Fun With Balloons - Correction

Correction. My last blog post was quite excited about Cool Earth's new inflatable solar concentration technology, which lowered the cost per Watt for solar to $0.20, and I found the idea too good to be true. Well, I did some further research and found a CNET article with the following quote:

"Cummings [Cool Earth's founder and CTO] envisions that these balloons will be cabled together above farmland and would be replaced every year"

Darn. I was hoping the balloons could stick around for at least a few years. If they have to be replaced every year, the cost per kWh becomes a bit higher. But what's interesting is that it's still cheaper than oil, getting close to natural gas, while still quite a bit more pricey than coal. But if they could make those balloons last four years, the price per kWh is about what coal costs!

Here are my rough calculations (I'm not a commodities trader, so I apologize if the prices aren't up to the minute):



I, for one, am rooting for them to make those balloons a little more durable.