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Power Plastic

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This coming August Southern California Edison (SCE) will start a five year programme generating electricity using an eventual 250 MW of photovoltaic technology.

The final scheme will spread over 65 million square feet (6.5 million square metres) of southern California industrial rooftops, reports Gizmag . Cost is set to be to be $875 million - though after five years who knows what it will really be.

This news comes on the same day, in the same news feed, that our own Swansea University engineering department announces that it has re-thought the whole photovoltaic thing following research on a completely different topic - the degradation of paint on steel surfaces . The Swansea U boffins reckon to be able (soon) to roller-plate steel with photovoltaic whatsit at a rate of 400 sq feet a minute.

But what's this? Several days later, here is a Japanese firm, Konarka Technologies, using a Fujifilm printer using cartridges loaded with Power Plastic light-to-energy fluid. At the same time New Jersey Institute of Technology is working on carbon nanotubes (what else) printed on plastic sheeting.

Meanwhile, in the headlong rush, three new sub-$400, sub-prime notebooks have been announced since last week, CTL's 2go , Intel's Classmate and MSI's so-far un-named $370 jobbie  .