Google’s motto continues to be – If you want something done right, do it yourself. And now they’ve added the solar power business to their plan. Google’s developing new solar tech that will drop the cost from 18 cents a kW-h to just under 5 cents.

“We’ve been looking at very unusual materials for the mirrors both for the reflective surface as well as the substrate that the mirror is mounted on,” said Google’s Bill Weihl. “Typically what we’re seeing is $2.50 to $4 a watt (for) capital cost,” Weihl said. “So a 250 megawatt installation would be $600 million to a $1 billion. It’s a lot of money.”

Google started investing in renewable energy in 2007. Along with solar thermal tech, the company is also interested in gas turbines that could run on solar power rather than natural gas.