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I just don't get how someone could think it's a good idea to spend half a million euros to power a single home. I can buy a rooftop solar array to power my hom

I just don't get how someone could think it's a good idea to spend half a million euros to power a single home. I can buy a rooftop solar array to power my home for maybe 5% of that amount (true cost, not the misleading "post-subsidy" cost.) And nobody will ever drive a truck on my roof. EDIT: I'm not normally one to complain about downvotes, but this has gotten 2 now; I find that completely inexplicable. Really, where's the value proposition in putting solar cells on the ground, in the shade, not aligned to the sun, where they'll get dirt and grime tracked on them, and having to spend 20x as much to manufacture them to withstand vehicle traffic? Even as an MVP, this seems foolish.

lucb1e 12y ago
> I just don't get how someone could think it's a good idea to spend half a million euros to power a single home. Because it's not meant to be profitable. It's a test; an experiment. Do you think the first first time anyone ever put a solar panel on their roof to test with that it was profitable?
- lotharbot 12y ago
  no, but I think they had an idea of how it could eventually become profitable. I don't see the value proposition, now or in the future, for solar panels on the ground, not aligned to the sun, with layers of protection on top of them, where they'll often be in the shade. Like someone else said, it seems like you can validate or invalidate this idea by using mathematics without ever setting up a full-scale multi-million-currency-unit experiment.