Solar Cells for the Home

[drbubb]

Solar Cells for the Home

This service helps you get the right solar cells

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Berkeley startup Sungevity aims to do for the solar business what Dell did for personal computers: digitize the entire enterprise to cut costs and create a mass market. Enter your address on Sungevity's website, and satellite-imaging software zooms in on your home, calculates the roof's dimensions, selects appropriately sized solar arrays, and shows what they will look like installed -- while computing your return on investment. Once the order is placed, an off-the-shelf prepackaged solar array is shipped to the customer's door, and an installation crew is dispatched. "This changes the game," says

Sungevity co-founder Danny Kennedy.

-- Todd Woody

 

/see: (and 10 other good green ideas):

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortun....fortune/2.html

[drbubb]

(here's another):

 

Supebugs

 

Imagine a fuel that can burn in today's cars, trucks, and jets while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by as much as 80%. A pipe dream? Not according to the founders of Amyris, a five-year-old company in Emeryville, Calif. Scientists Jay Keasling and Jack Newman have designed a microorganism that acts like a tiny factory, constantly fermenting sugar and excreting a hydrocarbon with properties similar to gasoline, diesel, and kerosene jet fuel. Amyris is putting its first bugs to work on sugarcane because growing and processing it releases fewer emissions than corn ethanol.

-- Brian Dumaine

 

/see: http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortun....fortune/8.html

[sossij]

Good piece in the Guardian's Money section yesterday:

 

Solar so good for our house

 

Well, the news is better than I had expected. We, a family of four, have produced 92% of our electricity usage from the roof of a century-old terraced house in south-east London - laying to rest the idea that Britain is not sunny enough for solar power. It also disproves any suggestion this sort of technology only works in state-of-the-art, modern detached houses.

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What is particularly annoying about all this is that in Germany, where a proper system of support has boosted volumes - the Germans kitted out 130,000 houses with solar PV last year, while the UK managed less than 300 - costs have fallen dramatically and a system like mine would only cost about £9,000 without a grant.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/apr/1...onsumeraffairs2

 

Details of grants (UK) available here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/apr/1...onsumeraffairs1

 

Edit: to add grants link.