SOLAR panels that generate electricity are bulky and expensive.
But now an American company says it can provide unobtrusive
photovoltaic panels at half the cost of traditional versions.
The new technology will be on show at this month's Olympic Games
in Atlanta, Georgia, where the US Department of Energy is
building a solar-powered house. On the roof are 110 solar
shingles supplied by Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) of Detroit,
Michigan. "From the ground, it's hard to tell the difference
between the asphalt shingles and the solar ones," says company
chairman Robert Stempel. Traditional photovoltaic cells are
built by growing silicon crystals, slicing them into wafers 100
micrometres thick, and encasing them in glass. This process is
now about as cheap as it is going to get, and assuming a cell
lifetime of around twenty years, the electricity from
crystalline cells is still roughly two or three times as ... To
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