Solar in the News

NY Times article Silicon Valley Starts to Turn Its Face to the Sun

Key Points

• Biggest market Silicon Valley has looked into per T.J. Rodgers
  
• Lots of pipe dreams over the years in Solar per one quote.
• Consumer behavior may be hard to change to accept Solar
• Lots of new ideas for Solar.
• Pipeline for innovation in Solar is short term focused, so innovation may go dry in 10 years.
• Fear of another Solar Bubble.
  

Analysis:
The Energy Crises where energy costs sky rocketed due to the Oil Embargo in 1973 and 1979 Iran Crises. After Jimmy Carter was President, the solar industry crashed when energy became cheap again reducing the investment in Solar. The cost of solar has been continually coming down each year, and now added to the high cost of energy is the threat of global warming. With the increased wealth of the world (India and China), more and more energy will be used. The amount of excess oil production available has decreased, so the price of energy will probably continual to be high (a deep recession would change this). The funding in Solar is helping innovation and the question is how fast will the price drop. Demand has been increasing, and for some recent years was faster than production was expanded.