[MRM]

I hate to give the Carter Administration credit for any good idea, but I recently heard an idea on solar power that dates to then and whose time has come.

Solar technology does exist, for the most part, but it is too expensive to be cost effective. The cost to produce a single unit is expensive now because the industry has not established production on an industrial scale, so the cost per unit is being absorbed by a limited number of units rather thana being spread out over millions of units, like cars. This is caused by a catch-22: prices are high because production is low; production is low because there is little demand.

The solution is to develop a market for solar panels that industry can respond to by producing solar panels on an industrial scale, bringing product improvements and reduced per unit costs as production ramps up. Think cars and computers.

There is an easy way to create a market-based demand for solar power. The federal government controls billions of square feet of office space through the GSA. Every square foot needs to be heated, cooled and lit. The GSA's electricity bill is astronomical. If the GSA put out requests for proposals for solar power for its office space, it would create a demand for solar panels that would justify industrial scale production, spreading the cost per unit over millions of panels, nringing the cost of solar power down to cost-effective levels.

You'd have to direct the program so it didn't turn into a pork barrel black hole, but it wouldn't be hard to devise a market driven program that would create competition for solar power genrating devices and reduce the cost for all of us.