Forty Percent and Buggy Whips
I saw this article linked over at Slashdot:New World Record Achieved in Solar Cell Technology
New Solar Cell Breaks the “40 Percent Efficient” Sunlight-to-Electricity Barrier
WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner today announced that with DOE funding, a concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has recently achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent, establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance. This breakthrough may lead to systems with an installation cost of only $3 per watt, producing electricity at a cost of 8-10 cents per kilowatt/hour, making solar electricity a more cost-competitive and integral part of our nation’s energy mix.
I don't know what the previous "record" for efficiency was, but that seems vastly more efficient than any version of solar technology even a few years ago.
That's not exactly why I'm posting about it, though.
One of the things I occasionally like to do with Slashdot posts is read through some of the comments, because they're outstanding examples of nerd-snark. Under this particular post, though, I saw one of the most interesting comments I've ever seen.
The discussion was wandering all over the place, like they always do, and someone posted about how converting to solar power would cost "hundreds of thousands of jobs in the power industry" and would actually hurt the economy.
Then someone (like I said, nerd-snark) posted this:
Yeah.
And what about all the buggy whip makers!
Who is thinking of THEM!
Then maggard (5579) posted this:
Actually, my Grandfather was a buggy whip salesmen.
After returning from The Great War, WWI, he was disabled (indeed he'd been declared dead & in the morgue at one point - mustard gas.) The job he could get was selling buggy whips, and his territory was the US Midwest & Canada. He was away from home for long stretches of time, and as you can imagine had some pretty amazing tales to tell of traveling to remote ccommunities back when travel was HARD.
However he saw the car taking over and once he'd saved up enough money he did the smart thing: Opened a service station.
Later it went bust in the Great Depression. He then started again, in putting in power lines, then power plants, and eventually became VP of a a large construction firm and responsible for many of the major structures still standing in Kansas City including the Liberty Memorial [libertymem...museum.org], Nelson Gallery [nelson-atkins.org], and the Starlight Theatre [kcstarlight.com].
The point is, he really was in the buggy whip business and when the new technologies came in he adapted and took advantage of them. Then when the bust came he reinvented himself again and took his skills and when into an entirely new career. Not a new high-tech story, rather from a fella raised in a sod hut in the Oklahoma Territory where buffalo were a constant threat.
What a great story.
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