Comment by pjc50

Accounting is a big issue for renewables because almost all the cost is upfront. You pay a capital cost for X years (say, 30) of electricity. Maintenance is a much smaller fraction of the cost. Therefore the question of profitability depends on all sorts of non-power things: amortization, interest rates, how the tax-deductibility of a capital investment is handled, what future electricity costs are, and so on.