An expert in the article alludes to the idea that stock prices of solar energy firms would be affected by solar tax credits.  The expert [Horowitz] says that tax credits “would not be a deal breaker” for stock prices because the largest market for solar is currently “offshore.”  So supposedly a jump in US demand for solar power would not create a huge change in solar energy firms stock prices.

As a director of a solar energy project affecting users in the developing world it’s interesting to me to consider not only how this will effect stock market prices of solar energy companies, as was referred to by Horowitz, but also how it will affect the price of solar panels themselves.  Will this solar tax credit in the US cause a huge worldwide demand in solar panels the likes of which we have never seen?  A large enough jump in demand may possibly create a jump in prices – which, if the tax credits are not extended for years to come – may create a successive lowering in price.  No one knows what may happen – but you can take a look at how solar energy prices have fluctuated in the past here.

The answer – according to experts at this week’s Strategies in Light conference in Silicon Valley – is that LEDs are still an emerging technology.  During a conference segment on “Overcoming Solid-State Lighting Challenges Today,” experts spoke of some of the many challenges LEDs still face – inconsistency in their manufacture, brightness output and wide-ranging, largely obtuse claims being made about their performance which may be true for some LEDs – but not for others.

According to experts attending the Strategies in Light Conference, LEDs with inconsistent quality are often widely found among those manufactured in mainland China.  For example, out of over 200 LEDs tested from 20 different vendors in China by a Humbolt University Project – over 80% did not meet brightness metrics claimed by the manufacturer and over 20% were only fulfilling about 10% of the brightness requirements.  Moreover, the widely made claim that you will get 50,000 hours out of an LED was at one point described as “NASA-quality” by a representative from a well-known silicon manufacturing company.

So what will we see from LEDs in 2008?  More performance, better output, more efficiency – but on top of that, managed expectations.  Over the past 5 years, LEDs have been widely publicized – but these publications have been often built on generating excitement and seldom detailed enough.  For example, what does 50,000 hours even mean?  In some LEDs that may be a hypothetical number that perhaps 10% of a batch may be able to achieve.  We will see better standardizations and better protections put in place so that your 2008 LED Christmas lights will hopefully come out looking pure clear white – not half white/green and half white/blue as with what happened to my family this past year!

Overall don’t lose faith in LEDs and if you go with LEDs be willing to pay for quality – it’s quality that gives the longer lifetime and higher efficiency.  Products which promise the same for less should be subject to your skepticism.

But instead of letting all of that exhaust into the atmosphere, it stays in the balloon.  Then, when the balloon is full, put it somewhere safe, maybe deep underground or in the ocean.  But don’t try this at home, you’ll look like a weirdo and the balloon will probably pop.  Typically carbon capturing is done in fossil fuel (oil and coal) power plants.  And they don’t use balloons, they use something tough, made out of metal – sort of like a big industrial sized propane tank.  Vattenfall’s process improves carbon capturing for coal – which is great news for the U.S. where coal burning power plants produce about 1.5 billion metric tons of CO2 per year, according to the article, and debates have sparked about coal’s health effects over recent years.