This is a very exciting time for renewable energy, as we all know. I wanted to re-post this story I saw on digg mostly because I’m always excited to see more people entering the market. And when the big name players enter the market, that’s even better. This is the economies of scale I mention in my article on powering a house with DC power.
Now let’s step back a minute here. $50 million dollars isn’t that much. I know that sounds absurd, but I used to work in a fab that cost $5B (maybe, could be more by the end). I am not familiar with the actual processing of solar cells, but I know that any kind of silicon is not cheap. But that’s why we need more and more big players to get in on it.
I think that in this case, Intel and Big Blue (IBM) are doing it somewhat selfishly and cautiously. Like I said, they’re really just dipping a toe in with the $50M, but maybe they will use the tech for some of their own power generation.
Overall though, I could not be happier to see some corporate conglomerates trying to take over and suck money from us consumers. The more people in the market and the more competition that exists, the lower the pricing. I say, in this case the more corporations, the better!!!
June 30th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
[...] Stress the fact that they can change the world. [...]
July 7th, 2008 at 11:11 am
[...] energy come into focus in the real world, we need to keep an eye on the economics of it all. You know the big players are. Big attention means big money and as you can see, lots of people want a slice of the [...]
July 29th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
[...] energy, specifically solar, has begun taking the KISS principle to a new level. Solar panels are not yet cheap or abundant as we want and need them to be. But mirrors are! So why not take a really simple method of [...]
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:40 am
[...] there are geothermal house heating solutions and communities with steam pipes going to houses and solar thermal towers and on and on. For most people though, those things are not an option for an [...]