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Charging a battery off of AC? Surely you mean RECTIFIER.

Nope, he said inverter, he was talking about a intelligent hybrid inverter like this Outback one.

The trick is that while it's called in inverter, that's only one of the things it does. Not only can it feed solar power to the grid, it can operate your home off of batteries, and if that isn't enough it can signal a generator to turn on(and off) as needs and power supply(solar AND grid) varies.

I can.

You *can* do this - I have this system. Sunny Boy inverters, Sunny Island unit for battery backup connected to 4 marine batteries which keep my house up indefinitely. (discharge at night, charge up during the day).

That lot cost $6k 5 years ago. The batteries themselves are $800 each. The Sunny Island is $4k ( http://www.solarhome.org/smasunnyisland5048uinverter5000w120v60hz.aspx )

I suppose you could go for something smaller, but the price of ONE of those batteries alone is more than your $600 generator.

cheaper != cheap.

I never said that they'd be able to use bargain basement thermal panels.

Still, Evergreen Es-A-210-Fa3
210 watt, 13% efficiency, 65"x37.5" = 2,438 square inches of collector(1.57m2). $587 each bought in a pallet of 28.

Cost by area: $374 m2
Power by area: 134 w/m2
Cost per watt: $2.79

A "ThermoPower-VDF30 should be around $1,244.
It's aperture is 2.67 m2. 94% absorbtion, 7% emission per the datasheet. 'Stagnation Temperature" > 428F

Cost by area: $466 m2 (okay, it's not cheaper per m2)
Power by area: 634 w/m2 (at 1000 w/m2) (almost 5 times the power though)
Cost per watt: $0.74

Conclusion: At 27% of the price, you'd have to be looking at a pretty hefty penalty for using an adsorption chiller for it to make sense to use electrical HVAC with solar electric panels. Also, in either case I'd consider utilizing additional reflectors to put more power to the relatively expensive collector.

For example:

A cloudy day provides sufficient diffuse light by which the panel will produce electricity. Optimum electrical production occurs with bright and sunny weather conditions. Under a light overcast, the modules might produce about half as much as under full sun, ranging down to as little as five to ten percent under a dark overcast day.

(From http://www.solarhome.org/solarpanelsfaqs.html#faq8)

A 50% - 95% reduction doesn't sound like "not that bad".

On the plus side, the cost of solar panel is expected to hit 1 dollar a watt by before the end of 2010, and as cheap as 50 cents a watt by the end of 2012.

Do you have a link on that?

If true, the only thing remaining would be to drop the ancillerary costs to a similar level. Right now that's running around $1/watt itself.

For example, a 6kw inverter runs $3.6k. That's $.50/watt right there, without getting into wiring, mounting costs for the panels, paying for the electrician to hook everything up*, etc...

*You can't count on everyone, or even a significant fraction of the population to be able to do this stuff themselves.

I have to disagree somewhat with this, or at least clarify.
The Inverter is the most expensive single component in most installations, but the total cost of the panels generally exceed it very quickly.
3.3kw Inverter, 240V, $2,250
Looking at their solar panels: Call it $5/watt
While a single panel costs $1,100, you can put 16-17 of them on the inverter. You could go with a substantially cheaper inverter if you're only going to have 3 panels in the system.
Note on economy - If you live in a southern state with high electricity costs and substantial solar install rebates, it can make sense. In my northern climate, minimal rebate, low electricity cost state, it doesn't. I'd be better off with wind.

I have to disagree somewhat with this, or at least clarify.
The Inverter is the most expensive single component in most installations, but the total cost of the panels generally exceed it very quickly.
3.3kw Inverter, 240V, $2,250
Looking at their solar panels: Call it $5/watt
While a single panel costs $1,100, you can put 16-17 of them on the inverter. You could go with a substantially cheaper inverter if you're only going to have 3 panels in the system.
Note on economy - If you live in a southern state with high electricity costs and substantial solar install rebates, it can make sense. In my northern climate, minimal rebate, low electricity cost state, it doesn't. I'd be better off with wind.

I remember reading that it takes more energy to build a Solar power system than that system will deliver in it's expected lifespan. Is this true?

No.

To elaborate: picture a 200W solar panel, it weighs about 30lbs and has a lifetime of 20 years or more. In those 20 years, if you average 8 hours a day of full output, that's 1.6kWh per day, or over 11 Megawatt hours. A moderately sized factory might consume 11 megawatts, but if it's that big, it had better be turning out more than 1 solar panel per hour.

the biggest problem is that it's very expensive to buy sufficient panels to generate 1000W of power

It depends on what you consider expensive. Five Sharp 224W Solar Panels, each costing $1200, would cost $6000 and generate more than 1000W.

The biggest problem with solar power is that we can't generate enough power and not the fact that we can't store it.

Do you know more than those who write for SciAm? SciAm published an article, "A Solar Grand Plan", detailing how the US can produce "69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy (which includes transportation) with solar power by 2050." Potential wind power is even greater. The Rocky Mountains from Canada to Texas alone, Oilman and Billionaire T. Boone Pickens is proposing this, has enough potential wind energy to provide the US with electricity. Actually his plan is for independence from imported oil. Use of the wind would allow natural gas fueled power plants to be closed then the gas coulf be used as vehicle fuel.

Falcon

Congrats on your cool setup! You can buy a new 100 watt solar panel for less than $600. http://www.solarhome.org/solarpanelbrand_ge.html Add a couple more deep-cycle batteries and you can probably push through 99% of the cloudy periods.

For those of us within range of civilization, connect your solar setup to the grid and use electricity from somewhere sunny when it's too cloudy locally. Supplement the solar generation with a little hydro and wind, reduce energy consumption, and voila: sustainable energy independence. Plenty of people already generate more electricity than they use with solar, and sell the surplus back to the rest of us. As the technology improves, I can imagine a future where most rooftops are covered in resilient, high-effiency solar panels.

Just because we use x amount of energy doesn't mean we _need_ to use that much energy... as hydrocarbon prices rise, hopefully the market will encourage people to curtail their consumption. Or, maybe we'll put a nuclear plant in every town and pray that nothing bad ever happens.