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[JMS]

Founder of ANTECY, Paul O'Conner claims:

"The price of solar panels is coming down drastically. Many companies are going broke because it's coming down so fast they can't keep up with it. By the end of this decade electricity from solar energy will be cheaper than coal or gas."

Source: http://www.power-tec...newable-energy/

What are your thoughts? Is it too early for us to think about affordable solar energy for the world's poor?

[r. zimm]

It could be an alternative for many. Often, they only need minimal power anyway for lights and a radio or laptop. The big expense becomes delivery and instruction. That can take an affordable system and make it too expensive. In the parts of the world that could benefit from this, there is no where near the transportation and delivery infrastructure plus often you have to bribe officials/gangs/etc to let the stuff go through or it disappears.

Then you have to have people in the field to train the new users. We take stuff like this for granted when you can order something online and have it delivered to your door reliably in a few days.