The Importance of Government Spending

http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices Certainly in terms of cost per watt, thin-film seems to be beating other photovoltaic cells. If you're buying for portable usage, that's the kind of incentive people like to hear. Also, thin-film solar cells are flexible, reducing damage from handling and impact. Hardly money flushed to the sewer since it means reduced maintenance and replacement costs in the course of hard usage, such as on the front lines of a military operation, or at a base or installation which cannot rely on local power generation and/or which may come under attack on occasion.

As this article emphasizes, certain energy technologies would be too expensive but for government-offered incentives for their use. One presumes that there are other publicly desirable technologies for which there was no initial demand, which are now widely used because of government subsidies specifically to encourage demand, whether or not those subsidies have been reduced or withdrawn entirely.

On the walking hand, of course, I'm pretty sure your personal demand is to remove all subsidies without exception and let the market eat the losers. I wonder what a market would look like wherein individuals actually have perfect information, though.