That depends on your location, prices have dropped considerably over the last couple of years and continue to do so. The best thing you can do is find people in your neighborhood that have had them them for more then a year and find out how much energy they generate. Then look at the installed cost of an equivalent system today to consider if it is a worthwhile investment.
As long as any light shines on these cells they produce electricity. As the price per unit drops and the efficiency of each unit increases the return on investment continues to improve. Here in southwest Arizona almost every day is a full sun day. Full cloudy days are rare, but even on those days there's plenty of light to produce electricity. Oddly, even moonlight will produce some current. In the next decade we'll probably have laws that demand all new construction include PV panels just like we had laws passed that demanded all buildings have electricity and indoor plumbing.
If they were any good they would not need the ridiculous subsidies that have to be borne by the less well off consumers. Wealthy solar panel owners should pay their own way not ask the rest of us to shoulder their energy bills. They then crow about how efficient they are. Not for the rest of us though.
I live at the other end of the Earth, Tasmania not quite as far South as the U.K. is North but with a similar effect, while days are short in Winter , they are very long in Summer, it remains light here till well after 9pm at the height of Summer, average that over a year and in terms of day light we are not that far behind the tropics. It is the radiant energy of the Sun that powers solar cells and temperature has little to with that.
I have seen deniers use many excuses and even lie here in relation to a number of forms of alternate energy, I speak from personal experience as I actually have such a system and I know how much it has saved me over the last few years, the initial cost has well and truly paid for itself.
Costs for solar cells have plunged as the efficiency has increased, with several even newer forms that are even more efficient and even cheaper not far from release.
One of the big cost savers was also being able to feed the power back into the grid saving the need to buy batteries which made up ~50% of the cost of older systems.
My system (averaged over the year) covers 100% of my power bill but even if such a system only covered 50% of your bill that would quite quickly pay for itself.
The UK government is a pile of trash. Nothing but a bunch of Rich arrogant criminals. This story sums it up. Yet these moronic people actually think that their government cares about their saftey and wants to combat AGW to "save our lives". Utter trash, they want you to be a slave in a one world fascist society.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/pol...
I mean it's always rainy so is it convenient?
