Google Files First Solar Patent, Builds R&D Team

bizwriter writes "Google has moved beyond investing and using solar power and has started on serious R&D work in the field. Its first patent application in solar energy technology just became public, and the company is staffing a new R&D group 'to develop electricity from renewable energy sources at a cost less than coal' at 'utility scale.'"

Renewable? Hah!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sun has a limited supply of hydrogen fuel. If we start depending on solar, in a few measly billion years we'll be depending on hydrogen imports from undemocratic planets. And the chance of a meltdown within 5 billion years or so is pretty much 100%.

Re:Another attempt

[Zerth]

I just hope they can maintain interest longer than they did with their Power Meter API, which was just deprecated.

Re:Renewable? Hah!

[dogmatixpsych]

It's worse than that. If we start building more solar energy plants we'll use more of the energy from the sun, causing it to burn out faster. The one positive thing about that is it will counteract global warming because eventually the sun will cool down as we suck all the energy from it.

Re:Renewable? Hah!

[Mindcontrolled]

Not sure about peak sun, but we passed peak wit, obviously.