I meant to link to this a few days ago: Over on Renewable Energy Access, Scott Sklar argues for the development of new economic metrics by which to assess the viability of renewable energy.
By accepting the traditional measures of viability (cents per kWh, for instance) PV and other renewables always come out poorly.
Another economic “metric” needs to be crafted and effort initiated to build support for it (such as dollars per immediate used, levelized cost, non-interruptable energy). When you take these modifiers in account, biomass, free-flow hydropower, geothermal, photovoltaics, solar thermal, wind, and waste heat/cogeneration along with other clean distributed generation and energy efficiency come out quite well.
