Mike’s ramblings

Nanosolar a company started by German founder Martin Roscheisen recently shipped its first CIGS solar panels. They have developed a technique to print their light active ink onto all kinds of materials. The thin-film panels produced this way come out at price of $1/watt for a total installation cost of around $2/watt. This makes the technique comparable to coal energy (which costs about $2.10/watt)!

In this price included is a nice margin for Nanosolar. They report that the costs to produce the panels are around 40 cents/watt. These numbers are amazing. What is even better is the fact that this company is already mass-producing these panels. If they continue to drive down the costs, we can soon cover all kinds of surfaces with these panels. These are truly exciting times in my opinion.

I usually don’t like Mashable’s lists too much, but this one seems to be a perfect fit for me. They assembled the top 10 eBooks that help you get started with your blog in terms of search engine optimization, monetization and gaining traffic in general. I will dig through them and follow up with a post that recapitulates the essence of all these eBooks.

Here is the list:

• Authority Black Book
• Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization
• BlogBash: Deep Secrets of Successful Blogging - learn from 30 experts
• Blog Profits Blueprint
• Dive Into Web 2.0
• Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber Dissidents
• Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com
• Unleashing the Idea Virus
• Web Style Guide
• Who’s there

CNN Money reports that John Deere, the big tractor company, has found a way to make profits while developing rural America and producing green energy. They accomplish this by financing wind turbines in these areas.

A project with the size of about 5 windmills works as follows: John Deere pays about $4,950,000, the farmers pay $50,000 and another $5 million comes from a loan from a bank. John Deere gets all the revenue for the first 10 years or until their initial investment is paid off and they’ve made a profit. The farmers get $20,000 a year each for maintaining the turbines. After the 10 years, the farmers get all the revenue, which estimates to about $1 to $1.5 million plus another $500,000 federal tax credit. This results to a good profit for everyone that will help develop these areas drastically.

It is nice to see that with a good idea you can accomplish something valuable, in this example develop rural areas and protect the environment/produce green energy/reduce the dependence on foreign oil, and still make profits. Sadly good ideas don’t grow on trees and as long as one can make their profits easier without doing something good, people will go the easy path.

(via EcoGeek)

The Bahrain World Trade Center will be the first building in the world, that has wind turbines of a respectable size included in its structure and built in to support its aesthetics. News of this has been out for some time now, but lucky EcoGeek has received first hand pictures of the turbines getting installed and I have to say it looks as stunning as it did on the renderings from the architecture firm.

The three turbines, each measuring 29m in diameter, will produce approximately 11-15% of the buildings energy needs, which equates to 1100-1300 MWh per year. (This is about the equivalent of powering 300 homes for a year.) The buildings is facing the Gulf and is shaped aerodynamically so that the turbines fixed position is not a problem and they get enough wind.

It is kind of paradox that this is built with money that most certainly has its base in oil, but I am not complaining when something as nice as this comes out of it.
(For more pictures go right over to EcoGeek.)