Yeah, I'm still waiting for my Oil Burner to "Pay for Itself" - same goes for my washing machine and water well. I did the math, and I must have made a mistake, because it says that those things are a cost, not an investment.

Now, if you're expecting your home-based power generation system to have a LOWER OPERATING COST than your grid-fed system, well, no, it's not reasonable to ever expect a decentralized system to operate at a lower cost than a large-scale production facility.

If that were the case, it would somehow and some way eventually be cheaper for you to make your own automobiles, to grow your own food, to make your own lumber and to make your own medications.

It's not. I grow my own food - to an extent. But I could never grow enough corn or wheat on my own. I can't smelt metal. I can't make plywood.

Photovoltaic systems are still appealing - but not so much from an individuals economic perspective.