Tech Talk

Don't you guys realize that PhotoVoltaics should NOT be expected to be useful for American Power Plants? Solar and Wind can not make reliable Electric Plants - unless they are designed into Hybrids with Fossil Fuel or into suitable (Pumped Water) Storage/Hydro Capability. The whole point to the Crosbyton Solar Power Project, which I Directed, was a WAR with USDOE in which Texas Tech University Designed a Fossil Fuel Hybrid to show how to use Solar Thermal Power. We made the Nation's First Commercial Electricity from Solar Steam! USDOE wanted its contractors to design Stand Alone Solar Electric Power Plants - STUPID!

You cite a PV price estimate of $4-5/Watt and point to a recent blog post. But that posting, which is mostly on wind power, says at the end that recent PV installations are running from $7.6 to $6.2 per Watt, a much higher value.

Site solarbuzz.com has a graph of actual installed solar module prices over most of the past decade. There have been some ups and downs but not all that much price decrease overall. I'm afraid the Moore's Law story is at this point more wishful thinking than based on evidence.

I did a comparison of solar vs. wind power for providing electricity to a small sailboat recently. I was amazed to find out how much cheaper wind power was, even for this application. Solar power has many advantages. I hope that cost will be one of them before long.

A Moore's law for solar is a completly missing the point of both Moore's law, which is based upon size reduction technology, and Solar Cell production costs, etching chemicals, handling and packaging associated with producing solar cells. Your article will be more productive if it addresses the latter in specifics. The title is only an attention grabber.

I have reviewed this technology and reviewed the ability to implement this on a large scale, several megawatts. This appears to be only economically feasible in Canada where the government is offering substainial incentives. Most groups of cells produce 300 volts of DC grouped together over a large area. There is no motor start capabilty so the utility sources will always be required. They are only peak shaving devices. My concern is these devices will undermine the integrity (robustness) and efficency of real power producing plants&transmission systems (nuclear, coal, gas)by shaving peaks, reducing efficiencies, and increasing the cost of bulk power production. Our economy depends upon 24 hour available energy, 365 day, wind and solar can never provide reliable bulk power just because of its dependence on sunlight and wind. (On another note, we do not fully understand if we use the weather for energy how does that effect the normal weather pattern. I dare guess more so that CO2 emmisions) Until some efficient way is developed to store the energy, we may be indangering our national and economic security to the variations of the weather. I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the previous generation of engineers and decision makers for developing our quality of life. It is a shame that our legacy may be how we destoyed it, with the greatest of intentions of preserving it. I think we have dismissed existing power producing techniques much too quickly and are too got up in the idealistic promises of wind and solar power. Very similar to our decision not to drill for domestic oil, and now we are shocked at the skyrocketing prices. Same difference?

I don't know where these relatively high price projections are coming from. In December 2007 Nanosolar started shipping product they claimed was under $1/watt (at this stage only to big buyers; they sold out their first year of production). I'm not sure what that translates to installed but others who are shooting for $1/watt are claiming an installed cost of $2/watt. A google search on solar $1 per watt has a lot of hits though most are not yet in production.

I have been tracking photovoltaics for the last 25 years. After all the great promises of cheap PV cells: mono-crystalline and poly-crystalline stuff, we are where we were all these years. So far PV does not appear to be a serious business for meeting heavy baseline loads on 24 hours basis. It is fine for specialized applications especially when the need is at far removed places and the power demand is in few watts. Rest all is just a hype to keep us toying with the idea of unlimited solar power and no operational cost. So time has come we stop living in fantasy world and face ground realities. Only the uninitiated are impressed, sometimes to devastating results, but those who know, it is just no more than a commercial ploy.

I would like to send this article to my son who works in the solar industry. I did not see a means to forward the article. Is forwarding of articles possible?

Since I put panels on my roof in 2005 the price of solar panels have actually gone up by around 25% in the last 3-4 years. There is still a lot of competition for silicon and with rising energy prices, ironically, the price of processed silicon is bound to go up. Eventually I do believe the rising price of conventional energy will make PV more attractive (not because solar panel prices will drop).

One of the hardest things to predict is the future. Nonetheless, we have to continue R&D on photovoltaics. We can't afford to ignore any potentially major source of energy for mankind.

People need to remember that solar power would be more neighborhood friendly than wind. Unless there are huge advances in making windmills invisible and quiet, most folks won't want them. I know folks on Block Island, RI that pay exorbitant fees for power because they have to have their own power plant and the fuel is brought in by boat. Wind power would be a great supplement and could reduce the cost but the residents view it like cell towers and landfills - not in my backyard.

Look Guys, Solar is emerging as the financial choice, even over wind, even over dirty old coal, here's why:

1. coal has doubed in price over the last several years and is expected to double again and soon.

2. the coming carbon taxes and or cap and trade or auction will cost scores of billions nationwide. Existing coal plants will come under new scrutiny and sensible regulation as they are mostly poorly regulated now. This will cost serious money but must happen.

3. While a new coal plant of medium size will cost $3 billion dollars, a field of photovoltaics is enjoying a decreasing cost perspective, rather than an increasing cost like coal.

4. As Kurzweil notes, PV cells are chips, and performance is going up while cost is coming down. The time between advances in solar is shortening with each passing year. Solar can be supplemented with wind and some very good and relatively cheap electricity storage devices that are already being implemented in other parts of the world, including pumping water to a high elevation, heat storage, and soon enough, super duper capacitors.

coals hidden costs:
When you compute the cost of coal,
be sure to add in the cost of deaths from coal's emissions,
the likelihood that underground carbon sequestration will rapidly vent 10 years of stack emissions into a towns air as a result of a geologic event,
the loss of a mountain range, the appalachians have already had 450 mountain tops blown off for easy cheap coal extraction of the coal beneath the mountain top.

You could also go nuclear, and enjoy the ramifications of nuclear releases and endless waste storage. Davis Besse almost took out a major Ohio city, becase they didn't want to do mandatory inspections of the reactor head in spite of the fact that the reactor's designed life was grossly extended with the stroke of a pen. It developed a hole in the reactor head the size of a bleach bottle, the coolant leak had eaten through ten inches of steel. There is no safety culture at a corporate run reactor in the U.S. They simply follow orders.

Do these guys know about Nanosolar? As early as Xmas last year, they claim to be shipping nanotech panels in the range of $0.99/W.

http://www.nanosolar.com/blog3/#post-23

Nanosolar, just went online this year in California with the world's largest solar manufacturing plant, first 18 months was sold to a german utility-type company at .99/kw.

Sunrgi, concentrated solar expects to be on the market in a few years at .05/kw

Dye-sensitized solar and popcorn nano-balls- new technology, cheap, increased efficiency

These are all new and emerging but will be huge within years

One and all - the largest challenge ahead for PV is not the cost of the PV cells. Just pretend for a moment that the PV cells were free. What would it cost to install, buffer, and intergrate with the grid? Oh, about $4-5 / watt now. The largest problem seen by those on the street trying to make a living with solar is that is NOT the cell, its the deployment. Lets focus our thinking in that direction.

Now, of course, if we are talking utility sized PV generation sites - install/deploy costs are somewhat mitigated due to large volume. Then the issue will become one of storage of power during peak times to use during super peaks and shoulder times of the day. This is faced by all solar generation facilities of all size and technologies.

I think PV has a lot to offer, but like other solar renewables, it needs to ride on the constant shoulders of steady base power. Right now our best hope for increased base power is coal and nuclear.

Summary: Its not the cells! Its the deployment.

I don't understand the argument of the first few posters - of course we can't meet all of our power needs from solar energy without a storage mechanism - it will always be part of a power mix. But getting the electricity at the right times - sunny days, when electricity usage peaks - means that the power company does not have to fire up that natural-gas fueled standby plant to meet peak demand.

The grid will probably always be combined with solar, because it will often be the cheapest way to store the energy used during dark periods. IEEE Spectrum, time to do a detailed cost analysis for PV installations at various scales!

Also, there is a hidden benefit to integrating DC power into the grid. Generally, DC sources have full control over the reactive component of the AC power at its terminals, due to the power electronic converter used. This can increase the stability of a heavily stressed grid, even if no power is being generated at the moment. Grid stress (and peak loads) generally happen on sunny afternoons, and peak power can be significantly more expensive than baseload power.

Power electronics, while not subject to Moore's law, are about to see major improvements with the introduction of Silicon Carbide devices.

Another important consideration: Cars will soon be exchanging electric power with the grid on a large scale.

Finally, realistic analysis of the total cost of fossil fuels should include a large subsidy for the US army protecting US supplies of oil with its various presences in the mideast.

The business and economic models for PV solar power do not apply. After all costs for production, installation, maintenance, etc., are recovered (be it 10 years or 100 years), the most inefficient PV panel becomes infinitely efficient! - they produce electricity from something that has no recurring costs.

Solar panels have a life expectancy due to crystal degradation, controls have a useful life, every technology has good and bad aspects. With this having been said let's all try to be realistic Solar is not!! suited for powering 24 hour base load, large manufacting or other high density power consumers BUT!!!! it is well suited for providing energy during Daylight (Peaking) periods to reduce overall energy consumption and reduce the use of inefficent power plants. Solar power is a great alternative that is viable but not quite yet commercially viable for most applications. We need to support and develop it to achieve these goals and to improve our world as a whole. This is the purpose of engineering and technology development and research.

Solar cells do not last forever. At a meeting last year by the Seattle chapter of the Industrial Applications Society, typical life was quoted at 10 years for silicon and less for organics.

Are the $X/watt costs cited for solar and wind for PEAK power or AVERAGE power? For example, a 100 watt peak solar panels delivers this amount for the equivalent of about 5 hours a day. Hence the peak cost has to be multiplied by 5 to get the average cost. A nuclear plant, however, has 80%+ uptime these days, and costs $5.00 per watt, the same as the cheapest most optimistic $1 (times 5!) solar panels, but it runs 24/7.

The cost of energy storage is significant, typically on the order of the cost of generating the power in the first place.

I have been living off power for thirty years, and solar has not been practical...necessary, but never practical...until a truly efficient method of storage is developed it never will be...Eric Larson says it well. remember that when the best solar gain is achieved it is also when the greatest demand occurs, be it air conditioning or factory hours, so even given the dream that enough panels would be out there, true contributions will always be a gleam in some fathers eye...
the greatest gains to be made are in storage and consumption, storage has remained stagnant, increased capacity in batteries for instance has gone nowhere in decades...the demand in just electric autos would use all the capacity for forever...(which is driving the research into better batteries, who would have considered that twenty years ago?)
secondly, all the oil in alaska would be unnecessary if mpg averages went up by a few gallons...I would have been impressed if this effort had been evident in the 70s, during the gas crisis that threw the USA into recession/inflation/stagnation...
add to this the question of if panels ever do pay for themselves, the cost and pollution incurred in their manufacture, the very real hazard of damage. power plants should never become dependent on outside sources of energy, one wide-spread severe storm could affect the entire grid.
until there are affordable life time batteries, and paint on solar cells, (OK, maybe this will happen, but not in my lifetime), we should focus on cleaning up the energy we use now, and increasing efficiencies along the dream of murphy's law...imagine if consumption, per capita were to halve along that concept...and we have the technology right now to achieve both,cleaner energy and reduced consumption, we just seem to lack the will, china has had the opportunity to build only clean coal plants and chooses not to do so, a legacy of filthy air that will be with the world for generations...if the USA were to fund clean technology for all of china it will cost less than the war in iraq, and the savings in fuel would render the cause for the USA's presence in the mid-east far more insignificant...a decent legacy for our children
solar and other alternative power sources should be pursued, along with a station on the moon, interesting, commendable, useful for the future...but of little use in the near future. what is needed now are commercially viable air conditioners that run on a quarter of the energy, just pick any appliance, across the globe...

Why is there no mention of Nano Solar? These are printed on flexible sheets and the cost is $3/W.

A myriad of battery assisted cars with plug ins are bound to absorb any grid imbalances, and if not, every other street light or more (the current ballast to the grid) can be turned off to supplement the supply. Wind desert/solar by conventional means and PV power are essential to our fight for energy in the world now that oil is failing us. I feel that advances in PV tech will be welcomed by the smaller, home/commercial installations and support research towards a major breakthrough which could provide a more secure future for all of us.

I was told about a project from Sirius/PureProphet in which they would have home models of wind power turbines which could intake air using sailboat technology to keep air incoming at the strongest.

The article mentions that wind power must only be done on a farm level, but in the same sense that they believe photovoltaics will take off, I hope we have a steady competition between wind and light, and soon!

Solar, wind, wave, geothermal, algae, wood chips, garbage, switch grass, corn-based ethanol, coal, oil, reformed coal, natural gas, methane gas from garbage land fills, etc. [Nuclear is a bad option] If I missed any carbon or other natural based sources, please add them.

We need energy to run civilization as we know it. Businesses are competitive, not altruistic unless they get an edge in the market from it. Entrenched energy businesses have nothing to gain from new energy source companies reducing their market share. The deafening silence from business and government for the last 40 years shows how profitable these ideas are. The current world's economies rely on coal and oil.

As long as coal and oil are profitable, they will be our fate, thus, all is gloom and doom.....

BUT: [Energy businesses please take note]

Natural gas (methane) can be made from CO2 and water (Lots more energy required).

NATURAL GAS CAN BE CONVERTED TO GASOLINE (YOU HAVE TO ADD ENERGY AND USE A MOBILE OIL [OLD PATENT FACTORY SCALE TESTED IN NEW ZEALAND] ZEOLITE CATALIST).

All the energy sources we can create form solar, wind, etc., that do not generate a liquid fuel immediately, should be used to turn CO2 into a feedstock for energy storage.

If this is done properly, it becomes a zero-sum energy game to run our civilizations, as we know them. The PV cost curve IS IMPROVING; we need not quibble at the speed. PV is an important cog in the wheels of progress. Political will and solutions are required.

By the way, solar cells have a finite lifetime, about 20 years I think.

The great thing about PV is that it may someday be economically feasible and it is another source of energy.
The scary thing is when activists and politicians speak of PV and other alt sources as a silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. Economies run on energy. If we truly want to see the world lifted out of poverty and not sink into it ourselves, we need to develop ALL energy sources as they are or become economically feasible. Anything beyond this is narrow sighted, agenda driven, fantasy. Following the feel good path will feel pretty bad when the glow wears off down the road.
In this election cycle, are there any politicians that understand this? Do we as a nation have the guts and fortitude to admit it?

Personally, I don't see where all these low prices of solar power are coming from.

I just priced out a 3 kW residential system for us to play with before our customers started to install them, and was quoted $8.50 to $9.00 per watt for an installed system. This was a grid-intertied system, typical of which a homeowner would install. At our current residential retail rates, and assuming 4% interest on our money, it would take between 59 and 97 years to pay back the system. If our rates jumped 50% the payback time would drop to between 52 and 70 years. The hype of cheap solar has yet to catch up with the retail market.

Solar is not a panacea, and neither is wind. Solar dies when it's overcast, and dies when it's dark. People still want the lights and AC running until late at night. Wind has an annoying habit of dying during the peak loads - it's always dead calm whenever it's the hottest or the coldest outside. Our peak loads are typically between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m. Dispatchable generation must always be held in reserve for those times.

Solar and wind are great for reducing your fuel consumption, but don't reduce the need for new power plants to handle the peak loads.

Energy storage will always be a problem for solar or wind power but there will be solutions. In the 1970's energy crisis we were looking at hyper speed flywheels electrically suspended in vacuum, today the ultra capacitors look like the front-runner technology. I am sure that in fifty years, green retailers will build buildings roofed with PV that will make and store power will be cost comparable to today’s wind power. I am also sure that it will not be competitive with the commercial power of the day.
We have this energy crisis because of politicians who do not want solutions. Current coal liquidification became competitive at about $55/barrel oil, oil shale extraction at about between $5 and $10 less than that. The Alberta oil from sands is even cheaper than that, if the necessary pipelines and refineries can get built. I cannot discuss the improvements in nuclear technology since that impacts security requirements of my job but they have been substantial over the last three decades and would expand rapidly if not artificially constrained.
The point is that the "energy crisis" is artificial and new improvements in technology will never be viable when the whole purpose of "Global Warming" is to hold capacity off the market and leave "we the people" with less. If the elete's artificial constrints fall as they did in 1980 then the cost of energy is between a third and a fourth of what current cost are and the bar.

I suppose that an open forum like this can not prohibit silly contributions like the following:

Solar can be supplemented with wind and some very good and relatively cheap electricity storage devices

The grid will probably always be combined with solar, because it will often be the cheapest way to store the energy used during dark periods

The business and economic models for PV solar power do not apply. After all costs for production, installation, maintenance, etc., are recovered (be it 10 years or 100 years), the most inefficient PV panel becomes infinitely efficient! - they produce electricity from something that has no recurring costs.

All the energy sources we can create form solar, wind, etc., that do not generate a liquid fuel immediately, should be used to turn CO2 into a feedstock for energy storage.

the whole purpose of "Global Warming" is to hold capacity off the market and leave "we the people" with less.

To John D. Reichert. I was there when Good Morning America broadcast the distribution of the first commercially available solar power. Not really sure the Crosbyton Solar project got the appropriate recognition. I am willing to bet that Kent remembers.. Nice Work!

Would love to visit - call me.