Word: edisonizing
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Until now, solar energy has appealed mostly to affluent homeowners and self- described tree huggers -- the save-the-environment folks. That's because buying and installing solar equipment can cost $15,000 for an average-size home before any current starts to flow. "Even Edison first electrified the homes of his wealthy investors, so the high-end client has always been fertile ground," says Steven Strong, whose firm, Solar Design Associates, based in Harvard, Massachusetts, is among the country's leading designers of solar homes...
...about $4 today. Companies are now rushing to break the $2 barrier, which would reduce the residential cost of solar electricity from 30 cents per kWh to near the 12 cents average price of electricity in California. Leading contestants in the scramble are Texas Instruments and Southern California Edison, which have joined forces to produce flexible solar panels from inexpensive low-grade silicon by 1994. The innovative technology will allow the panels to be integrated into car and building design and, even more important, will crash the price to $2.50 a watt...
Last month 68 utilities, from New York City's Consolidated Edison to San Francisco's Pacific Gas & Electric, formed a consortium to purchase $500 million worth of solar panels over the next six years. These utilities, which serve 40% of the country's electric customers, hope solar power can help replace aging plants that will begin phasing out by the end of the decade. Says Scott Sklar, director of the Solar Energy Industries Association, which represents more than 500 U.S. solar-equipment makers: "This will allow the solar industry to double its manufacturing capacity and acquire new capital to ramp...
...President of Commonwealth Edison...
Even scientists who are concerned about power lines acknowledge that the Edison study was a good one. Researchers from the company and from UCLA looked at more than 36,000 Edison employees who had on-the-job exposure to EMFs. Those with the highest exposure did not have especially high cancer rates. Does this prove that EMFs don't cause cancer? No -- just that we still don't know...