Re: the news from bush's speech...H-power

[David Howe]

at Wednesday, January 29, 2003 11:18 PM, Bill Frantz
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> was seen to say:
> Back a few years ago, probably back during the great gas crisis (i.e.
> OPEC) years, there were a lot of small companies working on solar
> power.  As far as I know, they were all bought up by oil companies.
> Of course, only a paranoid would think that they were bought to
> suppress a competing technology.
Actually, Oil companies are all in favour of competing technologies -
provided they get to control them. Solar may be an exception though;
wind is ok as the massive installations, land usage permissions and
nature of the output fluctuations mean you really can't start off small
(they are fine to feed into a large system where the overall average
would be fairly level, though) but solar is just too easy to reduce down
to individual installations in individual homes or businesses; only
technologies that permit a service based business model (delivery of
electricity and/or production of fuels that can't be done without
massive plant) are encouraged :(