Jade Queen

Solar: Energy's New Growth Sector

I read this with great interest.

Suntech and SunPower have pretty good websites. If you are interested in this sector, you might take a look.

Suntech's site used to be easier to navigate. I personally would make the homeowner navigation easier and showcase the see-throughs and light-throughs better, but I'm only a smallholder and possible purchaser, so what do I know. Suntech's array of products is pretty dazzling.

SunPower should probably take advantage of the issues coming up in commercial real estate and find a site in a high-unemployment U.S. location, splashingly, pr-wise.

Otherwise, if SolarWorld gears up its marketing, SunPower could be challenged by SolarWorld. I have visited the SolarWorld production facility in Oregon, and it is impressive.

The market for solar is sophisticated. Some will do the research to find out where the products are made. What's more, there's the Henry-Ford phenomenon of making things affordable for workers and their friends and families. SolarWorld also has plans to take its cells into schools for kids to assemble into panels. This could be an entree into a DIY market. If kids can do it...oh nevermind, kids can operate anything gadgety these days. It doesn't mean adults think they can, unless some marketer really good at sucking up makes them believe it.

The value of non-explosive, non-polluting, quiet, distributed energy could shake loose some investment money among those boomers who have investments left. There is potential for reducing monthly cost of energy and for possibly having a source of income, should energy costs increase and the monopolies' ways of operating change.

There is also a possibiliy, in Oregon, of financing the improvement so a subsequent owner could assume it. This could arrive elsewhere as well, shaking loose some equity from elders, in areas where there still is equity. In addition, it would encourage new home purchasers to consider cost of operation in their decisions concerning housing.

Places like Gainesville, FL, are going ahead. Their ratepayer-owned utility has good feed-in arrangements for property owners.

At some point, distributed renewable energy is going to break out. The logic for good neighbors who cooperate well is just too convincing in these times.

It will be a while before drilling gets good enough for geothermal to play in the residential market. Some temperate locations don't pencil that well for geo anyway.

I'm baiting the metal bugs here, but I would love to see a solar-cell standard as opposed to a gold standard.

Don't get me wrong, I love Ron Paul. I just see his gold thing as a blip I don't get. The real standard is energy. Marybe I'm more practical than the average ordinary person. I don't get the jewelry thing. I know that's unusual, but in some mini-cultures, I am not that far out there.

Is there such a thing as a geo-cultural economist? If there is, I'm asking again for input from such a person.

I'm all for making the Fed come clean, and as I understand it, Ron Paul is getting closer to getting that, after what, thirty years?

If they open the can of worms that is the Fed, the U.S. will become the destination for soap-opera and tabloid journalists, the world over.

Harlem churchgoers won't be able to get in their churches unless they get up at 5 a.m. to beat the journalist/tourists. Maybe the opportunistic music tourism will even bleed over to Baltimore. Having grown up in Maryland, I hope so. I love some of the parts of the D.C. area outside the core. Oh ok, I love some parts of the core also.

In sales mode, think about a Solar Standard: energy you can cart around, made of sand, with the value embedded from labor input. What's not to like?

I own STP and SunPower.