Quantum Dot Recipe May Lead To Cheaper Solar Panels 205
Science Daily is reporting that scientists have developed a new method for cost-effectively producing four-armed quantum dots that have previously been shown to be particularly effective at converting sunlight into electrical energy. The discovery could clear the way for better, cheaper solar energy panels.
Oil Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
I would hate to reincarnate into a world where BP is still selling me (solar) energy as costly as what it is today.
Can individuals adequately produce energy themselves in the future, or will big-corps still be the real suppliers?
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Re:Oil Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oil Companies (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oil Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
He's saying they aren't immoral so much as amoral. They don't sit around twirling their mustaches thinking of new ways to ruin the planet; rather, they sit around twirling their mustaches thinking up new ways to make money.
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Re:Oil Companies (Score:4, Insightful)
I then go on further to say that global warming, peak oil, and other various problems with oil as an energy source are starting to gain a lot of focus by the populace at large. I theorize that the oil company executives see where the tides are turning, and are investing in solar to maintain their profits when the tides finally turn. I don't see them sinking R and D money into solar just to ignore a possible revenue stream, especially since investing that money in politicians could just as easily solve the whole "solar problem."
Of course, other posters pointed out that they may have a short-term view, which may be the case. Its all speculation, unless you know someone very high in the decision making process at one of these companies.
At any rate, I'm certainly not suggesting that the oil companies are gee-golly our best friends, nor am I suggesting that doing evil to make money is a-ok.
Reading comprehension FTW.
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Re:Oil Companies (Score:5, Interesting)
It's like some kind of demented Turing test. You have two terminals. One is connected to an evil guy twirling his moustache. The other is connected to a profit-seeking corporate board. But you don't know which terminal is connected to whom! Can you tell, just by examining their actions, which is the evil moustache, and which is the corporate board?
Kthxbai,
--Rob
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It is a very simple thing to get people to do evil. Simply set up a system where no one person is really responsible but rather all effort is bent towards the common goal. Your idea of a coporation to make money will do just as well as any other. You can easily convince them that their duty to their shareholders is much more important than their duty to their employees, customers of the poeple of their town or city and thus induce them to perfrom the most unspeakable acts. Poisoning
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I'm confused. Are you trying to say corporations are evil, but it's ok since it helps them make money?
The OP is saying that their evil has a motive, as opposed to "pure evil" so to speak. The topic of this thread is not the motivation of the oil companies (that is not in dispute), but rather whether their motives will cause them to seek non-petroleum energy sources in the future. The short answer is "Yes, it will." The motive is profit, the behavior is (subjectively) evil, and petroleum has nothing to d
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Re:Oil Companies (Score:5, Informative)
Part of the problem is that it *does* take a while to shift production. You can reopen old wells or expand an existing field in half a year to a couple years, but brand new projects take many years to get started. Consequently, they have to do a lot of gambling on what the state of the world will be. There are tons of oil resources (bitumen, coal liquifaction, oil shale, arctic and deep sea extraction, etc), but we're running out of the "cheap" ones. The question is, how much of the more expensive ones do we think we'll need, ten years down the road? Will Nigerians be sabotaging pipelines, or will the crisis be resolved? Will the middle east have calmed down or will a whole new can of worms have opened up? Will foreign governments make nasty surprises on your projects, like Russia taking over Sakhalin or the Venezuelan goverment taking over joint ventures with PDVSA?
Not exactly an easy problem to solve. Bet wrong, and you'll go out of business. But you have to bet. Oil companies don't stay in business for half a century or more by only looking at their next year. Yet, that's exactly what the supermajors have done -- stay in business, decade after decade.
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The other question, which relates to this thread, is, "Will renewables be less expensive than these expensive-to-access-and-refine oil resources?"
Throw in a carbon tax to the issues you've touched on, and the answer may very well be yes. Plus, in the short
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Re:Oil Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget to factor in the externalized costs (air pollution, global warming, terrorism, your children getting sent to Iraq, etc). The price you pay at the pump isn't the only price there is to be paid.
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Air pollution can be mitigated in a coal plant, but it is hard to get rid of CO2 emissions!
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But you don't pay it AT THE PUMP.
And if YOU decide to buy the low-pollution high-price alternative you don't get the benefit of EVERYBODY ELSE doing the same thing. So you still pay the externalized costs AND pay for the "high-priced spread".
The externalized prices are a tragedy of the commons (in the eco
Re:Oil Companies (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe they know their business model is about to die a very bad death due to market changes we don't know about.
Remember, the oil companies came up with the Peak Oil theory, not the environmentalists.
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But they will DEFINITELY be selling power in major metropolitan areas. The tiny amount of sun my Condo gets in NYC is no where near enough to power my requirements. (On the other hand, my carbon footprint is about 1/3 average, because I use the subway instead of owning a car).
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Re:Oil Companies (Score:4, Informative)
Oil companies recognized a long time ago that much of their business was selling energy - or the means to obtain usable energy. And long before the whole "global warming" flap (back during the last "here comes an ice age" flap, actually) they recognized that using their products caused pollution, and people were looking for cleaner ways to get energy - which might reduce their market.
It makes sense for them to be able to make money from the big-business end of selling people the means to get usable energy. That way, if the market suddenly shifts to something else, they get to make money off that to compensate for the lost revenue on the old stuff. And if research is needed they had a LOT of money to invest in it - just as they invest in exploration for more oil deposits.
So they did a lot of research on ways to make money by enabling people to make energy OTHER than by pumping, refining, and selling oil.
One of those was photovoltaic panels. ARCO, for instance, did a bunch of work on that, eventually bringing quality modules to market at prices that make them practical in a large number of locations. (That operation has been absorbed into BP Solar if I have my players sorted out correctly.)
They'll be happy to sell you oil to burn in engines. They'll be happy to sell you photovoltaic modules. (They'll probably be happy to sell you fusion engines if they ever work out, too.)
Trying to keep solar energy out of the market does them no good. If somebody else comes up with something practical and they CAN'T stop it, they lose revenue on oil and don't get compensating revenue from the replacement. So their best strategy is to be in that market with a product competitive enough to give them significant market share, at a price that gives them a decent return but doesn't cripple the consumer. (And first company that makes a breakthrough that starts the switchover gets the lion's share of the money to be made.) They're smart enough to realize this.
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I notice oil companies are heavily involved in solar energy, are they securing their future and/or slowing solar tech down?
They speed it up. Peak oil works like this: Let us say petrol-company "A" can make X.XX dollars per gallon of refined gas. This is because crude oil is cheap, it only costs =~.75 USD per barrel of crude oil. Now lets say Iraq/Kuwait runs out of liquid hydrocarbon (pump-able crude oil) (not projected for another 20 years). And lets say petrol-company "A" makes a deal with Canada for Tar sands Hydrocarbons, to make crude oil, it will cost 1.18 USD per barrel of crude oil, because tar sands require addition
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Business are about money.
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Re:Oil Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell me -- how do they win? No, really -- what can they do to make you happy? Leave the oil industry altogether, so that prices shoot through the roof, and some other oil company which cares *less* for the environment can take their place?
Meanwhile, people like you just keep driving and driving, taking airplanes and using plastics, and all the while acting like it's someone else's fault. Well, guess what? The problem is *consumption*.
Some oil companies, like Shell and BP, are hedging their bets with investments in renewables and carbon sequestration. While in each case it's only a couple percent of their revenues, the oil industry is so much bigger than the renewables industry that it majorly increases the dollars going into renewables. They're making that bet so that, in case energy sources do change or carbon sequestration is mandated, they're in a position to capitalize on it. Since sequestration and renewables would drive their competitors out of business, you'll find lots of instances of Shell and BP execs encouraging governments to act on climate change. Others, like the monstrously big Exxon-Mobil, aren't taking that bet. As a consequence, you'll find that something like 90% of the anti-global-warming and anti-renewables PR can trace back to them.
That's not to say that even the renewables supporters are angels. They still lobby, like all oil companies, for laws that protect their core businesses**. It's a dirty business, and the stricter environmental controls are for production, the tougher it is for them. Still, I'm a firm believer that A) renewables investments so big that they double the size the investment pool in some cases are a very good thing, and B) instead of complaining about those evil old oil companies, *stop consuming their damn product* if you have a problem with it. If you don't, you're *part of the problem*. The world's burdens shouldn't fall on their shoulders just because *you* don't want to think of yourself as part of the problem when you're the reason why they have to produce that environment-destroying stuff in the first place.
** On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised when I looked up what was being lobbied for and found that most oil companies, even Exxon-Mobil, lobby as "peaceniks"
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YASPB (Score:3)
Re:YASPB (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that petroleum is still so cheap.
So for the time being, we have not crossed any economic thresholds for application types, nor are we looking at any such developments in the next serval years. So while basic engineering developments are promising, we aren't going see much investment aimed at making solar part of our daily lives.
We haven't reach world peak petroleum production yet. As we approach it, and the rate of production increase slows relative to world economic growth, things will change.
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You sure about that? I think we're there just about now.
http://biz.yahoo.com/seekingalpha/070502/34218_id
Re:YASPB (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, and while you're at it, explain why bitumen, coal liquifaction, thermal depolymerization, oil shale extraction, methane reformation (including methane hydrates and clathrates), sugarcane ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, and outright Fischer-Tropsh/Sabatier synthesis from CO/CO2 (using, say, nuclear power), won't work. Not just a handful of them: ALL of them, because each one alone has the potential to majorly cut (if not completly eliminate) the load on natural petroleum. Yes, they're more expensive (although some, such as bitumen, coal liquifaction, and sugarcane ethanol, are economical at current prices). Yes, expanding our capacity using them would take 5-10 years (but you'd have to believe that there's a huge international conspiracy to believe that we're going to "run out" in that timeframe -- also, investments in syncrude production have been way, way up for a couple years already). Yes, some of them would do a number on the environment (widespread use of sugarcane ethanol? Goodbye, rainforests!). But they all exist, they all work, and they all have their price. If you really believe we're due for peak oil, explain why *none* of them will work at any non-civilization-collapsing price.
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The problem for solar power is that the efficiency is low enough and manufacturing costs high enough that it makes it difficult for the average home owner to invest in a system. The cost to purchase and install a solar voltaic system for an average home owner is in the realm of $30k and it will take about 20 years to pay for itself based on reduced power bills.
What we need is better efficiency w
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Exactly.
The technology is already there, but it's the economics that haven't been worked out yet.
I remembered back in December, Slashdot covered the high efficiency multi-junction solar cells with a 40% conversion efficiency from Boeing's Spectrolab. According to the press release, they already had a fully functional 33 kilowatt generator in the Australian outback.
Too bad according to Wikipedia, it costs up to $40 per cm^2.
http://www.boeing.com/ids/news/2006/q4/061206b_nr. html [boeing.com]
href=http://en [slashdot.org]
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This whole addicted to oil this is not nearly as intractable as the entrenched powers-that-be would like you to believe.
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But politically-motivated "activists" insist on change RIGHT NOW, DAMMIT!
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Blah blah blah. This is a tech site. The articles are about technology. Up there, in the upper left corner, see that slogan? Does it read "News for nerds, stuff that matters, but only if it's a miracle of modern science?" No, it does not.
You don't have to jizz yourself because somebody discovered something. But remaining willfully ignorant and coming in here only to ridicule people who actually take interest in this stuff marks you as a dunce and a Luddite.
Re:YASPB (Score:4, Interesting)
And maybe this one will be the one
Well, at least this one... (Score:2)
I mean, according to the article,which is certainly obvious (heck, there's probably prior art), especially with the new Supreme Court ruling.
I applaud any solar breakthroughs regardless (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm glad people are putting money into solar, because if done right, it can turn regions of the globe which are otherwise unused (West Texas for example) into very productive areas for energy use.
Research into solar, coupled with innovations in batteries to allow for storage of energy will go a long way into making oil into "just" a raw material for plastics as opposed to a vital fuel source.
Re:I applaud any solar breakthroughs regardless (Score:4, Interesting)
I find it ironic that just about every solution we find to preserve limited resources and create environmentally friendly technology contains at least one toxic compound in it [slashdot.org] (cadmium selenide [wikipedia.org] in this case)....
non-toxic quantum dots (Score:4, Interesting)
(posting as AC so I don't get in trouble with the company legal team)
More information about quantum dot solar cells (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060603/bob8
"Both the Los Alamos and NREL teams calculate a maximum of 42 percent conversion of solar power to usable electricity. Conventional cells, by contrast, operate at 15 to 20 percent efficiency."
Hacking Matter on Quantum Dots (Score:5, Informative)
Quite an interesting read, and well written. And I think you can download the book online at his website [wilmccarthy.com], as well.
Highly recommended - entertaining, informative read.
A long way to go yet (Score:5, Interesting)
As with all stories about incremental progress in solar cell there are still a few hurdles yet to overcome:
Power conversion efficiencies from these cells are typically below 4% (eg. 1.8% original report, Sun et. al Nano Lett 3, 961). A good crystalline silicon cell will give you 12-15%.
Stability. Nanocrystals tend to go off pretty quickly and you don't want to be replacing your solar cell every week or so.
Cadmium is hella-toxic and _may be_ more so in nanocrystal form. A little vial of the stuff is enough to kill you, apparently. Makes you wonder about all those Ni-Cd batteries.
However, I welcome the (eventual) coming of our new tetrapod overlords.
Re:A long way to go yet (Score:4, Insightful)
What's funny is that progress is almost always incremental, and we adjust to each of these changes easily so we don't notice the advances.
My 5-seat Saturn burns down the highway at 90 MPH, and gets over 30 MPG doing it, fully loaded, and has great handling all the way up. Try that in a 70's Comet. My dual-core laptop with 2 GB of RAM burns less power than an amazingly slower (but power efficient for its time!) K6-2 processor-based from 10 years ago. The concept of the Internet was mind-boggling 12 years ago when it was first introduced to me. Now, my 1.5 Mbit fixed IP DSL internet connection is ho hum by today's standards.
Progress is constant, slow, and incremental. But go back 10, 20, or 50 years and compare life then to today and you might be amazed. I don't imagine that Solar power will be any different.
Remember when a solar calculator was a big deal? Now, they're commonly available at the local $1 store. Nowadays, a 120-watt incandescent light bulb uses more electricity than virtually all the lights in my house, since the Compact Florescent bulbs I use everywhere are so efficient.
I recently added a 1,500 foot extension to my house. So, I'm a big energy waster, right?
Well, it looks like it actually REDUCES our energy consumption! Its got outer walls built with 2x6 instead of 2x4s, has double-paned windows, and over 2 FEET of insulation in the attic. Because of the double-pane windows, lighting needs are minimal, since we don't need to use lights during the day. The insulation is so good that when the doors/windows are closed, the temperature deviates by about 10 degrees through the day even though outside it has climbed to over 90 degrees. WOW! I don't think we'll even bother running the A/C in the older part of the house - to get comfortable, just go into the new extension!
A big part of making solar work will be in reducing our demand for power.
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2007/04/18: -> "Plastic solar cell efficiency breaks record at WFU nanotechnology center"
The global search for a sustainable energy supply is making significant strides at Wake Forest University as researchers at the university's Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials have announced that they have pushed the effici
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Yet scientists can confidently predict that solar cells made with techniques that don't exist yet will be cheaper than conventional solar cells.
As a scientist I have always tended to dismiss Mark Twain's comment that science was the field where you got the greatest return in speculation on the tiniest investment of fact. But apparently he understood the human aspects of science pretty well.
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Inflexion point? (Score:2)
If our home generate lots of juice, then home-charged electric (or hybrid) cars could suddenly become significantly cheaper to operate than gas cars because charging them could become cheap. Which in turn could significantly lower our reliance on Russian and Middle Eastern oil, making it easier for us to disengage from meddling over there.
Pipe-dream or possibility?
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The unfortunate problem with solar power, indeed all forms of "alternate" energy, is that they are comparatively low-density phenomena. When you figure the physical plant required to generate enough solar power (including nighttime and off-season storage!) to be competitive with a nuclear or coal-fired power plant the difference isn't as extreme as you might think. Yes, a solar plant
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In the mean time, this technology does two things. First, it helps us reduce our depend
Your roof is often enough (Score:2)
I kin
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A big possibility. Remember the time when we used this black solid thing called COAL? It's just the way science and technology goes. We're hitting a new industrial revolution where the key technology is nanotech.
Just as the discovery of the transistor made a revolution in electronics, the discovery of methods to create and handle nanomaterials is preparing us to make better tools, leading to more methods, materials, and so on.
The problem right now, is not that we can find cheap ene
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In urban areas, it would be possible to deploy over-head or in-road power supplies that could be used by a running car. Recharge time is not an issue here because (once the infrastructure is deployed), you aren't using the local power supply. You might even want to use a city car that didn't have a battery, since it would be lighter and thus chea
Trailers (Score:2)
More dots? (Score:2)
Armed and dangerous... (Score:2)
Show me the cheap pannels! (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the subsidies solar research has had since the 70s, I can't figure out why progress has been so slow for the past 30 years. I'm not a big conspiracy buff, but, given the explosive rate of technology on other fronts over the same period, something just doesn't seem right.
Re:Show me the cheap pannels! (Score:5, Informative)
There has actually been fairly consistent, gradual improvement in solar panels.
If you're interested, get a hold of the May 8th Economist and check the Technology Quarterly. The article is online but requires an Economist subscription. There was an article on solar panels that was very informative. First, on price:
There is also a very interesting quote on how the technology can be compared to other technologies dealing with silicon and thin films.
There is also a graph in the article showing installed solar power capacity from 1994 to 2004. In 1994 there was about 0.2GW of installed solar power. In 2004 there was about 2.5GW of installed power.
From the article, you could go ahead and make up a 'Sol's Law', similar to Moore's law. It would not have anything like the 18 month double of transistor packing, but may have 10 year order of magnitudes of increases in installed solar panels and considerable reductions in cost.
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That must be in huge lots. If you can loc
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I've been watching solar power issues for thirty years - and "cheaper, more efficient" solar cells have been "coming Real Soon Now because of this Cool Discovery" about every six months all that time.
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From some random policy paper [udel.edu]:
Re:Show me the cheap pannels! (Score:4, Interesting)
There are several limits on cheap solar. Start with an absolute upper limit on efficiency. 100% is not likely in our lifetime, I'd doubt exceeding 50% is likely in the next hundred years. There are already panels in the marketplace in the 15-20% range and we are always reading about better stuff in the labs. So there probably isn't even another whole doubling of output power to research. It isn't like semiconductor transistor counts and operating speeds that apparently can keep on increasing for another couple of decades according to Moore's Law.
So that leaves existing power/area systems becoming more affordable sweetened with a little more efficiency now and then. But any panel based photovoltaic system can't escape needing a lot of surface area of fairly hi tech material along with the basic expenses involved in manufacturing, transporting and installing large bulky things. Heck, basic roofing material ain't exactly cheap when you have to buy enough to cover your roof and pay people to go up there and install it. It also implies a pretty hard limit to the maximum power load a home can have and still be a candidate for solar. Environmental control is the big drain now and can be greatly reduced with better home design. But other power drains are growing and if they exceed what can be collected that will scuttle the notion of independence from the grid.
And last there is the final part of a solar system, the control and storage system. Hi current electronics built and installed to code isn't cheap and isn't likely to experience more than a halving in price anytime soon. Storage for now means batteries and we all know they are THE limit on so much modern tech. So until somebody cracks that nut alternative power is going to be held back along with electric cars and portable electronics.
Storage isn't needed yet (Score:2)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEGS [wikipedia.org]
If they can find a way to get these to the consumer market it could be cheap
and could be made more long term reliable.
Re:Show me the cheap pannels! (Score:4, Informative)
Slashdot Post Title Generator (Score:5, Funny)
my @firstwords = ("Quantum", "Solar", "Mysterious", "Ancient", "Lovecraftian");
my @secondwords = ("Dot", "Nanotube", "Lubricant", "Artifact", "Octogenarian");
my @thirdwords = ("Recipe", "Formula", "Scripture", "Rumour", "Box", "Thingy");
my $firstword = @firstwords[int(rand($#firstwords + 1))];
my $secondword = @secondwords[int(rand($#secondwords + 1))];
my $thirdword = @thirdwords[int(rand($#thirdwords + 1))];
print "$firstword $secondword $thirdword May Lead To Cheaper Solar Panels\n";
photovoltaics == vaporware? (Score:2)
Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but I only ever see incremental improvements in PV technology at the retail level. Perhaps the Slashdot editors should hold back on some of these vaporware announcements and focus more on tangible products that can make a difference now.
How about storage (Score:3, Interesting)
How do we store it?
It seems to me that we will need both a new source of energy and a way to harvest/store it. Current oil/gasoline, as a liquid or vapor, is both. That means that it works fairly independent of outside factors with the exemption of operating-temperature limitations.
With solar energy, we need it to be available not just on the nice sunny days, but the nights, and the cloudy not-so-sunny days too. In countries like Canada or other places that see a fair bit of snow, we'll need ways to properly keep the collectors unobscured (such as heated solar panels) in order to keep the snow off, and ways to clean them when they get dirty.
We're making lots of interesting progress, but there's a whole, huge industry out there if the big push away from fossil-fuels ends up with solar as a primary replacement. Some people have mentioned the oil companies being involved, but my thoughts are that they can find plenty of ways to make money in the new industry. In fact, many of the oil-producing nations would also be prime areas for solar-collection, so they might do just fine in such a new market.
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Re:How about storage (Score:4, Insightful)
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Still, greater minds than mine might figure out a solution.
Bucky Fuller (Score:2)
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Cure omnibefuddledness: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Re:How about storage (Score:4, Interesting)
Even if we come up with some super-efficient way to transfer solar energy into useful electricity, there is one barrier that will remain: How do we store it?
How about in the grid? Tear down the coal burning plants and replace them with gigantic flywheel plants. During the day, excess solar energy spins up the flywheels. During night, the flywheels dole out the stored energy to meet the nighttime demand. This system might be carefully calibrated so that very little excess energy is wasted (generated by the photovoltaics, but nowhere to store it). And any small amount that WAS left over could just be used to electrolyze water and you'd get a little hydrogen out of the deal.
This doesn't do anything to directly address petroleum oil consumption of vehicles. But it would reduce the significant portion of total CO2 output from fossil fuel electric power generation.
Vehicles inherently NEED a dense, easily mobile power source. This is because they, well, MOVE. We haven't figured out a way to store renewable energy in a vehicle with the same density and mobility. But instead of chucking the whole idea just because we can't see how to apply it to vehicles, at least we might make an impact on other levels.
Chemical Storage? (Score:2)
Re:How about storage (Score:5, Insightful)
A better solution is to develop MIT's nanotube supercapacitor power storage units, which eliminates the complications of fast-moving parts and still offer quite a lot of power storage in a unit not much bigger than an air conditioning compressor for a whole house.
Re:How about storage (Score:5, Insightful)
By pumping water uphill.
Obligatory Comment (Score:2)
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I've run the numbers for my house more than once. I have a favorable rebate program (Austin Energy) and a prime location (south facing roof with no obstructions and a greenbelt behind me so no future buildings being erected). Even with those factor
Re:Not Again! (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_tags [wikipedia.org]
Renewable Energy Certificates (the consumer version). I take my power consumption on a monthly basis, and then by RECs equal to it. True, it's not like that power is getting to my house. But my effort, along with others like me, help make renewable more financially viable. And you better believe that's the only reason it hasn't taken off like wildfire yet. Make something so that it can actually turn a buck, and people will build it.
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Massachusetts recently required that all power companies in MA had to produce a certain portion of their electricity renewably. Of course, MA also has ornerous restrictions on actually building new power plants or changing anything. The power companies could meet the requirement by buying certificates or paying the state a substantial amount in lieu of certificates or generation.
So what happened? Public Service of New
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Cape Wind backers enter 'final lap'
Friday, April 27, 2007
NEWTON -- With a critical federal review of the Cape Wind project just months away, supporters of the plan to build 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound are growing increasingly confident that the long-delayed project will finally win approval.
"I think this is the final lap," said Barbara Hill, executive director of Clean Power Now, a nonprofit group that supports the project. "We've been in a marathon and this is the final lap."
Hill's comments came after a public hearing at a Newton hotel last night on offshore alternative energy projects.
HOAs and solar (Score:2)
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Rent solar power with no installation cost http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]
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I'd prefer to see direct research, with the occasional special purpose install. There are places where solar power does make sense due to the expense of trying to hook it into the grid.
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1. Alexander the Great was forewarned.
2. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
3. Four arms is an odd number of arms to have.
4. The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
5. Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite numbers of arms!
Re:A Manhattan Project on Alternative Energy Sourc (Score:2, Insightful)
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Never gonna happen. Not good for THE ECONOMY!
I hate you. I was getting all excited, thanks a lot for busting my bubble with your realism =P
I'm reading Blue Mars and the utopian economics they try to set up there seem interesting. I seriously doubt a matter replicator a la StarTrek will ever become a reality —or something like in that boring book with the Lady's Primer nanomagical nonsense whose name eludes me (and while I'm at it I think 300 is dull so mod me into oblivion)—, but having renewable and near-free energy sources such as wi