I'm kind of curious, how many nights of free energy does it take to pay those babies off. I'm all for the solar and wind technologies out there, I just can't afford them yet.
My 6 kW grid-tie solar PV system is a year old this month and will be fully amortized in a bit less than 7 years (with a useful lifespan of at least 20 years and probably more), which does includes the federal and state tax credits and incentives, which cut the effective cost by 50%. At the same time, we upgraded our central A/C to SEER 19, which helped as well. We ended up our first year in the black, which means SC Edison will be paying us a nominal rate for the excess electricity we generated. FWIW, I had an average usage of a bit over 910 kWH-electricity for two HTs, 7 computers, 2 fridges, 2 hair dryers and all the other electronic doodads adds up fast. Now I watch my plasma and listen to my 1.4 kW Class A/B amped system (and dry my hair artificially!) with a bit less feeling of guilt.