February 19, 2009 | Graham

The sun still shines downunder.



You frequently hear complaints that with all our sunlight Australia ought to be a leader in solar energy. They reached a crescendo about the time that Dr Shi Zhengrong was revealed as a billionaire after training at the University of Sydney and taking his solar research home to China where he made his fortune.
Of course the problem for any country is that you can only back so many projects, and just because one that got away has made a lot of money it doesn’t mean that you should have backed it, let alone every project that is put up.
So I was interested to see the CSIRO announcement that they are starting a print-run of solar cells using a similar process to that used to print dollar bills.
This sounds like the sort of project that could easily make billions of dollars if it is successful. Odds of that sound good, paritcularly as the researchers are 6 months ahead of schedule already.



Posted by Graham at 10:03 am | Comments (4) |
Filed under: Environment

4 Comments

  1. http://talbyv.blogspot.com/2009/02/climate-sceptics-party-world-first.html
    Are you aware of the new Climate Sceptics party, Graham?
    The president is Leon Ashby,the one who filmed you at the AEF conference last year. I sat behind you for most of the conference.
    Whether you agree or disagree with Man-made Global warming, Australia will be better off without a Carbon Tax/ETS. The Sceptics oppose any form of Carbon (Dioxide) Tax.
    The fact that the IPCC/ GW Alarmists are Flat-Earthers, not believing (or not wanting to believe) the latest science, such as warming records that are declining, glaciers are advancing, ice-caps are growing and record northern hemisphere low temperatures to say nothing of CO2. Scientists have shown from the Vostok and Greenland Ice-Core samples that WARMING PRECEDES CO2 RISES.
    Flat-earther followers of the 38 IPCC scientists take note.
    So Graham, the truth is here:
    http://www.climatesceptics.com.au/
    Thanks
    Taluka

    Comment by Taluka Byvalnian — February 19, 2009 @ 10:18 pm

  2. Graham,
    Fascinating. Any application in the boating/marine industry would be quite revolutionary.
    Weight is everything on oceangoing vessels.
    The very latest technoloy is for hybrid diesel/electric motors. These are still quite heavy, require large battery banks and large heavy solar panels.
    Rolling out of banknotes is a common activity on boats. I can just see my sails and decks covered in plastic solar cells.
    Thanks for the information. I’m about to install one of the new generation motors … now I’ll wait.

    Comment by Keith — February 20, 2009 @ 2:23 pm

  3. Well,they should be making standard roofing panels with integrated solar panels that are easily interchangable.If one fails it then can be replaced at minimal cost.There needs to be more effort and research in this area.Reliability will be the key,since people will not use new technology if it doesn’t perform.

    Comment by Arjay — February 20, 2009 @ 4:11 pm

  4. Like most scientific announcements– years ahead of its reality.
    Still, it may keep some funding going to the cash-strapped CSIRO.

    Comment by michael angel — February 23, 2009 @ 5:37 pm

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