I don't have any knowledge about the efficiency etc. but one possibly relevant note is that sometimes there are government subsidies, so even if there was a situation where it wasn't environmentally better it could still be a financial win for the end user. (I know this scheme was or may still be available in Oxford, I don't know if it was UK-wide or could have been the local council, but I know it wasn't a private company offering the incentives.)
Re:Why Open Offices?
by asgard1024 on Wednesday July 29, 2015 @03:10PM
(#9970881)
Actually, I have to correct myself - it looks like most estimates give PV panels EROEI somewhere above 6, which would mean about 15% of produced energy is needed for the production and maintenance of the panel itself. But even then it would probably be net gain.
Subsidies etc. are a different matter, because then you're talking about competing with other sources and the strawman argument "it costs more energy to produce than it saves" doesn't work.
It's a little OT, but do you have some real data to back this up? This argument came up a lot in discussions about light bulbs and fluorescent lamps, but in reality cost of fluorescent lamp is around 1% of its lifetime energy consumption. I highly doubt that solar panels cost more energy to produce than 10% of their lifetime output, even in such poor conditions as England.