How about they run with an amalgam of Silver and Copper for now?

And yet… silver price is 40% of its all time high…
As a silver investor this manipulation is excruciating

What about aluminum, instead of silver or copper? Much more plentiful on our 3rd rock from the sun.

In 1983 the Bass brothers tried to corner the silver market and silver hit $50/oz IN 1983 DOLLARS. $29/oz, while high works out to about $9/oz in 1983 dollars.

The irony of .29 copper is that is nearly free compared to silver yet people madly steal copper wire.

3:20 Here I was, anticipating you mentioning why you used "troy ounce" instead of kilogram…

Hi Matt, I wonder if a copper alloy might be feasible… I like the idea of using more of the common elements for panels…Thanks, Ron..

Solar panels have multiple fatal flaws, such as not being recyclable. Say you find enough silver and copper for the first batch to power the world. What do you do in 25 years when it's time for the second batch. And there are plenty of others issues to kill the dream of Solar. Panels are not yet efficient enough. Too many square feet of solar panel is required. The amount of land required is far more than Elon claims with his 100 miles by 100 miles to run the whole country figure.
If you carpeted the ground with solar panels like a tile floor for ten thousand square miles you could provide all the power to run the country and switch over transportation and industrial to electric, provided you could get it distributed. But that's not how solar farms work. Currently brand new solar farms here average 1 megawatt of solar for every 11 acres. 11 acres carpeted in solar with no gaps between panels is about 9 megawatts. 900% difference in land area. Then if you actually want dual use of agriculture and solar, so you aren't just sacrificing massive amounts of land, you must put solar up much higher and spread it out to 30 or 40 acres per megawatt. Now you can graze under it and grow some crops. But we are now looking at 250000 square miles instead of 10000 square miles, and now we need multiple times the steel, concrete and aluminum to raise up the array high enough in the air to farm under it and multiple times the copper to wire it all together. So, you say, do it in Arizona where you don't need to graze or grow crops. If Arizona was flat as a pancake, and we take the 10000 square miles of solar panels and multiply it by 9 to turn it into a real solar farm it would be the vast majority of the whole state. But Arizona isn't flat as a pancake. Even if it was, how do you transmit the power to New Jersey without loosing a giant portion of it to transmission loses. Solar output loses can be 25% and panel degradation is way faster in hot enviornments, like Arizona.
I think Tesla has the right Idea with the solar roof, but we need a commercial version as well. That could reduce much of the land need. At least in the south. Not a fan of panels on roofs. Attachment points are just future leaks. Cost of having to uninstall solar for roof repair or replacement is very problematic. I suspect the northern latitudes will have to find additional solutions. If first principle engineering can be done for geothermal that might work. But the current cost to drill multiple kilometers into the ground to get to the heat, will have to be over come.

fr this channel brings the best climate relevant scientific news about bleeding edge tech that I know!
I really love what you're doing! keep up the great work!

Oh cool, I didn't know you were a Rochesterian! We seem to be everywhere but Rochester, these days.

There is a massive Silver deposit north of me in Cobalt Ontario, Canada. Cobalt is often found with silver deposits, it is one of the indicator minerals since it is blue, it is easy to see. I still wonder why we are not mining more silver and cobalt there. I know they are looking but no mining is happening. Perhaps big oil will start investing in Silver, Cobalt, lithium, copper and other mines to continue making money by selling us what we need to power our modern lives

I was printing nano-copper circuits back in 2015 but the issue is that copper oxides are non-conductive but silver remains a good conductor even in higher oxidation states.

Photovoltaics have several fatal flaws:
1) too low power output per square meter, even lower if not actuated, even lower if you have stuff that casts shadows around it
2) doesn't work at night and on rainy days = needs a LOT of batteries
3) too difficult to clean and maintain, susceptible to dust buildup, thermal breaks, electrical issues, etc.
4) production of any commercially viable ones is extremely power-intensive plus involves a LOT of pollutants, most of them are manufactured in China that mostly runs on coal and completely disregards ecology
5) Because of #1, they occupy a LOT of space. This is increasingly costly and bad for environment.
6) almost impossible to repair and salvaging is very dirty and energy-intensive process almost no one does.
…
silver issues would not even make it in the first ten issues, I like to think that the price is what is stopping us from ruining the entire planet with those incorrectly thinking that they provide eco-friendly energy (they do not)

Ever heard of CuRe at First Solar? You better before it leaves you behind.

Do you have any idea about what is going on with black diamond solar cells?
I read an article about that in 2016 or '17, but have not heard anything since.

CuBert sounds most interesting. Drop-in replacement for silver screen printed cells. It seems like diffusion shouldn’t be an issue since it’s on the silicon surface. Oxidation would be the biggest unknown… Just speculating if I were an investor.

I keep hearing about the "skyrocketing" price of Ag/Silver, but when I actually go look at the price, I just don't see it, in fact, I see some up and downs, and nothing more than what I would think is inflation.

There is still the problem of the battery tech to go along with solar. Between the combination of mining, refining and manufacturing, it is still not as good as the greens would admit it to be.