It was a reply from absurdity.
And very expensive it is indeed. A piece about 1cm square costs $200 or more. Solar panels need square meters of the stuff.
> If solar panels didn't pay for themselves, people wouldn't buy them.
Exactly my argument. Thank you. People in fact don't buy them - except when they get subsidies that artificially reduce the price.
Excuse me, but what planet are you posting from? Your claim above suggests that a monocrystalline silicon solar panel that's of average size (120 by 54 cm), 6480 sq. cm., should cost $200 per square centimeter, or 1.3 million dollars. In fact, such a panel costs $168.50:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/200W-100W-X-2PCS-monocrystall...
> People in fact don't buy them - except when they get subsidies that artificially reduce the price.
All your claims have been falsified using readily available evidence.
It wasn't MY claim, it was the poster above me.
I was saying his comparison was absurd. Obviously it doesn't cost that much.
And that would be a real problem if solar panels producers had to have microprocessors etched into panels, had to pay the scientists to design the processors, and had to build the plants to scale that process to industrial levels, like Intel.
Happily, they just have to buy an ingot of the stuff and cut it with a saw into a 250 micrometer by 1 meter squared (or so) piece. I will leave it as an exercise to you to verify the spot price of solar grade silicon is less than $30/kg.
So lets say a panel takes 250 micrometers * 1 meter * 1 meter * 2g/cm^3 (density of silicon) * $30 / kg (assuming spot prices and not long term contracts or internal sourcing). That's 250 cm^3 * 2g/cm^3 * $30/1000g, or $15 for a whole panel of the stuff.
I was ridiculing him for even suggesting it as a reply.
So sayeth the poster, sitting at a computer filed with the same kind of silicon out of which panels are made. The reason solar panels are so cheap to buy, is because they're cheap to build.
> What would be the point if the energy return is not there?
Everything except evidence that this is so. If solar panels didn't pay for themselves, people wouldn't buy them.