Good points, but on the flipside, German solar is probably roughly a third as productive as sunny American states could be... so when you factor in the added ou

Good points, but on the flipside, German solar is probably roughly a third as productive as sunny American states could be... so when you factor in the added output per equivalent installation, the 3x grid cost should be roughly mitigated. However, the trouble is the costs are not primarily correlated with size of installation and the cost of the panels themselves are no longer the primary cost driver. This means tertiary costs like installation and regulation, which do not necessarily scale with system size, are an important and complex piece. edit: it's not 3x but still as high as 2.5x in some places: http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/us_germany_spain/pv_map_us_germany_spain.jpg http://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/us_germany_spain/pv_map_us_ge... and more if you compare to northern Germany. Anyway some parts of the US have significantly higher power costs than others (not surprisingly these are generally good solar sales markets)