Although the Clean Energy Project is trying to produce cheap plastic energy producing devices to capture solar energy, people need to remember that items that are expensive to build come down in price with mass production and design refinements.

I would not be overly worried about trying to make solar panels as cheap as possible!
The bottom line is that we live in a Capital driven world, not a Utopian paradise.
Unless it is a marketable product, it will never sell.
If you managed to make cheap solar panels for say £1, they could not sell in our economic society simply because they would be too cheap. The retailers would not make a profit, so they are not going to even try to sell them. Transportation costs would be more than the item can sell for, so they would not even ship.

There also needs to be competition in this area!
Too expensive and they will not sell in sufficient quantities to make any environmental difference – the present situation.

So the CEP needs to aim at being cheaper than existing technologies but not dirt cheap. Sufficent to fuel the industry as well as homes, factories and offcies.

Also, there is no sense in trying to make Panels that last for ever!
In 3-8 years new panel technologies will be more economical and cost effective, assuming there is competition, so the old ones will end up in the plastics bin any way.

OK, I was being simplistic, but the point stands. If an item costs £2 to get to the shops, but it is large or bulky and the mark-up applied by the shop is 30% then the shop can only make 60p per item. Given retail overheads (Rent, staff pay, insurance, electric etc) this would probably not be sufficient to attract many retailers to sell the product. So the sales would be limited to out of town warehouses and bulk orders. This means it would be more difficult to get the items. So demand would actually fall with price. If retailers raised their overhead to make it worthwhile selling, they might not have a sufficient turnover rate to sustain continued sales. From a retailer’s point of view, as long as an item is sitting on a shelf it is taking up room and costing the retailer.
If this project managed to produce a viable product for say, under £5 but with sufficient scope for mark-up and profitability to make it sell, the result could mean an end to other manufacturing and designs, which are relatively expensive. In the long run continued research and development of today’s expensive products could well result in a superior product design. But this would be lost due to market saturation of the cheap product. The cheap product could actually become a problem in our throw-away society.
Another factor to consider is product growth rate. You can’t suddenly produce and sell millions of items. Product manufacturing and sales rates have to grow according to the rate the sector can expand. It would be folly to think that cheap plastic solar energy capture is necessarily going to be a successful product. All too often scientific research does not result in an end product. Scientists have a knack of studying things to death.
I suspect that successful sales of cheap plastic solar devices may have a limited time frame, given recent solar developments (Carbon tubes). Subsequently the product may be limited to niche environments. So, it is important to get the product out there now, even if it is not presently very cheap. The more time you spend developing a product the less time you have to manufacture and sell it, before a better product comes along. Industry needs time to build itself around a new product but can develop towards new products from existing ones a lot faster than starting afresh.

The CSIRO in Australia is currently researching cheap solar cells using plastic! Australia has the market share in plastic notes and currency and its going to turn its huge printing power towards the production of solar cells.

This is one solution but its great to have lots more.

Keep up the good work Harvard!

Hence this project.