From IEEE Spectrum,“My First Year With Solar”. Interesting how subsidies change the game entirely.

I was wondering the other day, how accurate the rrdtool graphs are. Currently the average shows is 455 Watts thus far this year (the graph stretches back to last October). So if the average stayed at this value for the full 12 months, what would my total kWh be for the year?
.455 * 24 *365 = 3985.8 kWh
As a comparison, I looked at my total kWh for last year which was 3940kWh. Pretty close I think you would agree.

Now, lets look at the average kWh from my Gorilla installation. Today, the average is 63 watts (since april). So, 63 * 24 * 365 = 551.88 kWh or approximately €100. If we put the price of the bits and pieces I have at €1500. That means that it would recover its costs in approx. 15 years.

Now, if, in our case, we consider the typical cost for a proper, grid-tie, 1kW Photovoltaic system in Ireland is about €4000. What would the cost recovery period be?

As the average sun-hours per day, per annum in the South East of Ireland is approximately 4 sun-hours per day, and the average consumption of our house is lets say 500watts (455 at the moment). That would mean we would recover 4 x 500 or approximately 2Kw of power per day from the system, with 2Kw going back to the grid, of no benefit to me (money wise).
2 * 365 = 730kWh or approximately €131. That gives a cost-recovery period of approx 30 years, ouch.

Assuming that my calculations above are correct, without a decent feed in tariff, PV doesn’t really make sense economically does it?

C’mon Munster!