on and on. The solar panel I am proposing is not a consumer product. Costs could be reduced to the absolute minimum and with advances in solar technology coming all the time, could become really cheap and planet saving. The prospect of a panel cost only 1$ is very possible. :-)

agree... but our laws will forbid it.

I'm amazed at some of the doubting comments here... This is truly a great idea, so maybe seeing all the "no-way!"'s just proves that. The thing about great ideas is that not a lot of other people have them (or understand them). Ok, yes, solar panels today are not as efficient or inexpensive as they ideally could be. Tomorrow? No one knows, and if they say they know, they are lying.

But lets take a hypothetical situation: come May, US taxpayers are getting a rebate of 300-600 dollars per person. Lets say for all those millions of people, the gov't reduces the rebate 100 dollars, and instead mails everyone a solar panel. Guess what: the price of manufacturing solar panels has just gone down thanks to economies of scale! And what did it take? Americans just have to sacrifice 100 bucks of their upcoming handout. Big deal.

I think the inexpensive inverter problem is the only sticky wicket here, but its nothing a few creative engineers couldn't tackle with a million dollar grant I'm sure. As for the "engineers" who post comments here, I think I read about them years ago laughing uncontrollably when NASA said they were going to try and send a man to the moon...

I think you need big box retailers to start selling mini-solar to consumers.

IKEA, Home Depot etc.

Forget painting the fence on the weekend, install a solar panel.

Canadian Tire in Canada sells some basic solar systems, but no grid inter-tie needed to feed the grid.