Re: All week long (mid dec 2007) I've been hearing about...

I was saying the Evergreen was punished by crummy stock market practices, having absolutely nothing tho do wit the company or it's products; the fact that they survived it says just the opposite.

The practice of selling "Naked Shorts" is equivalent to printing counterfeit stock certificates, and was done by outsiders who saw an undervalued company.  More's the pity!  The investors & founders were robbed of millions of $$$ of equity.  I actually had some shares that I bought for under $2, but I needed the cash and had to sell them

String Ribbon(tm) is still a "poly-crystalline" system.  One that is marvelously frugal in the amount of silicon if consumes.  But being poly-Si, it still achieves efficiency in the 15% range.  That's why I like it.

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 This post was primarily about Nano solar.  They've been getting *huge* press for announcing $1/W based on "thin film" CIGS technology. 

Last week I found the reference to German paper from last July that actually mentioned 6.7% efficiency ( I had estimated 7.5% or half of silicon cells.  And I had thought I remembered the 6% figure, so I suppose they did make a minor breakthrough )

So as Chris (athena) mentioned it's not quite so bad as a football field, but it's still on the order of 2x the area for the same output as a Si counterpart.  So paralleling the bromide "It's not the heat, it's the humidity.", I'll say:  "It's not the panels, it's the installation" that'll get you.

Anyway, we'll see what happens.  The fact that I've not heard of a single silicon contract being cancelled since the announcement kinda indicates that I'm not alone in my belief.