Solar Decathlon 2007: Future Lifestyles Defined

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Solar Decathlon 2007

This is a pretty interesting competition, the university I attend was part of it.

I consider this competition very important for the future, this houses would define future life styles. I think we need to find new viable source of energy because of Global warming and even if Global Warming is not real, fossil fuels won't last for the amount of energy consumption that we, as hummanity, are demmanding.

Maybe now the cost of the solar cells wouldn't save you a lot of money as we want (maybe we would loss money), but I hope in a future the Voltage/Area increase and the price go down.

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Photovoltaics are dropping slowly but steadily in price. The next generation of thin films (in the works) will be made through highly efficient mass-production.

Our local Solar experts (Solar Wrights) believe that the production payback time (the time required for the PV to have "saved" the same amount of energy that went into making it) will drop from 2 years (where is is now) to 8 months.

The consumer cost payback is currently between 8 and 12 years (tied into grid with no batteries) and this time is expected to get down to 4 to 6 years. That's taking into account the lower prices for PV and the rising prices of electricity.

The first step is to start making houses that require less energy in the first place. These competitions are just the thing. What's better than getting teams from universities across the globe working on the same problem?
 
It's too bad that even the money's lost to corruption in Iraq couldn't be spent on solar development.

"He estimated that corruption has cost Iraq as much as 18 billion dollars and has helped spawn sectarian militias, hampered political reconciliation and affected Iraq's oil industry."

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/64695/


--and I imagine that estimate is real low
 
rewebster said:
It's too bad that even the money's lost to corruption in Iraq couldn't be spent on solar development.

"He estimated that corruption has cost Iraq as much as 18 billion dollars and has helped spawn sectarian militias, hampered political reconciliation and affected Iraq's oil industry."

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/64695/


--and I imagine that estimate is real low

I think that a lot of politicians... a lot of peoples thinks only on today and forgot about tomorrow. They don't think that tomorrow energy hunger would be bigger than we can satisfy.

Something is for sure, oil industries won't be happy if those 18billions dollars were inverted on solar development.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapata_Corporation