Solar corporations are in a race to produce cheaper and more effective thin film (nanotech) solar panels. M

Published on Friday, July 11, 2008 by the Boston Globe

Innovation Fuels Solar Power Drive

Rising Fuel Prices, New Technology Help Make Such Generation Feasible

by Carolyn Y. Johnson



BOSTON - Solar power, which has been the next big thing on the energy horizon for decades, may finally be reaching a tipping point.

Long considered far too expensive to be a viable power source, solar energy is now benefiting from technological innovation, environmental concerns and the ever-rising cost of fossil fuels.

In the latest discovery, an MIT team yesterday announced it had developed a new way to concentrate solar beams, potentially reducing the cost of solar panels.

But such advances, still far from becoming commercial products, are only a small part of the forces finally making solar look feasible. Unlike in the early 1980s, when cheap energy prices helped derail Jimmy Carter’s ambitions for solar power, today’s technology is getting close to being cost-competitive with other forms of energy.

“We’re not in a hype cycle,” said Nathan Lewis, a chemistry professor at the California Institute of Technology. “There’s a lot of innovation we’re seeing now, regulations guaranteeing a market expanding for the next decade. . . . If you go to Silicon Valley and around Route 128, everyone and their brother who used to make computer chips are now trying to make thin-film solar cells.”

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Well, when seeing that solar cells were over $100 per W in the 50's, and about $20 per W in the 70's. The price has already been dropping and will continue to drop.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

We shall see.

Already, we are experincing a LOT of pushback and lawsuits by neighbors of solar panels, citing visual blight and blinding of houses and roads. As cool as solar panels are, there's still a ton of people who will fight them, tooth and nail.

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An employee gets trampled to death by a frenzied, greedy mob at a Walmart sale, and customers actually complained when the store closed. Yet, I'm the bad guy for suggesting policies that assume people act like retarded herd animals that need government nannying and control....

Am I the only one that sees the irony here?

You mean how a "tipping point" is so "far from being commercial"...?

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An employee gets trampled to death by a frenzied, greedy mob at a Walmart sale, and customers actually complained when the store closed. Yet, I'm the bad guy for suggesting policies that assume people act like retarded herd animals that need government nannying and control....

I think he means that it has been a dream for so long and that it still says it is a ways away, like it will never come.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

I see the irony in people in 2008 still desperately advocating nuclear energy with breakthroughs in renewable energy happening at a fast and quickening pace.

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I mean that they have been making these promises for decades, and now the next breakthrough is on decades away.

Better yet the irony of of global warming alarmists ignoring that nukes are zero emissions, and unlike solar, acutually make huge amounts of energy.

Rancho Seco Nuclear Power Plant has not been in operation for years.

MIT opens new 'window' on solar energy - Political Fever - The Political Debate Forums

I just posted this thread about a new MIT breakthrough for solar energy. It is a special window you install and can see through but it doubles as a solar panel. It can be produced inexpensively and should be on the market within the next three years.

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