Matt's Comments

Nice place!

I'm curious why you didn't use some sort of geo pump to help cool / heat the house. I've read elsewhere that this is a very cost effective way to use the deep earth to heat a bit on cool days, and to cool a bit on hot days.

I like that poster's comment about 500,000+ cost of the home. If he only realized what you get in the bay area for 500,000+. One bedroom apartment in the middle of crack town!

Matt

Hi Chris --

I'm also curious if you had to clear trees to make room for your house or to allow for the sun to hit the panels.

This is a problem they are realizing now with biofuels - if you clear land for the biofuels you are doing more harm than if you would just be using petroleum. I wonder if the same can be said for new homes with solar panels, or homes that clear trees so that solar panels can better see the sun?

Matt

don't forget v2g for storing excess energy / providing it back to the grid.

Also storing up hydrogen / converting it to other gaseous or liquid fuels.

Make hay when the sun shines!

We can count on one thing for sure with Reid it seems.

Pork! Yummie!

I can't figure out who to contact about this project -- its just a bunch of directors.

I'd like to suggest they look at vanadium flow batteries & V2G tech as a way to solidify the renewable intermittency.

Good job GE! Now bring on the 5 MW deep offshore turbines.

And step up the lobbying pressure. You are a US company that is making stuff & making money. What a combo!

Matt

I was reading that Google puts over 200 million per quarter towards R&D. I guess that is alot of engineers salaries.

Still... wouldn't it be great if Google started to put some of that cash towards low cost solar cell & energy storage research?

I bet with their brains & some of their cash, they could go a long way to making cheap solar energy a reality.

In doing so, they'd be greatly expanding their reach into the developing world... get more people online with solar energy & whalla... more customers!

Most of the industrialized world SHOULD like this idea... except of course for a certain group of oil / coal folks.

Matt

Why is the word "welfare" a word with a bad connotation?

It means doing good for people.

Why is that wrong?

Wake up Jim.

North Korea is building a nuclear bomb. Why? Bush didn't wan't to talk to them.. and called
them part of the "axis of evil". Hmm. we invaded and destroyed one of those axis countries. Iraq.

If you were a small, poor country & the US might be targeting you soon. What would you do? Build a nuke? Or get bombed?

We are spending 1.5 billion a week in Iraq.

What does this buy us?

Nearly 3000 Young US soldiers are dead. 650,000 Iraqis are dead.

Al Qaeda membership is up 20x.

There are more people that hate the US in the world than ever before.


3 billion for solar cells I'd say is a great move... Not just for US jobs the US economy... but for the future of peace & stability.

it moves us away from this stupid fight over resources like oil & lets us be free... powered by the sun.

Matt

Gene... your math is just plain wrong.

Installation amounts to about $1 - 1.5 / installed Watt.

The price of solar is coming down all the time.

Installed solar panels will pay themselves off within 7-10 years & provide free electricity for 15-20 years beyond that.


Plus, you've got other benefits:

No pollution compared with nuclear power (umm where do you put all that radioactive garbage) and coal (got mercury anyone? destroyed earth.. underground coal fires)

So if you factor in those costs... solar starts to look very cheap.

Plus... with solar, you don't need as much grid infrastructure. No need to move the power to your house, when the power is already on your house.

Matt

How about .25% now (of the US budget) or about 4 or 5 billion dollars right now put towards Solar cell & energy storage R&D.

Matt

According to Peter Lewis of Caltech.... the only real option for powering our planet is solar power.

Nuclear is expensive and dangerous (proliferation, cleanup, waste aren't taken into account in the $/kwh pricing)

We must really love our world --- investing a whole $13 million to its future.

I'm totally into this idea too. Wind maps show that there is increadibly good wind right off shore from our major population areas like LA & NYC.

Perhaps their could be an offshore "grid", bringing power into the coast only so often as to make it economic.

Sort of depresses me though that it seems our efforts & Europe's efforts are totally separate.

Here, at MIT, a 5MW is "experimental"

Meanwhile, in Europe, they are installing 5MW off the coast of Scotland, into a wind farm.

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=45877

I wonder how long it will take for nations to realize that the only way to beat global warming is to work together?

Matt

I agree.. the governement & anyone who puts money into solar cell / advanced battery / deep offshore windfarm technologies stands to gain alot.

I've been reading a bit lately about dye sensitized solar cells - made from TiO2. They sound like they could be made very inexpensively.

Can someone suggest a good, up to date book that explains various solar cell technologies at the technical level of a good Scientific American article.

Thanks
Matt

Gene -

You are right about solar power. California's lead for a million rooftops is awesome news. Hopefully solar cells (as well as inverters) will get cheap soon.

There is so much we could be doing right now. The US Govt. should be subsidizing wind turbine manufacturers in this country now. We need lots of turbines & it doesn't make sense to buy them from Germany & Denmark. Europe's long time subsidies of wind have made them years ahead of us in manufacturing base required. We can leapfrog them by coming up with cheap ways to deploy wind into deeper offshore areas.

Folks, lets not discount the idea of cheap batteries / ultra - capacitors. A city of a million plugged in cars is one great big distributed, multiply redundant buffer / storage mechanism for itermittent wind / solar production. V2G -- its a very good idea.

Matt

The answer to this question is that the USA & Europe & Japan needs to come together to form an international research effort to create an ultra cheap, highly reusable battery technology -- something like the carbon nanotube enhanced ultracapacitor MIT LEES lab is working on.

The Iter budget is about 10 billion. I think this is worth at least that.

At the same time, a team can be created to find an ultra cheap solar cell.

With these two things mass produced everywhere, our energy & climate issues will be history.