LOL

From the Lumonator:

It's organic and carbon is cheaper than silicon because you don't have to deconstruct anyone's microprocessors or artificial breasts to get the stuff.

Lubos is talking about solar panels made of rubrene and being funny, but in fact silicon, despite being quite a bit less abundant in the larger universe than carbon, is several hundred times more abundant in the Earth's crust than carbon, and dirt, or at least sand, cheap. Nice pure crystals for optimal solar panels are not so cheap to manufacture of course.

As a person who has recently considered equipping my house with solar panels I do have to say that efficiency can be an important concern. My roof has a limited amount of real estate suitable for mounting solar panels, so to get the optimal amount of energy I need high efficiency panels even here in relentlessly sunny New Mexico.

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