Just as I’m writing that the big guys better get in on the game of disruptive solar technology, here comes an announcement from BP Solar on that very topic that they are getting involved in radically new ways of creating solar cells.
Though these are long term projects, the fact that a giant currently using standard wafer/silicon ingot technology is looking at this looks to me a radical departure from the conventional status quo in such large corporations.
So for now, BP Solar simply pours millions into research with competing disruptive technologies and then once the race parameters are more drawn out, determines whether to continue, drop or scale up its initiative. The maturing of an industry causes some interesting opportunities. By maturity, I hardly mean the product lifecycle, rather that some very serious investments are now appearing in solar in multiple amounts of the scales we’ve seen in the past decade.
Many predicted that while information was the disruptive industry of the 1900’s, energy will be the one in the 2000’s. So far, they look right to me!
Sass