Obama primary opponent Bob Greene: Calif. man has energy plan for U.S. for next 1000 years

[FSSF]

22. People in the solar industry think they can get solar at or less than the cost of coal much faster.

You probably don't hear about them as much because they spend of there time doing things rather than talking about paper reactors.

1366 Technologies got a $7,000,000 research grant from the DOE to work on their direct wafer technology in 2010. They got a $150,000,000 loan guarantee in September of 2011 to start manufacturing.

"1366’s mission is to make the cost of solar power competitive with coal power.

Our approach is simple. We take a proven, safe, abundant material –silicon– and develop practical manufacturing solutions that increase efficiency and dramatically cut cost.

Our manufacturing solutions are compatible with existing supply chain processes, delivering a large impact without the complexity.

1366 has a team of veteran scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, including MIT professor and photovoltaic industry expert Dr. Emanuel Sachs, with extensive experience in process and machine design.

The initial technology for 1366 was developed by our team at MIT and is now being commercialized.

The science is understood. The material is abundant. The products work.
All that is left is to build the largest manufacturing industry in the history of mankind. This is what we intend to do."

http://www.1366tech.com/about-1366/

Standford Ovshinsky thinks he could do solar cheaper than coal on a large scale very soon.

"BAS: Can you explain your new assertion about what you have achieved in terms of photovoltaic panel manufacturing?

Ovshinsky: I can show now that we can achieve solar energy, with good profit, at a cost less than that of burning of fossil fuel. That is a revolutionary statement, and it can’t be done overnight, but it can and will be done. The plant would be an ordinary-sized plant of 150,000 square feet which would put out a photovoltaic product of one gigawatt per year. Unless we start making a gigawatt in many plants, the cost of photovoltaics will never get down to the cost of coal— which is what global society needs.
This can be done with proper support in no more than several years. The cost of the production machine will be a few pennies per watt, $350 million at the most. I’ve proven in the past that the first machine always costs more than the subsequent ones. When you go into a high enough volume production, all costs come down in the steepest decline that you can think of. And you want to build as many machines as possible in every city in every country."

http://bos.sagepub.com/content/67/3/1.full

Sure none of these projects will ever work as well in reality as breeders, or molten salt reactors, or fusion reactors look on paper. That's mostly because they're actually being done.