18,300,000/802,000 = 23 year return on investment if no maintenance or other costs are incurred. Glad they are spending my tax dollars so wisely.
I have visited the USAFA solar array as well as several DoD solar projects. The only main difference between the USAFA one and the others is that USAFA built it with ARRA funds and the others were privately built.
23 years is about the typical standard (20 years) for gov't and private finance on energy projects. So yes, they spent your tax dollars wisely. In fact, the bidding process was really well done. They had their budget and chose the project that could give the biggest bang for the buck on that budget - and it did.
On most of these projects, the O&M ends up less than anticipated and is cheap - on the order of $10/kW/year (<$60K a year for 6 MW). The contract requires the contractor to maintain a minimum level of efficiency so they will have to pay USAFA if they don't meet that.
I spend the majority of my research time working on these energy projects at RAND for the Army. The USAFA one is helping meet the Net-Zero goals specified for them and is financially beneficial, even in one of the country's cheapest energy markets. The non-ARRA projects such as Nellis, Davis-Monthan, Fort Carson, a several private housing projects in the southwest have been saving a ton (the first Nellis phase sells them electricity at 2.2c/kWH - they save close to a million a year and the private developer has done well). The Army developed a commission called EITF to help them accelerate these projects. The USAF has been the leader in developing these contracts through MAJCOM specific Tiger Teams.
The most common contract allows the private developer to build the array on military land at a discounted property rate. The military gets the benefit through purchasing the power at a discounted rate. The requirement is to receive power at equal or less (usually less) than their current electrical tariff. The military has been benefiting from these projects tremendously.
In the case of Nellis, Fort Carson, Miramar, and USAFA, I have directly interviewed their energy staff and the people who developed the contracts. They are pretty impressive in knowledge and results.
In conclusion, some like Packer choose to take the naive approach and denounce "government spending!" as so terrible without understanding the actual process and finances going on in these projects as well as how both public and private utilities perform their financial calculations on energy projects. As someone who has been involved for two years in evaluating the DoD installation renewable programs, I can say they are one of the few well-managed programs doing some real good for the DoD and the country as a whole.