Nanosolar solar panel printer
Regular readers may remember previous posts on this California company. They have proprietary technology that I believe will easily revolutionize the municipal and home energy industries. Basically, they print a solar panel onto a sheet of metal film, using less than tenth the materials of a regular panel.
I've been keeping up with them occasionally by reading news articles and their web site, and I was reminded to check in on them yesterday when Aimee and I visited two Home Depots in one day - the old Bangor Home Depot, which was having a moving sale - who could resist $25 a cart-load? - and of course the new one, where shopping was surprisingly muted for a holiday weekend because everyone was over at the old one, filling their boots, stealing from each other's carts, fighting over stuff they didn't really want, and generally doing the strange things people do at sales.
(We also had to go drop her computer off at Best Buy for a $350 refit. There goes 29.16% of our economic stimulus package, thanks to the authors of the Cyberlog-X virus, a nasty piece of work created by nasty people. A special message to virus breeders everywhere: My wife thinks you are the lowest form of life. She's a marine biologist, so she knows her slime. And you are that slime.)
Anyway, the power of retail to shape culture has to be properly appreciated, and it often isn't by folks in the sustainability business. Here in Maine, too many sustainability buffs are pure-as-snow back-to-the-landers. Aimee and I are definitely back-to-the-landers, but we're never pure. In fact, I get thoroughly annoyed by the search for purity wherever I find it, and generally feel an overwhelming, even obsessive, need to fight it on every front. Think of a cross between Lewis Black and Amory Lovins.
(I plowed a whole ten pound bag of chemical fertilizer into my otherwise fertilizer-and-pesticide-free garden last year just so it could never quite be organic for a few more years. It was worth every dollar and every minute. Eat manure, organic purists everywhere. We'll never be like you!)
Anyway, to cut a long rambling post short, on that Great Day when you can go down to your Home Depot and visit the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency aisle (it already exists for Harry Potter fans - aisle 28 7/8), and select from a large choice of household energy efficiency and renewable energy products: inverters, wind turbines, solar panels, laser thermometers, insulation packages, triple-glazed windows, etc, etc, then we will finally be on track to combating climate change with a force that is equal to the challenge.
American Retail. Your friendly sustainability giant.
I can hear the howls of derision from sustainability purists everywhere. Consumption, they will say, is our enemy, not our friend.
But everyone must consume, or die. And it isn't so much consumption that is our enemy, but our culture of wasteful over-consumption. To change culture, use a cultural weapon. To change a culture of wasteful over-consumption, use suppliers of consumer goods.
What if, instead of peddling fixtures, fittings, and building materials for the current average American dream home of 4,500 wasteful oil-heated, 200 amp, regular-grid-supplied square feet, American retailers sold fixtures, fittings and building materials for the new super efficient, 1,500 square foot or less, solar-and-wind-powered, super-insulated average American cottage home? Park a Prius, or better yet a Tesla sedan, outside this new average American home, and you have 40% of the climate emissions reduction problem solved right there.
I know lots of purist sustainability buffs who still have incandescent light bulbs and oil heat. They haven't quite made the connection yet.
What I got out of my Nanosolar update was the sly hint they dropped on their blog about creating a household scale product. At today's high oil prices, with their solar panel-printing technology, Nanosolar can probably turn out a household scale solar product at about half to one quarter the cost per watt of current products, increase total volume by an order of magnitude, and still make a huge profit. It's really just a matter of changing the configuration of the printing so it prints a different circuit, one that produces a lower voltage suitable for today's grid-tie inverters.
I am so looking forward to buying some of this stuff.
To sell this product, they're going to need that Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency aisle at Home Depot, Lowes, True Value Hardware, and all other good box store and franchise vendors of home improvement products nation- and world-wide.
Aisle 28 and 7/8. And a smidgin (in home improvement-speak). A hair. A gnat's...
If you're tired of this silly measuring/Harry Potter analogy, go to the Nanosolar blog here...
No comments:
Post a Comment