After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit

Re:After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit by walrus01 on Saturday July 04, 2020 @03:36PM (#23734396)

I don't disagree on the point that they were undercut in price. But they were also undercut in price because commodity normal PV panels composed of 156mm polycrystalline or monocrystalline cells (60 or 72 cells) are much cheaper to manufacture than the weird proprietary system they developed. They are also much cheaper to mount on large roofs (home depot/walmart warehouse sized) or on large scale 300kW+ ground arrays.

Ordinary 60 or 72-cell panels are DEAD SIMPLE in their construction. It's a sandwich of a backing material, encapsulation for the cells and soldering, glass in front, with an aluminum frame and a junction box on the rear.

Solyndra "panels" are fragile, hard to transport, hard to mount, everything about them was a pain in the ass.

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Re:After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit by nappy on Saturday July 04, 2020 @04:27PM (#23734708)

You can't fund potentially breakthrough innovation and research and only get one tail of the distribution. It's a good thing, not a bad one, the the US government providers funding, and in this case, interest free loans for projects that sometimes fail.

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Re:After many false starts, hydrogen power might now bear fruit by jaggederest on Saturday July 04, 2020 @07:48PM (#23735688)

As I always say in software projects, if some of your tasks aren't failing, you're not being ambitious enough in your goals, or are not ditching ineffective work soon enough.

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