This is what I've been talking about! License to Print Money

Solarmer understands my vision! At least that is how it seems when I read this blog post about them from Cringely.com.

Basically they are aiming to bring down the cost of solar technology their aim is to create

very large plastic solar cells that are 10 percent efficient, have a 10-year service life, and can be manufactured for $0.50 per watt or less. 

This is exactly the sort of thing that I have been saying we need for years, who cares if your solar panel is 50% efficient if no one can afford to install it. The idea of mass producing lower cost and lower efficiency cells is perfect. I picture a product,

SolarBond!


Thats right SolarBond, now the idea will be immediately apparent to all the Australian readers that are familiar with the ColourBond range of products from BlueScope Steel, but for everyone else out there ColourBond is a type corrugated steel roofing material that is relatively low cost and high quality and more recently with the production of Thermatech they are moving towards environmentally friendlier materials.

So the idea is this, if they could make "SolarBond" and even if it say cost 50% more than the equivalent non-energy producing roofing material and was only like 5% efficient then it could have a big impact. I'd happily pay that premium (still significantly less than the cost of dedicated solar panels) and have the knowledge that I was contributing a little to the energy production needs.

Now, the idea with installing this type of roof is not really to make your money back by selling it back to the grid while you're at work but it is one benefit. The main reason that I see (and this may be a hard sell for some people out there) is that by every new house having these panels we can significantly reduce the peak load fluctuations that these new houses cause. The single biggest unpredictable load on power networks now is residential air conditioning systems.

Now if most of these houses that have air conditioners also have "SolarBond" roofs then at the very time they are sucking in gobs of energy to run the air conditioners they will also be generating at their peak capacity. This makes it a whole lot easier to meet the increase in demand that they them selves are causing and by meeting this demand we can alleviate the need to adjust power outputs from stations that do not cope with change well, such as coal fired stations. This means that we can run them at better levels of efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of the energy usage.