This just shows that residential solar is kind of dumb. It's more gaming quirks of rate structures than it is producing cheap energy. Fortunately, there's more than enough room for large scale solar, installed at about $1/W.

2008 called. It wants its prices back.

A visit to sunelec.com or santansolar.com yields a litany of panels for sale well under $1/W. Half the offerings on Amazon are below $1/W as well.

As such, nowadays you should be paying no more than $10k for a 5kW system.