PrefBlog

There good news on photovoltaics:

A technology that would enable low-cost, high efficiency solar cells to be made from virtually any semiconductor material has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley. This technology opens the door to the use of plentiful, relatively inexpensive semiconductors, such as the promising metal oxides, sulfides and phosphides, that have been considered unsuitable for solar cells because it is so difficult to tailor their properties by chemical means.
…
Photovoltaics are the ultimate source of clean, green and renewable energy but today’s technologies utilize relatively scarce and expensive semiconductors, such as large crystals of silicon, or thin films of cadmium telluride or copper indium gallium selenide, that are tricky or expensive to fabricate into devices.

“Solar technologies today face a cost-to-efficiency trade-off that has slowed widespread implementation,” Zettl says. “Our technology reduces the cost and complexity of fabricating solar cells and thereby provides what could be an important cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternative that would accelerate the usage of solar energy.”

Academic research in the States provides the skills, the patents and the profits. The research wasn’t done in Ontario because we blew the budget installing shoddy and expensive technology. Yay us.

Sorry folks – the tables will be delayed. On the bright side, I’ve just finished a major project, so things are looking up!

Update, 2012-08-24:

This entry was posted on Friday, August 24th, 2012 at 2:48 am and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.