The future according to Ray Kurzweil (loan, money, companies)

[Philip T]

Originally Posted by bchris02

You can't make money off solar energy. Its in infinite supply - thats why politicians, the media, and corporate America are so against it.

oh, Y E A H.

THAT is a real discussion that occurs in the halls outside the board rooms.

Once this cat slips the bag, a lot of FAT upper-end cats are going to be looking for new parasite profit centers.

Suppose the govt. will start a Sun Tax?

Could never have a import tax to pay the Government bills, could we? That would be like going back to that old fashioned stupid Constitution thingy -- and may harm International Corporation profits.

[travelmate38]

To buy a Solar kit for your home to reduce the average electic bill of $100 per month takes an average $18,000 investment. At this level, you can expect to pay $50 per month or 50% off your electric bill. At this rate, it would take 30 years to pay yourself back for that investment. This is why it is so frowned upon by consumers.

Now if they starting building houses from the ground up with these systems in place, not only would they be more efficent, resulting in a 80-85% reduction in one's electric costs, they would be more cost affective and cheap to incorporate into the home.

For exsisting homes, the government needs to produce the kits at a drastically reduced rate, using prison labor. Then sell the kits to existing homes at a rate of about $600.

THEN WE MIGHT GET SOME WHERE WITH THIS!

[Philip T]

Originally Posted by travelmate38

To buy a Solar kit for your home to reduce the average electic bill of $100 per month takes an average $18,000 investment. At this level, you can expect to pay $50 per month or 50% off your electric bill. At this rate, it would take 30 years to pay yourself back for that investment. This is why it is so frowned upon by consumers.

Now if they starting building houses from the ground up with these systems in place, not only would they be more efficent, resulting in a 80-85% reduction in one's electric costs, they would be more cost affective and cheap to incorporate into the home.

For exsisting homes, the government needs to produce the kits at a drastically reduced rate, using prison labor. Then sell the kits to existing homes at a rate of about $600.

THEN WE MIGHT GET SOME WHERE WITH THIS!

Well, let's start you with a baseline on the topic. Yes, Solar PV (talking about PV, NOT Solar Thermal) tends to be a sucky "investment" for the average user where gird power is available. It is superior to the grid for remote applications.

Solar Thermal on the other hand (Whole different animal than Solar PV) tends to be much more economical, and may beat coal (coal is the present time low cost winner) in utility scale production of electric power, as well as small scale applications now under development.

Finally, as far as prison labor -- and I guess you mean PV, as far as these "kits?" The expensive part of PV is the cells, themselves. These are produced in Semiconductor Fabrication facilities costing near Billions to make the site, and staffed and operated by PhD and MSEE level engineers and scientists. That part aint really a job like stamping license plates. As far as the relatively minimal effort assembly of putting them in an aluminum frame -- Chinese labor rates probably beat the prisons, as well.

There may be a market for assembly by prisoners for various Solar Thermal equipment, but the trend in that industry seems to be mass robotic assembly, -- like automobiles.

[evilnewbie]

Originally Posted by Philip T

oh, Y E A H.

THAT is a real discussion that occurs in the halls outside the board rooms.

Once this cat slips the bag, a lot of FAT upper-end cats are going to be looking for new parasite profit centers.

Suppose the govt. will start a Sun Tax?

Could never have a import tax to pay the Government bills, could we? That would be like going back to that old fashioned stupid Constitution thingy -- and may harm International Corporation profits.

You know the government is already preparing for this... they expect gasoline to be phased out completely therefore there will be no more Gas tax.. do you know what they are thinking about??? A driving tax... that's right... they charge you a tax for every mile you drive... hehehe... they have to steal money... I mean make money somehow... however I wouldn't mind paying a tax per mile as long as the money is used ONLY for roads and highways AND NOTHING ELSE...but I suspect most people would overlook the "nothing else" part that is missing when they pass it into law... I hate freaking thieves...

[Philip T]

Originally Posted by evilnewbie

You know the government is already preparing for this... they expect gasoline to be phased out completely therefore there will be no more Gas tax.. do you know what they are thinking about??? A driving tax... that's right... they charge you a tax for every mile you drive... hehehe... they have to steal money... I mean make money somehow... however I wouldn't mind paying a tax per mile as long as the money is used ONLY for roads and highways AND NOTHING ELSE...but I suspect most people would overlook the "nothing else" part that is missing when they pass it into law... I hate freaking thieves...

Sure Oregon started down that road (yeah, pun intended) a couple of years ago, when they figured Oregon-type folks would be quick adopters of hybrids and electric vehicles. Got locked up in GPS and privacy issues as I recall.

A very profitable path out of the whole mess is to electrify or "grid enable" the highway system and city roads. Allows electric motor cars to pick up the power directly from the road surface and uses no oil and either no or very small batteries on board.

Since the roads are all in the "commons" or government owned, they can retail the electricity to the drivers (would cost about 1/6 to 1/4 of present fuel), and require NO import of energy to run it. Instant trade balance and instance balance of the Government budgets.

Gas and diesel burners could still use the same highway, but fuel burners would mostly be abandoned across normal vehicle replacement lifetimes.

B U T . . . it would wipe out the Petrol industry worldwide -- the industry collapse would come sudden as the only remaining fuel burners would be airplanes, remote locations, some ships, and back-up power.

And as two terms of the current top dogs have shown (Bush and Cheney are both Oil People), the average American voter is too stupid to act in their own or the country's interest.

When this discussion (grid enabled highways) comes in energy Corporate discussions, the top end starts howling like Gorillas on Planet of the Apes.

[TexianPatriot]

I'd like to have power when the sun isn't shining. When big solar doesn't need massive government subsidies to produce energy cheaper than petro or nuclear, I'll look into it. Until then, we need oil and it's time to tap into our own resources before every other country does it for us and then exports it back to us at a nice profit.

[Niners fan]

Originally Posted by bchris02

You can't make money off solar energy. Its in infinite supply - thats why politicians, the media, and corporate America are so against it.

This is the kind of negative, broad generalization that I referenced in the OP.

Politicians have nothing against solar. But innovation doesn't come from government. Look at the ethanol mess where we are burning our food for an energy that is inefficient and the market would not have chosen.

The media - generally speaking - doesn't care about solar one way or the other. There is a leaning towards printing doom and gloom in the media but that is because it sells better than optimism. (I believe there is also an attitude that patriotism is outdated and/or juvenile (for lack of a better word) but that is another thread.)

Corporate America is against solar? Tell that to the corporations who are investing in solar. Big Oil is probably not too thrilled about the idea but, as the interview noted, Google is into solar and last I checked they were a corporation. The technology would not have come this far without corporate support - unless you are going to argue that it has all come from research at universities. But then that blows the theory that government opposes solar because that is where most of the research money would come from.

[f_m]

Originally Posted by Philip T

I think you may be correct about the "celebrity" part of the guy in the interview, as he sounds a little crackpot to me, but then I am in the application end, not the sales end. I am just not too fond of purported experts overstating claims and causing disappointed expectations -- seems irresponsible. Better to undersell and over-perform.

Not sure what people are saying about "celebrity." Here's an article about the same thing:
Solar Power to Rule in 20 Years, Futurists Say | LiveScience

Ray Kurzweil was one of the first to come up with the digital music keyboard (that emulates pianos, organs, strings, etc...) which is what all music keyboards are like today. He was also one of the first to do text to speech and speech to text work for disabled people like Stevie Wonder. That is what you all hear today on talking GPS's and voice mail systems, voice activated devices, etc... He doesn't talk about things, he actually does something.

[Philip T]

Originally Posted by f_m

Not sure what people are saying about "celebrity." Here's an article about the same thing:
Solar Power to Rule in 20 Years, Futurists Say | LiveScience

Ray Kurzweil was one of the first to come up with the digital music keyboard (that emulates pianos, organs, strings, etc...) which is what all music keyboards are like today. He was also one of the first to do text to speech and speech to text work for disabled people like Stevie Wonder. That is what you all hear today on talking GPS's and voice mail systems, voice activated devices, etc... He doesn't talk about things, he actually does something.

That is all great and fine. The celeb reference was from evil_newbies' comment. Please don't make me diagram the conversation.

I am not against this stuff. Have been doing it daily for the last three years. But the truth is it is some genuinely hard work and we may pull it off or not. I am betting that we can because all other options look VERY grim. It is a life boat building thing from my perspective.

My concern is when the "From The Future" folks start into the "Everyone will have a helicopter in their garage by 1990" or "Nuclear Power will provide safe, clean and limitless energy that is too cheap to meter," -- the BS level harms the industries.

[f_m]

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