A few things you might not know about solar panels.

Brushy Clump Large Weasel had emailed us about recent events with the recent global warming email fiasco (which I won't get into right now.). But it got us thinking about some things we learned recently involving solar energy. Firstly that only about 1% of our national electric usage is currently (that was not a pun) being made by solar panels. Here are some things about solar energy you may not know. Firstly that the solar panels in use on our very successful mars probes Spirit and Opportunity are not the typical type you see on rooftops all over the country (you see many more in Germany but we'll get to that later.). The solar panels on the Mars probes actually are much more efficient, they catch more than the current solar panels in use on earth.
Current solar panels here use only a limited part of the solar spectrum to create electricity. The mars probes are designed to catch a wider range of the spectrum and are much more efficient (also much more expensive, about a million dollars a square foot.) But recent discoveries in the field are yielding promising results. For example there is actually a solar panel that can be painted on (although it is capable of using only about 10% of the solar energy available.) Remember that every square foot of sunshine contains in it about 1000 watts of power (enough to power your tv, computer, house lights, and step dad's experimental dog polisher.) We mentioned Germany. That government recently put a freeze on electric costs for the next 20 years, they also are paying people to build and use solar panels. One pig farmer cleared a few acres of field and got a loan for 5 million dollars to build a solar field which provides power to about 1500 homes. He makes 600 thousand American dollars a year of which he says about 60 thousand is profit. The idea is not perfect but by the time the 20 year freeze is lifted he will have paid off his loan and be producing free energy for himself and be able to charge his neighbors a much lower rate than current electric charges. A win win in my book. Germany currently produces about 20 percent of it's power through solar energy. As of this writing the United States has no plan or policy to do anything similar. Although about 150,000 people are currently employed in the solar energy field in America. There are many other examples of solar energy use being a profit making venture, which in this country is the way to make something take off and run. As you can see, at the crazy we are solar extremists, but unfortunately poor solar extremists. Acquiring the materials for solar energy is currently costly, but soon we may be able to use solar energy by simply painting our rooftop or house itself at a fraction of the cost of current solar panels. Are you a gloomy gus? Do you think that cloudy days are a death knell for solar power, nope, even on cloudy days there is a lot of wattage falling on us.
Clouds block out only visible light, most of the ultraviolet light still comes through. So what needs to be done to make solar energy viable for every American? We need to improve storage techniques (the EverReady bunny really doesn't keep going).
We also need to improve the efficiency of solar panels (recent tests have produced materials that convert about 30% of sunlight falling into energy. When we can convert about 50%, then Solar energy will be competitive to current gas and coal powered electricity. So cheer up, if someday we run out of fossil fuels (which we will) Solar energy is one of the possible replacements waiting in the wings. And we won't even mention recent experiments with algae.