Comments x2fer has made

  • Urban Lumber

    There's an outfit (mostly one guy) salvaging urban lumber in Springfield & Eugene, Oregon. I don't know about their volume, but the few times I've been in their storefront, they've had a nice selection of a variety of woods.

    <http://www.urbanlumbercompany.com>On High-end use for urban trees saves landfill space posted 1 year, 7 months ago 5 Responses

  • Too much news

    So, on the upside: more news, faster.

    That's actually a downside to me. Good news is about good editing & news selection. I've always liked the Daily Grist because it was limited -- presumably to the most informative or interesting news of the day.

    Now, I have to wade through yet another potentially infinite blog-like page. Already the amount of information is about double what it was before, and will surely increase over time. I've got too much news coming at me already; it's not a benefit to have more.On Tell us what to call our new news section posted 2 years, 2 months ago 4 Responses

  • Re: What's the downside?

    The downside is that thin film panels are generally less efficient than traditional solar PV cells, so you need more of them to get the same amount of energy out.

    If a thin film panel costs half as much as a traditional panel, but is only half as efficient, you end up paying the same amount for the panels, but end up needing twice as much area to install them, more labor (typically) to mount the additional panels, more wiring (typically) to hook up the additional panels, etc. You end up paying more for the installation, so it can cost more to go with thin film.

    But since thin films are so much more flexible, they can be used in a wider variety of applications. And there's much work going on to make thin films even less expensive and more flexible. If you believe the marketers, soon thin film solar will be dirt cheap and we'll be covering every available surface with them.
    On Umbra on thin-film solar panels posted 2 years, 5 months ago 7 Responses