A Model of the Cost of Solar Power v. Oil

I was asked to review and comment on an essay that attempted to compare a dollar's worth of gasoline to a dollar's worth of solar panels. In my opinion, the fatal flaw in that essay is that once you spend a dollar on gasoline, it's gone, whereas once you spend a dollar on a solar panel, it keeps producing power for the life of the panel.

Also, the essay's comparison of the relevant fill times per unit of energy are, in my opinion, specious, because you won't have one dollar's worth of solar panels, you'll have your portion of the total solar panel power output at hand on the grid.

Nevertheless, the essay raises an interesting question. What is the difference between the cost of current petroleum-powered transportation, heating, and cooling, compared to the equivalent cost of providing such energy via solar panels? In order to provide a mechanism for exploring the question, I have prepared:

A Model of the Cost of Solar Power v. Oil

This is an interactive model: you can change the input values, and the calculated values are automatically recomputed as you go. The current version 1.2 has only been checked by me, and once you've created something, it's really hard to see your mistakes.

Thus it is that I request any and all feedback per corrections, enhancements, and extensions to the model. There is an email link available from within the model.

Revision History:

2008-03-22 ~ 1.2 ~ Fixed a bug in the formatting of calculated values.

2008-03-22 ~ 1.1 ~ Changed energy equivalent of a barrel of oil from 4 to 5.8 million British Thermal Units, according to the U.S. Department of Energy web site. Solar is now about eight times more expensive.

2008-03-21 ~ 1.0 ~ Not checked; current calculations show solar as five times more expensive than oil (F_s), which isn't much, if solar gets more efficient, and oil gets more expensive.