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Nanosolar - Finally clean and cheap solar energy

Posted 27th December, 2007 in by Federico Pistono

Now now... can somebody tell why solar energy did not become ubiquitous in the World? The answer is very simple, it's expensive. Typically a house needs 3KW per hour of energy, and to achieve that with solar panels you would spend about $40,000 $34,000. Even with the 55% incentive that the Italian government gives you it's nearly impossible to consider it affordable for an average family. The rest of the world offers has slightly similar conditions, some a bit better and some other a bit worse.

The bottom line is: Solar power is way too expensive to be used at a large scale. A typical installation will need circa 20 12 years to recover the cost and start saving money. That of course does not take into account the whole picture, in fact the entropy of the system dramatically decreases, having no oil, no coal, no nuclear waste, no CO2 emissions and so on you are actually living sustainably as far as the environment is concerned.

Links

Posted 29th November, 2007 in by Federico Pistono

List of things worth mentioning, in no particular order.

Awesome YouTube channels

  • CGP Grey - incredible reason and clarity, great sense of humour, debunking misconceptions like no others.
  • potholer54 - science and reason FTW, debunking creationists, climate deniers, and generally idiots with painstaking patience and incredible irony.

Films worth watching

Science and technology sites I regularly read

Web comics I enjoy

  • xkcd - a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Basically a geek bible. My universe.
  • Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: excellent irony about science and society.
  • Dresden Codak - a celebration of science, death and human folly. Obligatory read if you read any of Kurzweil's works, and have a general knowledge of physics and accelerating change.
  • The Oatmeal - stinking, rancid awesomeness.
  • Dilbert - life in a cubicle.
  • PHD Comics - the life a of typical researcher. I can confirm, it's all true!
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