Solar panels are already almost free, under $1/W. If you neglected the labor costs of installation, along with the inverters, racking, permitting, etc., they'd

Solar panels are already almost free, under $1/W. If you neglected the labor costs of installation, along with the inverters, racking, permitting, etc., they'd pay for themselves in _under a year_ in PG&E territory, which lists a 43c/kWh rate on their website. And that's before any tax or feed-in tariff incentives. "Better" (efficiency) is completely irrelevant to this math problem.