Since I’m on a little bit of a clean energy spree, I wanted to plug an innovative company based in Pasadena, California not far from where I grew up. Soliant Energy has developed a new type of solar panel.

What makes solar panels expensive is that the material that converts sunlight to energy is the same material used to make computer microchips. So you can take a sheet of that material and make one solar panel, or you can make hundreds of chips. When a fab plant costs a few hundred million to build, the cost of a sheet of the stuff is going to be significant.

Soliant has seen an 88% reduction in the amount of silicon required by reflecting and concentrating sunlight onto a smaller area of silicon. Lets hear it for innovation!