[gela]

Hmm.. Keep in mind that I am arguing from an Australian view point. We have thousands of kilometers of useless space that has constant sunlight (bar night obviously) practically all year around.
Even on the coast, where I live, It is sunny for most of the year.
I don't know what the climate is like where your from, but it seems like pure stupidity that our government isn't putting more effort into solar power.

Well that's not the only reason, but even if it is one such reason, what's the problem? Do you have something against supporting an industry that would create thousands of high-paying jobs?

If thats what politians are aiming at by supporting Nuclear power, then mabe they should be direct about it - instead of using global warming as an excuse to get their big money making business up and running.

Based upon what? The fact that it lacks the capacity or efficiency to power large cities? The fact that it takes millions of acres to generate the same amount of power that a nuclear plant can do on a much smaller footprint?

Like I said above. Space is hardly a problem over here.
Even then, if the government put some tax cuts into solar panels, and made it more affordable, so everyone could have one - then you would have millions of acres to generate.

And yet somehow, nuclear power is still less expensive than solar. So how do you figure solar is better?

Well, I have nothing but your word to back up this one.
Source it.

Sounds great. Are you arguing for or against it?

Nope, Im saying why it has the support it does, and the reason isn't 'to help the environment'.

Your claims here are laughably naive. First of all, solar power is much too complex to be set up by the average do-it-yourselfer. I consider myself to be a pretty far above-average do-it-yourselfer, I've done extensive electrical work on my own house, and installing solar is above my comfort level. I priced a contractor to do it just out of curiousity, they wanted $20,000 not including the price of the panels.

Thats why I think the government should get behind the industry, and give it tax cuts to make them more affordable.

The "if you have excess power" is a really HUGE "if". In my area of the country, the best estimates say that, given my roof area and number of "solar" days, I could get about 33% of my power through solar. Not close to providing all of my needs and a HUGE leap from "selling" anything back to the grid.

South Australia (one of the smaller states over here) have introduced a tariff (sp?) on their solar power. The government matches every dollar you make putting power back into the grid - so your making twice as much money selling solar power.

My point is, that over here, people do make enough electricity - because people have enough left over to put it back into the grid. If not in family houses - then in houses that only have couples (a suprisingly large amount these days).

There are other complications as well... I can set up a battery system to save for rainy days, however due to safety concerns the power company won't let me have the battery system connected to their power system, so if I lose power I need to physically switch the power myself, and then switch it back when it comes back on.

Problems that would probably be solved if the government would put more money into the industry.

What Im sick of, is governments saying that nuclear power is the only solution to unclean energy.
If they really cared about unclean energy, they would put money into solar power - not into nuclear power.