Even though I said very soon, it took me some time to finish some reading before I write to you about Solar Power. I don't want to jump into those hot and volatile solar companies immediately. Instead, I want to start with some basic physics. If you just want to read the companies information which I have gathered, you then can skip this mail and wait for part II.
 
Why Solar should be the best renewable energy? Actually, Photon is the carrier of all energy we use in the world (except radioactive and gravitational energy). It converted to heat and kinetic energy for wave and wind, converted to chemical energy for photosynthesis. People tried to capture all heat, kinetic and organic fuel to produce electricity, what stops us from converting solar to electricity in the first place?

There are 2 major issues about solar energy, which are cost and efficiency. Before all that, I should try my best to explain everything in very simple words. I presume Jason would know all these very well, Einstein won his Novel Prize in 1921 due to his paper on Photo Electric Effect, not anything about Relativity or E=MC2, and he wrote that because he needed money to pay for his ex-wife. Well... that effect can be explained by the diagram attached. Photons come as quantum package hit atoms, and when the energy is enough its electrons gain the energy and raised its energy band, some even have enough energy to leave its atoms. My idol Feynman can calculate that more exactly and from which he got his Nobel Prize which he didn't want to receive, as he only wanted to explain things, not for money...
 
Electrons leaving atoms won't make any good for us, only if it can generate electric current. Therefore people need to find material which is neutral in the first place and electrons are loosely attached to it. Yes, you got that, semi-conductor. Now its time for commercial side, the most common semi-conductor is silicon. However its efficiency is low, about 10%, that is mainly because it is very difficult to purify silicon and the range of frequency which silicon atoms can convert to electricity is not so broad, i.e. only some color of light can be used to generate and others are wasted. However, along with technology advances in these recent 2-3 years, purification and shaping silicon become more easy, and researchers also proposed to use other material in layers to replace silicon which can have higher efficiency, Copper-Indium Selenide up to 30% is one example. Producing both materials requires certain amount of energy and may produce pollutant. Well, that may be the reason why China has a lot of new fast growing companies in this area.
 
OK, solar energy can replace traditional electricity in the future, even now manufacturing silicon which can generate 1W of power would cost 7-8 USD, each household requires normally 3KW of power, however the operating cost for photovoltaic (PV) power generation is much cheaper than traditional power generation. Right now, the estimation is PV power would be 3 times more expensive than the one we are using. When price can come down further and due to Kyoto protocol, like in Germany and in Luxemburg, very soon more solar farm would be stored in the coming years in the whole world.
 
In the future, solar cell in form of film would be transparent and can be used as household windows. I don't feel surprise in the future outdoor car-park would be more expensive than the indoor one in daytime as cars would surface with solar film. The indoor won't be hot (infra-red would become electricity as well), and parking would be a good time for car battery charging.
 
That is the reason why companies relating to silicon producers, solar cell and equipment installations are so eye-catching at the moment. Amongst those some are good and some I think should better avoid...
 
Eric