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NEWS ARTICLE: Bright Prospects - Energy: Solar
power is in the ascendant.
The
Economist
Publication Date: 03/10/07
Quote: "Last year Microsoft outfitted its campus
in Silicon Valley with a solar system from SunPower,
a local company that makes high-efficiency (and, some
say, the world's best-looking) solar panels. A few months
later Microsoft's arch-rival, Google, began building
something on an even
grander scale of this may yet be topped by Wal-Mart...In
just one hour the Earth receives more energy from the
sun than human beings consume during an entire year.
According to America's Department of Energy, solar
panels could, if placed on about 0.5% of the country's
mainland landmass, provide for all of its current electricity
needs... Besides efficiency, durability and reliability,
the most important requirement for solar cells was how
much power they could generate per unit of weight. Cost
considerations, at that time, were far less important.
Solar cells back then were made much like jewelry, recalls
Bill Yerkes, an industry veteran who is now the chief
technologist at Solaicx, a start-up dedicated to reducing
the price of silicon wafers for the solar industry."
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