Thursday, May 3, 2007

Aussies make solar power cell breakthrough

Aussies make solar power cell breakthrough


Once again, the solar revolution is coming. It won't arrive on exactly the schedule we're predicting, and it won't look exactly the way we envision it, but it is coming, and it will be the biggest game-changer in energy technology during the lifetime of anyone reading this.

Think that's an exaggeration? Tell me what you think will happen when the cost of solar power gets cheap enough that in the mind of mainstream decision makers it goes from a "nice, but too expensive technology" to a "no brainer". Once every household and business and school and house of worship and every other group that owns a building with a roof in the US wants a set of solar PV panels, what happens to centralized electricity generation? What happens to emissions from fossil fuels burned to generate electricity? What happens to the starry-eyed plans for a nuclear renaissance? How much easier does it become for people to afford a plug-in hybrid or electric car, once they know they'll be ble to buy a large portion of their electricity consumption at a low, fixed cost for years? And once the owners of those tens of millions of rooftops start clamoring for solar panels and people to install them, what kind of job creation will it trigger?

Does any of that sound like a "revolution" to you?

Cost of Energy Blog

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