This is encouraging, but what if you don't own a home? I hope this will also be available to those in this country who wish to use solar power but don't own the home they live in. I wonder too... could these strips eventually be put on cars or even airplanes? Now that would be something to see. For me, the bolded text below is really most important because developing countries need solar energy because it is clean and it is in non renewable supply. It is simply the most cost effective, safe, and clean way for these countries to get power. I would even hope to see water pumps run by solar power in areas of the world where it is hard to have electricity.
I only hope this comes in time to mitigate further damage to our atmosphere and that other industries are open to it. But again, this is encouraging, and I see the only way for the price of solar to keep parity with oil and gas and hopefully one day beat them out is to see a greater demand for it, but that won't come without information and persuading people that it is OK to look to the future because solar power is cleaner and safer.
Of course, people out to make money from this (and let's face it, profit will also be key here as well) may not see it that way should demand be truly overwhelming, so again, I think we will need to wait and see how this plays out. Such a shame too. This should have been done twenty years ago. I have always said that solar was the wave of the future, and the future is now. I truly hope to see this take flight on a massive scale.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/02/19/ccview19.xmlMonday view: Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gas by half
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 11:31pm GMT 18/02/2007
Within five years, solar power will be cheap enough to compete with carbon-generated electricity, even in Britain, Scandinavia or upper Siberia. In a decade, the cost may have fallen so dramatically that solar cells could undercut oil, gas, coal and nuclear power by up to half. Technology is leaping ahead of a stale political debate about fossil fuels.
Anil Sethi, the chief executive of the Swiss start-up company Flisom, says he looks forward to the day - not so far off - when entire cities in America and Europe generate their heating, lighting and air-conditioning needs from solar films on buildings with enough left over to feed a surplus back into the grid. The secret? Mr Sethi lovingly cradles a piece of dark polymer foil, as thin a sheet of paper. It is 200 times lighter than the normal glass-based solar materials, which require expensive substrates and roof support. Indeed, it is so light it can be stuck to the sides of buildings.
Rather than being manufactured laboriously piece by piece, it can be mass-produced in cheap rolls like packaging - in any colour. The "tipping point" will arrive when the capital cost of solar power falls below $1 (51p) per watt, roughly the cost of carbon power. We are not there yet. The best options today vary from $3 to $4 per watt - down from $100 in the late 1970s. Mr Sethi believes his product will cut the cost to 80 cents per watt within five years, and 50 cents in a decade.
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"The beauty of this is that you can use it in rural areas of India without having to lay down power lines or truck in fuel." Villages across Asia and Africa that have never seen electricity may soon leapfrog directly into the solar age, replicating the jump to mobile phones seen in countries that never had a network of fixed lines. As a by-product, India's rural poor will stop blanketing the subcontinent with soot from tens of millions of open stoves.More at the link.
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