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Is the Future of Silicon Valley Solar?
Noryungi writes "In this provocative article, Brian McConnell argues that Silicon Valley, instead of staying in the saturated IT field, should apply its resources (including its chip-producing plants) into Solar Power/Renewable energy. Intel branded Solar Panels, anyone?"
if the war in iraq and the rising cost of oil have showed us anything, it's that we need to look into more alternative energy sources. producing our own solar energy would not only leave us less dependent on foriegn oil, but would also help the enviroment. we should also look at wind and water power also. hopefully in a few years time we'll be able to have some kind of program running that promote this type of thing.
"Solar electricity can be produced by means of photovoltaic arrays (based on the photoelectric effect discovered by Albert Einstein) or by using conventional heat engines whereby solar energy is used to power a turbine. Solar heat is simpler still, requiring only a blackbody and a mechanism for storing and transferring heat"
Einstein didn't dicsover photoelectric effect, he has EXPLAINED it (and earned a Nobel Prize for it).
What about Sun Solar Panels?
Out here in sunny california, they have already been considering legislation to require a certain percentage of new built homes to have solar panels preinstalled on the roof by the contractor.
A house with these panels can provide most of its energy, and on sunny days even feed excess back into the grid (electric company pays YOU)
Considering the enery crisis, and terror threats to centralized power, it would seem irresponsible NOT to try and push for distributed solar power generation. It makes sense in almost every way (money, eco-friendly, security)
Intel and AMD both still run their own production facilities. In fact, Intel makes sure that the layout of the fabs is identical, so that production parameters are transferable from one fab to another. As a result, their fabs are designed for producing microprocessors, and making major changes in this general alignment would be rather difficult. IBM, on the other hand, runs a more diversified system of fabs.
You are probably confusing this with companies such as ARM. They are merely a chip design and intellectual property company now, however in spite of the "merely" this is still an enormous economic asset in today's tech arena.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
FYI, this is already done in a way, as far as Intel helping to build solar panels goes.
Astropower is a US solar panel manufacturer that gets many of its solar cell silicon wafers through recycling programs with Intel. TI, etc. See here. They basically take bad/test wafers, clean them up, and use them for silicon solar cells.
I'm building a 100% solar home and already have a kW of capacity installed, and went with Astropower for several reasons, the above included.
The article goes on and on about how Silicon Valley can capitalize on the solar energy business (and other forms of high-efficincy energy production). There are a couple new and exciting renewable energy companies in the valley.
The first order of business for an energy consumer should be to minimize energy consumption. The economics are simple: a reduction in demand will reduce costs.
Many people are shocked when they learn that it's very easy to save $1000 in energy costs a year by spending less than $100 and an hour's worth of time. This guy and this guy seemed to do just about nothing for 50% energy savings.
Even though it's always exciting to look at the state of the art in the energy business, it's more useful (but less exciting) to look at how it impacts you personally.
While not a Silicon Valley company but instead residing in The Netherlands, Philips already has a solar panels division. And it makes a lot of sense, because they're active in both lighting (solar panels are just the inverse of what they've been doing for over a century) and semiconductors (so they have lots of "waste" silicon which is useless for ICs, but not for solar panels).
;P
So, yeah: get with the times, Silicon Valley!