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Originally posted by ANNED
They will not be down to $0.10 per watt 20 years from now.
This is another pipe dream by someone that does not know how things work in the market place.
First no company could make enough to meet supply at that cost.
then demand would be so great that just supply and demand would keep the cost well above $0.10 per watt.
The cells are so flexible that dense arrays of them can be rolled tightly around a pencil. The technology has been licensed to Semprius, a semiconductor company in Durham, N.C., that expects to begin a pilot project making solar modules in about a year. This approach offers a unique strategy for making highly efficient, flexible solar cells for large-scale production, said Ali Javey, an electrical engineer and assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who co-wrote a review of the work for the journal Nature Materials.
The Powerbrella™ incorporates the lightweight Power Plastic® on the surface of SKYShades’ retractable and fixed architectural SKYbrella. Designed for use at outdoor venues such as cafés and restaurants, hotel and resort swimming pools and outdoor lounges, the Powerbrella™ provides customers coverage from the sun while that energy is used to power their laptop, cell phone or other portable devices.
The arrival of the first significant quantity of the thin film will also allow SKYShades to build its first prototype parking structure to be announced soon. Eventually, the combination of the thin film Power Plastic® and the tension-membrane shade structures developed by SKYShades will allow many different outdoor locations, including covered car parking areas, car washes, stadiums, amphitheatres and retro-fitted roofs to capture power that could be stored for use or sold back into the electrical grid.
Powerbrella™ is expected to be available for purchase by the third quarter of 2009.
Commercial production of Lowell, Mass.-based Konarka’s branded organic photovoltaic “Power Plastic” will begin in earnest in the first quarter of 2009, the company tells us. Konarka’s special sauce lies with its organic solar panels, which it says are able to absorb a much wider spectrum of light than other thin films, allowing for higher efficiencies and even indoor applications. Now that it’s manufacturing product, Konarka joins Nanosolar, the poster child of thin-film solar that started inking panels on a 1-gigawatt, $1.65-million solar printer late last year.
Originally posted by getreadyalready
... even the most conservative say by 2400 we will consume more energy per day than what strikes us from the sun even at 100% conversion. Combining all the Fossil Fuels, all the Sun's energy striking earth, all the geothermal energy from deep earth, etc......combined, will not be enough to sustain our greedy appetite for power within a few centuries.
The amount of energy captured by the Earth each second = 1.8 x 1017 Joules/second.
To put these numbers into a perspective with highly practical relevance, on average, humankind is only using about 1/10,000 of that amount for its total energy consumption.