Comments on: Sucker Purchase: Solar Panels On The Roof

By: David

David — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:34:24 +0000

Just build more nuke plants if you really want to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

By: SF2OAK

SF2OAK — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:27:27 +0000

Just back from Israel where I visited a solar power research institute, Sde Boker at Ben Gurion U. Basically EB Conservative they confirmed your assertion that PV solar panel rooftop are a waste and not sustainable.The fact is is that without subsidies the PV rooftop solar panels make little sense- though they have certain useful applications such as off the grid. What they did show us was a parabolic concentrator that is inexpensive b/c mirrors cost much less than silicon (and they do use PV just a much smaller amount.) Anyway again you have showed a superior understanding than some of the those who we entrust our tax $ to.

By: mark ross

mark ross — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:32:39 +0000

This is the same reason hybrid automobiles are so expensive. When I was an environmental journalist in the early ’70s, I interviewed a physicist at Cal Tech. He was all gung ho about 3M developing photovoltaic material much like Scoth Tape. Cheap and easy to work with. Much of the “green” technology being hyped today has evolved very little over the past 30 years. I was just at a get-together with some major enviro players and I got some to agree with me that most of these ideas are just plain too expensive. The “thinking like capitalists” part is particularly right on.