[ExI] Inkjet printing could change the face of solar energy industry

[Samantha Atkins]

On 07/01/2011 12:29 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote:

<snipped until something I wanted to comment on..>

> Most installations are in invididual houses. Unless you live in a
> renewable-disadvantaged country like the US.
>

We aren't renewable disadvantaged.  We just don't do stupid things (well 
we come close) like stopping the use of the safest form of mainline 
power to date (nuclear).  Although we might as well since it takes 
decades to license a new plant that uses more efficient and scads safer 
and cleaner nuclear technologies.

>> capital up front, and that is it's weakness when people are mostly
>> living from paycheck to paycheck and already up to their eyeballs in
>> debt.
> How did these people get to afford the houses they live in in
> the first place? Oh, wait, they didn't. They got suckered in
> by the bubble. Guess what, the bubble is not global. It might
> have hit US, Spain and Canada, and a few other places. But world-wide,
> it's an anomaly.

Nope. Japan had a much worse bubble that crashed its 80s "miracle" and 
has had the country stagnating with 200% of GDP national debt since.  
The main thing that kept it from being worse is that Japan has a very 
favorable balance of trade.  Post quake this may no longer be the 
case.   China is in a major housing bubble about to pop very very messily.

>
>> Nanosolar is selling most of their panels these days to facilities in
>> Germany. In a way, this is fair. Germany subsidizes the development of
> I know, I've tried to buy some, and you can't get any as end user.
> Same thing with Fist Solar. It will take a while until the overheated
> market cools off enough that availability and prices are adequate.
>
>> solar energy, while we in the US subsidize Germany's security through
>> military spending. I doubt they are on the same order of magnitude of
> Dog knows the failing empire is doing everything to piss off the entire
> world and get a half million of Manhattanites fried to a crisp by a nuke,
> but I don't know what this autoexsanguination has to do anything with
> anything else than people endorsing instituionalized insanity, bless
> their black little hearts. W0Of.

Subsidizing anything is a mis-allocation of resources by definition that 
is very likely to come back to chew a leg off.  If solar was really good 
enough to affordably power my home I would do it in a heartbeat.  It 
isn't - yet.   The US produces half the oil it consumes.  It wouldn't 
take that much to move the other half to something else better when it 
truly is better without lets pretend games of subsidies, free panels, 
and what-ifs with missing technologies.

- samantha