That article you link to is based on the Ferroni and Hopkirk 2016 paper, but that has been discredited somewhat, I believe.

The paper below revised the EROI figure from 0.8 to around 8.0.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...

"Looking at the bulk of the research, it’s more likely that solar panels, over their lifetime, generate 10-15 times as much energy as it takes to produce them and their associated hardware. That number may be as high as 25. And it’s rising over time." http://rameznaam.com/2015/06/04/whats-the-eroi-of-solar/

There's also the fundamental mistake that not all energy is equal.

Energy in the form of electricity is far more useful than energy in other forms as it can be used directly. With other forms it will generally need to be converted first, with massive efficiency losses which are ignored by EROEI proponents.

So for example while oil might be said to have an EROEI of 14.5, it loses 80% of that when used for the common purpose of turning a cars wheels, giving only a 2.9. generally those who quote EROEI numbers would claim this makes industrial society a literal impossibility.

All analysis I've seen indicates pretty much the opposite. Electricity is way less useful than diesel fuel. Our civilization critically runs on diesel and no one has figured out an even theoretically viable way to substitute in batteries where diesel is used in logistics, resource extraction, and pumping.

These claims are based on simplistic spread sheet models. We have REAL WORLD DATA. The real world experience throughout europe and the USA shows net losses. I repeat: if it worked the plants would be profitable and they would be going up without tax subsidies. Do you dispute this? Does the legal environment somehow prevent entrepreneurs throughout the western world from selling solar power into the grid?

If you think tax subsidies have anything to do with EROI (i.e. EROEI) you are very confused. This is calculated on the basis of Wh/Wh. Simple dimensional analysis shows that $ doesn't show up at all in the calculation.

Of course tax subsidies are useful to bootstrap on a $ cost basis, but with current costs and rate of falling costs even that will soon become unnecessary (let's get rid of fossil fuel subsidies to make this "real world data" comparison fair though).

Cash flows are in fact a reasonable proxy for energy in many cases. Manually tallying up the uses of energy and materials is a handwaving exercise at best, but net losses of cash in the energy industry indicate with certainty that you not yielding net energy to society as an enterprise.

Can you review this [1] and ELI5 why solar seems to work in China, but the Sun doesn't shine enough to make the economics work in the west according to your research?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China

> if it worked the plants would be profitable and they would be going up without tax subsidies.

No, it's the other way around: fossil fuels are subsidized by governments to the tune of $4.8 trillion a year, so solar needs to be subsidized as well to be able to compete.

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42940.0

> they would be going up without tax subsidies.

They don't even build Walmarts without tax subsidies these days.

Can you link real world data?

Are externalities (CO2 output) taken into considerations in your unsourced REAL WORLD DATA!!~!

> I repeat: if it worked the plants would be profitable and they would be going up without tax subsidies

Right, so on that basis these bids below the grid rate indicate that they now work?

Bids are speculations.

Bidders are very frequently unable to actually deliver. See pretty much any highway project ever.

Agreed on that.

Nothing prevents anybody from selling solar power. Lots of solar farms are live and many more are being built.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaic_power_sta...

(note how the biggest ones are all new)

I would have bought a house without a tax subsidy.

But there is one, so I'm sure as hell taking it.

It used to be that solar panels never paid for themselves, then it was 20 years to break even. Now, I think, we're down to 5 years.

Solar panels are getting cheaper and cheaper, and they definitely have a positive ROI now. And there are huge solar farms being built all over the world. I'm pretty sure they did the math before investing millions of dollars.

If you can highlight a plant that is not a "tax farm" I would be interested to read about it.

"we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit." --Warren Buffet

This illustrates the reality of every "renewable" facility I've heard of to date. If the business case has changed just now, that's great and I look forward to the future. But most of what I've seen has been very silly industry propaganda.

Some areas have produced cheaper energy without subsidies as far as 2014. See pages 2-4. It's way better now, since the solar prices went down so much.

https://www.deutschebank.nl/nl/docs/Solar_-_2014_Outlook_Let...

And to answer your question about non-tax-farm, I don't know. If the government gives a subsidy, why wouldn't you take it even if you're profitable without it?

Subsidies alone don't prove that the solar farms are not profitable.

Is the 40GW of production in China a "tax farm"? Your argument that "solar is a gimmick because tax subsidies" seems flawed when international counterexamples are considered.

> Is the 40GW of production in China a "tax farm"?

According to everything I can find online the answer is a clear Yes?

What you call a "tax farm" is traditionally called industrial policy, and it has an exceptionally good track record.

It's almost as if initial government investment has allowed the technology to advance to the point that it no longer requires subsidy to be cost effective. Kind of like every other major industrial and technological breakthrough over the last 100 years.

What kind of economics would allow a solar panel manufacturer to spend $301 worth of energy to produce a panel which sells for $300?

The simplest response to this is: they are going up at a massive rate.