Burn, baby, burn
President Jimmy Carter installed Solar panels on top of the White House... One of incoming President Reagan's first actions was to take these panels down.
New advancements in solar cell technology make solar energy a viable alternative to fossil fuels.
At Colorado State University, researchers have devised new production methods for solar panels...the new panels are about 10% the cost of the previous ones... production is much faster than prior solar cell production capabilities.
The use of new materials to coat solar cells can increase efficiency up to 60% ( in 1954, 4% efficiency was deemed state-of-the-art). Massey University in New Zealand coats photo-voltaic cells with synthetic dyes to achieve the new result.
New designs for reflectors, plus the new coating materials and new nanotech spray- on plastic solar cell coatings... enable solar cells to collect radiation from the invisible infrared spectrum ( before, they could only collect energy for the visible light emitted by the sun). This means that collection can occur from dawn to dust, and on cloudy days.
We have entered a new era in solar energy use potential- a fivefold increase in the energy we could collect and use has happened- just in the last two or three years. What once cost $3 a watt to produce now costs about 27 cents. Solar energy is now (much?) cheaper than using coal or oil.
( Boeing-Spectrolab, funded by the Department of Energy, is one company leading the way. Part of what I have just talked about can be found in a article in the the Jan. 14, 2005 'National Geographic News'...Slashdot magazine has several good stories too- punch in anything about solar energy on their site...)
New advancements in solar cell technology make solar energy a viable alternative to fossil fuels.
At Colorado State University, researchers have devised new production methods for solar panels...the new panels are about 10% the cost of the previous ones... production is much faster than prior solar cell production capabilities.
The use of new materials to coat solar cells can increase efficiency up to 60% ( in 1954, 4% efficiency was deemed state-of-the-art). Massey University in New Zealand coats photo-voltaic cells with synthetic dyes to achieve the new result.
New designs for reflectors, plus the new coating materials and new nanotech spray- on plastic solar cell coatings... enable solar cells to collect radiation from the invisible infrared spectrum ( before, they could only collect energy for the visible light emitted by the sun). This means that collection can occur from dawn to dust, and on cloudy days.
We have entered a new era in solar energy use potential- a fivefold increase in the energy we could collect and use has happened- just in the last two or three years. What once cost $3 a watt to produce now costs about 27 cents. Solar energy is now (much?) cheaper than using coal or oil.
( Boeing-Spectrolab, funded by the Department of Energy, is one company leading the way. Part of what I have just talked about can be found in a article in the the Jan. 14, 2005 'National Geographic News'...Slashdot magazine has several good stories too- punch in anything about solar energy on their site...)
posted by Zero at 10:20 AM
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