The Future of Power

Finally, some good news!
Nanosolar is a company that is using Nano-Technology to create a new kind of solar cell that, if their claims are accurate, could create an entirely new, distributed, energy infrastructure in this country and beyond. Their solar cells are about 10% the cost of traditional solar. Traditional solar costs can't compete with fossil fuel and hydro energy sources but Nanosolar's cells hold the promise of slashing those costs but 90%. I haven't been able to locate any information on the effeciency of these cells but, even at half the efficiency of traditional silicon cells you would be talking about a major decrease in cost/kilowatt.

One day, perhaps, we will all produce solar energy on our rooftops and feed the grid in a distributed fasion. If this were realized then fossil fuel electricity production would be needed only as a supplemental energy source and the sun would be the primary energy producer.