And it needed to get much lower
to be cost-effective.
I studied all the new things
that had happened in solar cells,
and was looking for ways we could
make solar cells more inexpensively.
A lot of new things
are happening to do that,
but fundamentally, the process
requires a tremendous amount of energy.
Some people say it takes
more energy to make a solar cell
than it will give out in its entire life.
If we reduce the amount of energy
it takes to make the cells,
that will become more practical.
But right now, you pretty much
have to take silicon,
put it in an oven at 1600 F
for 17 hours, to make the cells.
A lot of people are working
to try and reduce that,
but I didn't have anything to contribute.
So I tried to figure out
what other way could we try
to make cost-effective solar electricity.
What if we collect the sun
with a large reflector --
like I had been thinking about
in high school,
but maybe with modern technology
we could make it cheaper --
concentrate it to a small converter,
and then the conversion device
wouldn't have to be as expensive,
because it's much smaller,
rather than solar cells,