Solar panels a ‘loser,’ professor says

Installing solar panels on homes is an economic “loser” with the costs far outweighing the financial benefit, a respected University of California-Berkeley business professor said Wednesday.

The technology, using photovoltaic panels to generate electricity, is not economically competitive with fossil fuels and costs more than other renewable fuels, said Severin Borenstein, who also directs the UC Energy Institute.

Under the most likely scenario, the cost of a 10-kilowatt solar system would be three or four times as much as the electricity it’ll produce,

Borenstein found. And even using a more favorable set of criteria, the cost would still be as much as 80 percent more than the value of the electricity it will produce.

Borenstein’s research wasn’t sponsored by any group or organization or industry, and the UC Energy Institute does non-partisan research, he said.

“I have nothing against solar PV and I hope it gets better,” he said. “It’s just very expensive and not terribly efficient.”

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