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Yes, my link http://www.qcimarketing.com/ is redirected to http://www.jointhesolution.com/olero/. QCIMarketing.com is easier for people to remember, so that's how I have it setup (I don't believe I'm the only one who uses a redirect on the Internet, do you?). Unseemly? You're kidding, right? If you really feel that way, then I'm sure the Fortune 1000 "seems" "unseemly" to you (and your miniscule "anti-redirect" group) then, too, right?

I'm sure you can understand these economics: Our costs are about half of our competition due to many reasons, supply-chain integration being one of them.

Who says we won't be selling them in the future? Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions...

As far as your comment on our website design, you'll have to forgive me, I'm not sure of the point you are making here (sounds like a personal web design preference to me), but we do have 3 main web functions: corporate information (http://www.citizenre.com/), customer information (http://www.jointhesolution.com/olero/), and associate information (http://www.powur.com/olero/).

Hope that helps explain things a little better for you.

PJ

http://www.qcimarketing.com/

Near as I can figure, this:

http://www.powur.com/web/index.php?p=support

is where they plan on making their money. Sure, you don't have to pay them to be an associate, but you had better purchase their training materials if you want to keep your associate status. They don't even need a factory or a working system.

The whole "we take on huge amounts of capital risk for you" makes it a pretty hard pill to swallow, and the fact that you have to go through citenzenre.com and citenzenre.net to get to their actual 'associate relations' site doesn't say anything particularly positive to me about their intentions.

I've signed up for a system, so yes I'll be paying the company money. But, my rate is 9.8 cents per kWh and I avoid a 2.1 cents per kWh distribution charge so I actually start out save about 17% from what I'd pay the utility.
In my sales activity, I have not been asked to pay anything. I have advertized a little, but this has payed for itself in terms of sales.
It is true, that those who work longer at this will make more money than those who work for a shorter period. In the bible story, all the laborers are payed the same if they came early or late, but this is to make a point. It is more usual to make more if you work more. I've also put some effort into training other people and I think I may profit from this if I've been any good at it. You can see the compensation at http://www.powur.com/mdsolar.

Well, distributed power is fundementally more robust than centralized power (in many more senses than that intended here) and so roof top installation beats any gains that might be had from say a south west US deployment, or a space deployment. Had we had decentralized solar power after Katrina or Rita, the recovery logistics would have been much more managable owing to surviving refridgeration. The population displacement would have been much less.

In terms of safety, anti-islanding circuits cover the main hazard that is not already present with electric power.

I think you are using an average value for solar power at the bottom of the atmosphere, 1000 W/m^2 is closer for noon and averaging including night is about 250 W/m^2 at the cloud deck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insolation. Our panels are about 15% efficient. Our production capacity is 500 MW peak/plant/year. Repacing existing generation capacity in a decade requires 200 fabrication plants, a tidy number but not so bad if you consider the world market as well and give 4 decades of use per plant before needing to replace installed stock.

Again, it is important to realize that old panels are worth $25/kilo as scrap. They are not waste but rather fall rather neatly into the cradle-to-cradle paradigm. An old solar panel is just a cheaper way to get a new solar panel since it is already low impurity silicon.

Silicon fabrication does involve some chemical processes that need to be looked at. However, much of this work has already been done by the Rocky Mountain Institute in collaboration with Texas Instruments. It's under control. Send me an email and I'll send you the technical conference call number and login for next Wed. an you can listen in. It is amazing what scale does for panel production, well to be expected, but you still get surprised when the results are actually there.
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Contact: http://www.powur.com/mdsolar

The national labs generally support training on the job, so if you come in as a programer, you can get a second degree and move over to a science position. Look at the National Academies website http://www.national-academies.org/ to find mentor contacts in a field that interests you. Career Links is down and to the right.
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Or, convert everyone to solar http://www.powur.com/mdsolar

I really think we're at the point of arguing about which method of suicide is best, and that is not my point. There is still a little breathing space before this link hits the slashdot front page http://www.ipcc.ch/. So, I'll just say right now, read http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/ for a bit.

From a technical call two nights ago I can say that cost per peak W for solar has hit $1.53 (fabrication not installation) and the time to pay back the energy to produce the panels is now about 1 year. This is cheap! Worrying about clean up for solar strikes me as a little silly. A defunct solar panel is defunct owing to lattice disorder caused by cosmic rays. It still has many more useful cycles after recrystalization. I would even guess that it does not have to be fully remelted, but this is a problem that we have not faced yet owing to our rather clueless addiction to fossil fuels and nuclear power. This report http://archive.greenpeace.org/climate/renewables/r eports/kpmg8.pdf explains the basic economics of large scale solar power production.

If you want to help, go to http://www.powur.com/mdsolar and click on "Become an Ecopenure."

but your own: http://www.powur.com/mdsolar
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An after thought.

There will have to be multiple, complex solutions to this coming energy crisis, but 2 things will have to happen: 1) The public as a whole is going to have to be better informed and concerned enough to force the politicians to move, and 2) A huge majority of the public is going to have to make a few changes.

Which green solutions are best is sometimes debatable. But there is a new company that seems to best cover both 1&2, and it is one of the 'no-brainer' solutions. Citizenre will be renting solar panels out, letting them almost immediately save everyone money, while making each customer a sales person, familiar with product and issues. Its 100,000 panel/yr manufacturing plant is scheduled to come online in September 2007. They're currently using 2005 average power bill prices, and will switch to 2006 on Jan 31, 2007. The rate my Dad locked in, just by registering on the website, was 37% less than his current bill.

If you live in the US, and would like to sign up under me, sites are:
http://www.jointhesolution.com/solarnevada (as customer)
http://www.powur.com/solarnevada (as sales associate)

To ruthlessly give someone else commission, www.citizenre.com. :)

Well, your bycycle example it a good one. The FUD that is being spread about warming often says "we can't predict the weather five days out, how can there be any certainty about 30 years out." It is difficult to predict if your bicycle will fall to the left or to the right, but, as you say, knowing that it will fall is pretty easy. The weather prediction problem is like the left-right question, climate prediction is like the will it fall question.

On the other hand, the factors that go into climate are many. Insisting that it is the Sun alone is incorrect. If you liked Silent Spring, you'll probably enjoy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisyworld where feedback is simply introduced. "Daisyworld arguably demonstrates that biologically mediated homeostasis does not require a teleological explanation." So, no magic either....
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Already have solar? Make it easy for your friends: http://www.powur.com/mdsolar

What your working on sounds really good. I think for the residential market, the trick is to design the system to meet usage over a year. Our rental systems are designed this way. If you don't feel it would be a conflict of interest, I'd be really happy if you helped us out in what we're doing http://www.powur.com/mdsolar.

You just don't have to depend on government spending anymore to convert to solar power.

Take a look at this flash presentation http://www.theneighborhoodlive.com/common/presenta tion.htm to see how we can convert a huge amount of our energy supply to solar.

If you think that works for what you want to do, go to http://www.powur.com/mdsolar and click on "Become an Ecopeneur" to get going. You'll need to take a 25 question test after reading a 14 page training document on solar power.

After that just "Make it so" as Cpt. Pickard used to say.
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Disclosure: I sell solar power at http://www.jointhesolution.com/mdoslar

A grid tied 100% annual power system, needed to take full advantage of net metering, costs about $30K installed. Spread over 25 years that's $100/month, a little lower that a 1000 kWh monthly bill at 11 cents/kWh plus $8 line charge.

Solar is competative with retail electric now: You pay $35400 without it and $32400 with it. (You always pay the line charge.)

Now, if you invest $30K, you might do better in the market if electric rates just go like inflation. They've been higher than inflation recently. So, you kind of want to make a guess, "Can I do better in mutual funds on in electric rates?" since you're 2007 dollars spent now avoid 2032 dollars spent on electric bills. (You actually have to integrate this.)

If you have $30K on hand, or if you can get a very low interest loan, it might make a lot of sense to do solar. But, if you don't or can't, renting from a company who's cost to install is half what you would pay owing to scale makes even more sense because you get all the benefits of service along the way. You don't get renewable energy credits, and that means the company makes even more money, but did you really want to hassle with those anyway. Right now your carbon credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange are worth only about $14/year because you're stacked against gas turbine generators rather than coal plants.

If you want to get into RECs, you should be trying to do what the company is doing; aggregating them. Then you can hold them or work derivitives or that sort of thing to make them worth more.

What is clear is that when you combine savings owing to scale with the retail parity of solar and coal and add in net metering, there is a lot of money to be made. Remember, coal has already taken its scale advantage so it isn't getting cheaper. It is a funny thing that the power plant Citizenre won't compete with is the Grand Coulee Dam, another renewable.

To get involved goto http://www.powur.com/mdsolar.

Actually, people in New Jersey have it pretty good. There is no limit on enrollment for net metering. If you'd like to help get people there signed up for solar go to http://www.powur.com/mdsolar and I can get you started.