Solar Energy could...

[XT]

I was reading this (http://www.livescience.com/environment/080219-kurzweil-solar.html) article about the (possible) potential of solar energy so I thought I'd start a debate here on the subject and see what 'Dopers think. According to the article something similar to Moore's Law is at work in the solar energy field, with a doubling of 'advancement' every 2 years. By this futurists calculations we should, in theory, be able to scale up to 100% use of solar power within 20 years at the current rate of progression.

BOSTON — He predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. He predicted the explosive spread of the Internet and wireless access.

Now futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil is part of distinguished panel of engineers that says solar power will scale up to produce all the energy needs of Earth's people in 20 years.

There is 10,000 times more sunlight than we need to meet 100 percent of our energy needs, he says, and the technology needed for collecting and storing it is about to emerge as the field of solar energy is going to advance exponentially in accordance with Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns. That law yields a doubling of price performance in information technologies every year.

Kurzweil, author of "The Singularity Is Near" and "The Age of Intelligent Machines," worked on the solar energy solution with Google Co-Founder Larry Page as part of a panel of experts convened by the National Association of Engineers to address the 14 "grand challenges of the 21st century," including making solar energy more economical. The panel's findings were announced here last week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.


Solar to compete in five years

Solar and wind power currently supply about 1 percent of the world's energy needs, Kurzweil said, but advances in technology are about to expand with the introduction of nano-engineered materials for solar panels, making them far more efficient, lighter and easier to install. Google has invested substantially in companies pioneering these approaches.

Regardless of any one technology, members of the panel are "confident that we are not that far away from a tipping point where energy from solar will be [economically] competitive with fossil fuels," Kurzweil said, adding that it could happen within five years.

The reason why solar energy technologies will advance exponentially, Kurzweil said, is because it is an "information technology" (one for which we can measure the information content), and thereby subject to the Law of Accelerating Returns.

I'm...skeptical. I have no doubts that solar energy will play a vital role in the future mix of energy sources as we ween ourselves away from fossil fuels, but I just can't see how we could scale up to even 50% of our energy needs coming from solar in 20 years (hell, even 10-20% would be an achievement considering how much we currently get from solar)...let alone 100%.

Thoughts?

-XT

[Triskadecamus]

As the value of energy increases, the practicality of energy harvesting technologies becomes greater. As the number of methods increases, engineering refinement makes previously rare methods more efficient.

Algal farming for bio-diesel in marginally useful desert land brings heavier development of infrastructure to remote areas. With that infrastructure available, those areas can implement wind and solar energy harvesting more efficiently. As increased numbers of consumers buy the products for this new economic niche, industry finds it more useful to fund research in small improvements to existing technology.

There is a synergy to the process. Predicting exact outcomes is chancy, but the trend is inevitable.

Tris

[Squink]

I'm...skeptical.Yeah, we still need a cheap, efficient, commercial scale solar cell. I see lots of articles about how some group has invented a revolutionary device, but never anything on how they're actually going into production. Assuming someone does finally come up with the right device, it probably will take 20 years to start to saturate the market.

[Gangster Octopus]

They also need to come up with a good, economic storage technology, because solar is not particularly effective when the sun don't shine.

[Stranger On A Train]

Ray Kurzweil is somewhat bombastic about his own predictions about future developments. He certain wasn't the first person to foresee the expansion and application of global communications and computer networks, and his famous prediction regarding the fall of the Soviet Union (based upon expanded communication capability "disempowering" authoritarian govenments) is simplistic, failing to acknowledge that the USSR had long been economically insolvent and that the political issues which resulted in the collapse of the Warsaw Pact (upon which the Soviet Union was economically dependent) predated the earliest personal computers by about a decade.

With that being said, whether there is an exponential advance in the collection and storage capability of solar power or not (and while I don't work in the field, in my cursory reading I haven't see anything indicating this) the increased global energy demand of emerging industrial nations and continuing depletion of known fossil fuel reserves may demand a transition to solar-based or solar-renewed energy, i.e. PV and thermal solar, wind and wave power, renewable biofuels, et cetera. (Virtually all energy, save for nuclear and geothermal, originally comes from the Sun anyway.) Whether this happens in twenty years or fifty largely depends not on advances in technology or government regulation, but market pressures; when oil is $200 a barrel and China is demanding 10kW-h/person/day, the impetus to develop the necessary technology and apply what is currently feasible will be much higher despite the costs.

And Kurzweil is right about the supply of solar energy vastly exceeding foreseeable need. I'm just not seeing this vast explosion of the capability of applicable storage and collection technology driving this.

Stranger

[Quartz]

The big problem with solar energy is transporting the energy from where it's generated to where it's needed. And then there's storing it until it's needed.

Solar power is good, but it's not going to be the sole solution.

[flex727]

They also need to come up with a good, economic storage technology, because solar is not particularly effective when the sun don't shine.
All we need is a Global Grid! The sun is shining somewhere on Earth all the time.

[Lamar Mundane]

The big problem with solar energy is transporting the energy from where it's generated to where it's needed. And then there's storing it until it's needed.

Solar power is good, but it's not going to be the sole solution.
Welcome to the American West, where the sun always shines and the wind blows! The future of the American energy industry lies in Colorado, Wyoming, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, etc.

Uh, can we borrow some water?

[gazpacho]

They also need to come up with a good, economic storage technology, because solar is not particularly effective when the sun don't shine.http://www.news.com/Full-steam-ahead-for-Nevada-solar-project/2100-11392_3-6166113.html

Large scale solar plants use mirrors to focus sunlight and store the heat in molten salt. This heat is then used for more conventional turbines to generate electricity. The heat will last into the night so they can generate power when the sun is down.

There are a few of the plants running in the southwest US currently.

[vibrotronica]

I, too am skeptical of solar's potential. But I got a little less skeptical after reading this Scientific American article (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan&page=1) which outlines a "grand plan" for using solar to make the US energy independent.

[BrainFireBob]

Problem is the need to develop a stable, economically viable efficient solar panel.

The most efficient panels operate at what, 16% efficiency now? The conversion rate is insufficient. As I recall, and it's been a while since I studied solar tech, that's about the theoretical maximum for the materials currently used, and developing new, more efficient panels requires developing materials with a higher maximum.

Now, that's for direct conversion of sunlight into energy through illumination of a band gap. For solar panels reliant on converting sunlight by other means, most of those are some form of heat engine, and there we're limited by the absolute maximum efficiency of 40% for heat engines.

40% is good. Is it good enough, vs. the amount of space and sunlight needed to create sufficient heat?

[Mosier]

So what this guy is saying is that even with 100% perfectly (flying pink unicorn) efficient solar panels, we'd need to cover 1/10,000 of the planet's surface (including the oceans and ice caps and mountains and other completely impractical places) to meet the energy needs of TODAY, let alone the likely higher energy needs of 20 years from now.

The idea that we'll ever get anything close to 100% of our energy requirements from land based solar panels is certainly logistically impossible. And, the more sun energy we harvest with solar panels, the less is used to stimulate photosynthesis in plants. We can't just smother the planet's surface with solar cells. Solar energy isn't, and wont ever, be even close to adequate to meet our energy needs, especially compared to the much cheaper, smaller, and more practical alternative of nuclear energy.

[Cheesesteak]

There are many reasons why this won't happen.

#1, there is no Moore's law with solar energy production. There is only X amount of energy available per square foot. Period. You can't double your efficiency every 2 years when there's a hard cap.

#2, Increasing the percentage of our energy created through solar means covering more and more stuff with solar panels. Not only does that mean that we'd be perpetually looking at solar panels, but someone has to manufacture and maintain all of these solar panels. You'd need to be able to lay solar panels like shingles, or asphalt to get enough area covered without busting everyone's bank.

#3 Storage. You can't transport an entire continent's worth of power across the globe. Not with anything remotely resembling current technology. Battery storage sucks.

[Bryan Ekers]

#3 Storage. You can't transport an entire continent's worth of power across the globe. Not with anything remotely resembling current technology. Battery storage sucks.

Well, actually, there are pilot programs using superconducting power cables that are lossless or near-lossless. Early days, but it looks promising.

[Stranger On A Train]

The big problem with solar energy is transporting the energy from where it's generated to where it's needed. And then there's storing it until it's needed.The former isn't a problem in the sense of it being technically infeasible; high voltage DC transmission is a well-developed technology that scales up very well. Of course, there would be the need to create a distribution infrastructure with much more capacity than is currently extant, but the present system (at least in the continental United States) is a cobbled together patchwork of different systems that are all past designed capacity, so the expenditure is well overdue anyway.

As for storage, storage on large scales in a static system isn't difficult, and can be done as gravitational potential energy (water or sand reservoirs), lightly compressed gas (air or nitrogen at low pressure), rotational energy (massive banks of flywheels), thermal storage, et cetera. There are mechanical and thermodynamic losses to these, but then tend to get smaller in overall proportion as the amount of storage capacity scales up. The problem is mobile energy storage; rechargeable electrochemical (NiMH) batteries are, despite decades of evolutionary development, still about two orders of magnitude or more distant in mass energy density from petrofuels, and well over an order of magnitude versus alcohols. Technologies for fuel cell storage and synthesized fuels are still in their infancy in terms of viability for transportation, with no realistic projection as to when those will be competitive with existing fuels on a cost or performance basis.

The real problem with replacing existing fossil fuel plants with solar or solar-derived energy is implied by the cited Scientific American article: "But $420 billion in subsidies from 2011 to 2050 would be required to fund the infrastructure and make it cost-competitive." This is $420B in today's dollars, never mind inflation, competition for fiscal resources, the difficulty of getting consistent funding for far-future rewards, et cetera. In short, solar power may be feasible, but even if the ongoing production and maintenance costs are lower than digging and processing fossil fuels the initial capital cost of building a new infrastructure to collect and store energy isn't currently competitive with coal and oil, for which the infrastructure already exists. Hopefully, by the time the cost of the latter rises we'll still have the capability to build the former, and we don't suffer a precipitous decline in energy availability.

It would be wise now to start investing in renewable energy production despite moderate efficiencies, if only to start making the mistakes to learn from and build up a legacy of research knowledge and technical talent to apply to the next generation of energy research. But wisdom has rarely been part of any nation's long term fiscal strategy.

Stranger

[Little Nemo]

I'm not an engineer but I haven't heard of any technologies in development that are going to bring solar energy in mainstream production. So I think we still need some revolutionary advances before we can switch over.

[XT]

Why not convert the solar power into hydrogen?

-XT

[Stranger On A Train]

#1, there is no Moore's law with solar energy production. There is only X amount of energy available per square foot. Period. You can't double your efficiency every 2 years when there's a hard cap.

#2, Increasing the percentage of our energy created through solar means covering more and more stuff with solar panels. Not only does that mean that we'd be perpetually looking at solar panels, but someone has to manufacture and maintain all of these solar panels. You'd need to be able to lay solar panels like shingles, or asphalt to get enough area covered without busting everyone's bank.These arguments are nonsensical; there is no "Moore's law with" petroleum or coal production, either; indeed, while the availability of solar energy is essentially limitless on any time scale we're likely to be concerned about in the next few millenia, coal and oil are very finite resources, and fissile fuels, while more extensive, are still ultimately limited, even assuming fuel breeding and activation methods. (Nuclear fission, of course, also has political and radioactive waste ramifications as well.) Barring the advent of nuclear fission (which perpetually seems to be "20-30 years away") or something more exotic we're going to have to transition to solar or solar-derived energy sources anyway.

The PV solar cells of today will resemble solar collection technology fifty years from now in the same way that a Model T resembles an Audi S8. No doubt they will be laid like shingles and be essentially just as robust (and readily replaced and recycled when they wear) rather than the delicate and complex PV systems today. But the efficiency of photovoltaics, while suitable for small installations, will probably never be suited to wide scale energy production. Thermal solar and solar-derived energy production systems are likely to be more effective on large scales.

Stranger

[Stranger On A Train]

Why not convert the solar power into hydrogen?In order to get hydrogen to anything like a reasonable energy density you have to liquify it, which requires extremely high pressure or cyrogenic storage, both of which have obvious problems. And even in the liquid state, hydrogen has very low volumetric energy density, so it takes up a lot more room per joule than gasoline or alcohol. Handling pure hydrogen also has other hazards (explosion, containment, hydrogen embrittlement) which make it an undesirable fuel for long term storage. We use it in space launch rockets because of how energetic it is for its mass, and because it combusts almost completely with liquid oxygen or peroxide, but even then it has significant drawbacks that resulted it hydrogen being abandoned as a fuel for missile and quick response use. Hydrogen might be usable in fuel cells where it is stored in a solid matrix or catalyzed into and out of a bound state, but this technology isn't going to give us a replacement comparable to the performance of gasoline-powered engines any time soon.

Stranger

[XT]

We aren't likely to have the high density nano-engineered solar cells any time soon either. So, as a convergent technology along with fuel cell development I would have to think it's at least viable. I can't believe that major manufacturers are pouring billions into hydrogen technology if it's not viable on a large scale...they have to be able to look at the same things you have brought up, no?

-XT

[John Mace]

We aren't likely to have the high density nano-engineered solar cells any time soon either.
Are you talking about this kind of Nanosolar (http://www.nanosolar.com/)? That company was featured in the Biz section of the SJ Mercury News a few months ago.

Stranger: PV shingles are available now, although they are not as efficient as the more common panels.

[XT]

Are you talking about this kind of Nanosolar? That company was featured in the Biz section of the SJ Mercury News a few months ago.

Yes, though the company I read about a while ago was in South Africa. The cells are basically printed on flexible materials and can be put down like carpet or wall paper. They aren't anywhere close to ready for prime time though...they don't have the density required to be really cost effective. But...eventually I could see wide scale use of this kind of technology on building roofs and such to lessen external energy consumption. I just don't see something like this replacing 100% of our energy use...but I can definitely see 20%.

And I still think you could convert solar power in, say, Arizona, to hydrogen fuel for use as a transport medium for use in personal transport. I can't believe that there is so much money being thrown at hydrogen fuel cells if they aren't viable or if there are no good logistical means for transporting the hydrogen.

-XT

[Cheesesteak]

These arguments are nonsensical; there is no "Moore's law with" petroleum or coal production, either;This is kind of the point. Power generation doesn't follow anything like Moore's law. You're not going to go from 1% of the total to 100% in 20 years by relying on technological breakthroughs. If someone proposed improving coal efficiency by leaps and bounds every year, I'd think they were nuts too. (Nuclear fission, of course, also has political and radioactive waste ramifications as well.) Barring the advent of nuclear fission (which perpetually seems to be "20-30 years away") or something more exotic we're going to have to transition to solar or solar-derived energy sources anyway. I think you meant fusion here, but you're right, it's always 20 years away, even though it is really the holy grail of power generation. More solar is good, but you have to be realistic about how far it can go, and what the technology will be 20 years from now.

The PV solar cells of today will resemble solar collection technology fifty years from now in the same way that a Model T resembles an Audi S8. No doubt they will be laid like shingles and be essentially just as robust (and readily replaced and recycled when they wear) rather than the delicate and complex PV systems today.
Very possibly true, but I was reacting to the claim that solar will compete with coal in 5 years and provide all of the Earth's energy needs by 2028. That prediction is nonsense.

[Ponder Stibbons]

Uh, can we borrow some water?Easy!

You've heard that the Greenland glacier is melting, right? And environmentalists have predicted dire consequences should all that nice, pure, fresh icewater should go straight into the ocean. Therefore, we should build a giant pipeline from Greenland to the southwestern US.

Two problems solved with one action!

[XT]

It's all downhill from Greenland too (I've looked at a globe, aye? ;) ) so we could generate energy from the water flowing down from Greenland to the Great South West and eliminate a 3rd bird as well!

(ok, I know there are several logical problems with this, but work with me here! Also, no actual birds will be harmed in the making of this technology...which will hopefully alleviate any tree hugger anxiety over the plan...)

-XT

[vibrotronica]

The real problem with replacing existing fossil fuel plants with solar or solar-derived energy is implied by the cited Scientific American article: "But $420 billion in subsidies from 2011 to 2050 would be required to fund the infrastructure and make it cost-competitive." This is $420B in today's dollars, never mind inflation, competition for fiscal resources, the difficulty of getting consistent funding for far-future rewards, et cetera.

After the $500 billion Iraq debacle, "it costs too much" doesn't cut it as an argument for me any more. That's an estimated $420 billion spread over 39 years. We've pissed away that much in the desert to secure our oil supplies in 5 years, and we're not going to have jack shit to show for it in the end. If the political will can be created, the cost won't be an issue.

[Stranger On A Train]

So, as a convergent technology along with fuel cell development I would have to think it's at least viable. I can't believe that major manufacturers are pouring billions into hydrogen technology if it's not viable on a large scale...they have to be able to look at the same things you have brought up, no?It's not viable given current state of the art in hydrogen storage. Advances in efficient reversible hydrides or matrix storage may make it more competitive (or at least practical) for general consumer transportation, though I doubt hydrogen fuel will serve as a replacement for heavy haulage or air transportation. Save for niche applications in fleet vehicles, the current state of hydrogen fuel storage technology just isn't suited to replacing petrofuels, and the low energy efficiency compared to direct electric is going to require substantial advances in storage capability of hydrogen over more robust electrochemical batteries.

Manufacturers and researchers are aware of the drawbacks of hydrogen (and I don't know that anybody is pouring "billions of dollars" into it) but the appeal of a fuel that is essentially completely non-polluting is a strong draw, but personally I suspect that electric battery storage will eventually trump hydrogen for volumetric energy density, and the storage and handling problems of hydrogen, along with the inherent inefficiencies in the "hydrogen economy" will sideline molecular hydrogen as a fuel, though it may still find use in hydrocracking and synthetic fuel enhancement.

Very possibly true, but I was reacting to the claim that solar will compete with coal in 5 years and provide all of the Earth's energy needs by 2028. That prediction is nonsense.Well, I can't disagree with that. We'll be using fossil fuels (and trying to figure out how to make them last longer or extract more energy from them, while mitigating their effects) for a few decades to come, even if we started now with an intensive solar development program. Like I said, Kurzweil is bombastic and optimistic beyond any reasonable projection. But eventually we'll have to transition to solar and solar-derived energy sources.


You've heard that the Greenland glacier is melting, right? And environmentalists have predicted dire consequences should all that nice, pure, fresh icewater should go straight into the ocean. Therefore, we should build a giant pipeline from Greenland to the southwestern US.

Two problems solved with one action!It's all downhill from Greenland too (I've looked at a globe, aye? ) so we could generate energy from the water flowing down from Greenland to the Great South West and eliminate a 3rd bird as well!I know you are both being facetious, but you'd actually have to pump a lot of energy to get water from Greenland to a lower latitude, owing to the difference in rotational energy. And water depletion--a serious problem in the American Southwest as well as other areas--isn't just an issue of water for drinking and agriculture, but also energy production; water is used as a general purpose working fluid and coolant in most large scale power generation cycles owing to its availability, low cost, relative nonreactivity and chemical hazard, and because of its fairly unique thermodynamic properties of transitioning between vapor and liquid at temperatures and pressures that are achievable using common steels, and being liquid at STP. Nitrogen, ammonia, halocarbons, or molten salts are other possible working fluids but they have to be processed and refined, and then contained lest they contaminate the environment in large amounts, making them less than useful for rejecting waste heat to the environment.

Stranger

[Stranger On A Train]

After the $500 billion Iraq debacle, "it costs too much" doesn't cut it as an argument for me any more. That's an estimated $420 billion spread over 39 years. We've pissed away that much in the desert to secure our oil supplies in 5 years, and we're not going to have jack shit to show for it in the end. If the political will can be created, the cost won't be an issue.I don't disagree with either the sentiment of waste or that funding energy development programs that make the United States independent of foreign sources is smart and viable...but try getting a $420B spending package through Congress (without strawman threats of terrorists or Commies) or sustaining the requisite level of funding for a program over two decades or more without having it cut when some jingoist wants to burn money on vaporware defense programs or election-stalking tax cut "dividends".

Creating foresighted political will is harder than squeezing oil out of desert shale, and it has an extremely high entropy factor. It's harder to contain or control than superfluid helium, and less predictable than a cat in a box. If you could figure out how to govern political will and put it to good use, controlling the global climate would be trivial in comparison.

Stranger

[XT]

I know you are both being facetious, but you'd actually have to pump a lot of energy to get water from Greenland to a lower latitude, owing to the difference in rotational energy

:eek: You mean it's NOT all down hill??

(and yes, I think we were both joking there...certainly my own statement was tongue in cheek)

-XT

[ralph124c]

..that produce oil as a by product. We can use the oceans as energy farms. Next: pass laws that madate working at home-then we can reduce our energy waste in commuting!
Finally: everybody buys one of those gas-savings gizmos (from the JC Whitney catalog)-presto: problem solved!

[Bill Door]

Yeah, we still need a cheap, efficient, commercial scale solar cell. I see lots of articles about how some group has invented a revolutionary device, but never anything on how they're actually going into production. Assuming someone does finally come up with the right device, it probably will take 20 years to start to saturate the market.

Squink, are you talking about the way it took 20 years for home computers or cellular telephones or MP3 players or DVDs to saturate the market? Because in my lifetime I've seen a tremendous compression in the time it takes for a consumer item to transit from early adopters to laggards. My guess is, that if viable solar cell technology becomes available, it will be ubiquitous in less than five years. Even if we have no improvements in solar technology, the increasing cost of fossil fuel is going to make the economics trend towards solar. At $150/barrel oil, you can do a lot with solar, and how long do you think it will be before we're paying that much?

[Voyager]

I don't much believe what Kurzweil says about anything. The media has watched too much Gilligan's Island - they seem to think an "inventor" is qualified to talk about anything.

Given that, a bunch of smart people in the Valley are backing this with real money. Yes breakthroughs will have to be made which we can't foresee, but when I started in the business the silicon technology which is obsolete today was impossible with known technology. Moore's Law, by the way, is descriptive, not prescriptive. While semiconductor companies roadmaps take it into account, things are slowing down already - not because of technology but because it is too expensive to build fabs for new process nodes.

While I agree that the transmission infrastructure means we'll never get anywhere near 100%, one of the biggest advantages of solar is that there is a lot more local generation, which should relieve the stress on transmission lines. If 50% of LA's power was locally generated, how much would that save in transmission line losses?

[Bryan Ekers]

Even if we have no improvements in solar technology, the increasing cost of fossil fuel is going to make the economics trend towards solar. At $150/barrel oil, you can do a lot with solar, and how long do you think it will be before we're paying that much?

You may be overlooking the notion that OPEC can monkey with the price and could (and by all business logic, will) cut oil prices just as viable solar tech looks close, long enough for solar investors to panic and promising industries to crash, and then start creeping the price back up again.

To be really serious about alternate energy, one has to look further than five years ahead. Twenty, minimum, and your investment will be slip to near worthlessness before it turns into gold, if you have the guts to hang on.

[Squink]

Squink, are you talking about the way it took 20 years for home computers or cellular telephones or MP3 players or DVDs to saturate the market?
...
My guess is, that if viable solar cell technology becomes available, it will be ubiquitous in less than five years.I expect that lots of homeowners will wait for viable solar cell tech, v2.0 before decking their roofs. v1.0 might be viable, but early adopters run the usual risk of paying for something that contains a fatal flaw.
Heavy industry, such as the local Ford plant, would face big infrastructure changes, plus the necessity of working out new deals with power companies to assure a constant backup supply.
I think you're underestimating the magnitude of the changes required for solar to become ubiquitous. Then again, I may be over-estimating. ;)

[Stranger On A Train]

While I agree that the transmission infrastructure means we'll never get anywhere near 100%, one of the biggest advantages of solar is that there is a lot more local generation, which should relieve the stress on transmission lines. If 50% of LA's power was locally generated, how much would that save in transmission line losses?Well, again going to a HVDC system for long distance electrical transmission will be a vast improvement on current HVAC. But decentralized and regional energy production is good for a number of reasons, including limiting energy cartels and favoritism for energy availability, reducing the complexity and providing redundancy in the transmission infrastructure, and so forth. I doubt that truly local solar power production via PV cells mounted on rooftops will ever provide sufficient electricity for standard residential and commercial use, but it can certainly be supplementary, reducing demand during peak energy time, and making some systems (like heating and cooling) semi-autonomous, further evening out loads. It might even be worthwhile to feed energy back into local grids (as some utilities currently allow for PV array owners), but you're still going to need central intensive power production sources for an industrial economy.

This combined with energy conserving construction methods and increasing efficiency in appliances could conceivably maintain the present standard of living with a vastly reduced dependence on foreign oil and domestic coal, which is a lot more appealing than running around and telling the public that they must freeze in the winter, broil in the summer, and only put on one light at a time lest they make the Baby Jesus cry.

Stranger

[Bill Door]

You may be overlooking the notion that OPEC can monkey with the price and could (and by all business logic, will) cut oil prices just as viable solar tech looks close, long enough for solar investors to panic and promising industries to crash, and then start creeping the price back up again.

To be really serious about alternate energy, one has to look further than five years ahead. Twenty, minimum, and your investment will be slip to near worthlessness before it turns into gold, if you have the guts to hang on.

Sure they can cut the price, the way video recorder manufacturers cut their prices to stave off DVDs, but it's hard to sweep back the tide. In 30 years VCR's went from a high tech curiosity purchased by innovators to quaint relics owned by a few grandparents who haven't got with the program.Here's (http://www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625/winchest.html) an interesting historical look at the cost of computer memory over time. From 1994 to 2004 the cost of hard drive memory went from $0.95/megabyte to $8.70 a gigabyte. That's better than two orders of magnitude in 10 years. There's a tipping point, and when it happens, it happens fast.

[Sam Stone]

(Nuclear fission, of course, also has political and radioactive waste ramifications as well.) Barring the advent of nuclear fission (which perpetually seems to be "20-30 years away") or something more exotic we're going to have to transition to solar or solar-derived energy sources anyway.

Well, that's an awfully fast dismissal of nuclear. Nuclear remains the only technology we have for generating the power we need without producing greenhouses gases for the forseeable future. We can solve the waste problem, and you'll be surprised how fast political consensus changes when the price of energy skyrockets.

Betting our future on solar is ridiculous. We don't really know how to get the power we need, or how much it will cost us in the end. There are political problems here as well - as soon as you try to deploy over large areas of land, you'll run into opposition. Just ask the wind power folks. From what I hear, nanosolar is overhyped.

We need high density baseload power that's available rain or shine, light or dark, windy or calm. Nuclear power plants take up a fraction of the space of other power sources. They emit no pollutants to the atmosphere. Their waste is already sequestered. The cost of nuclear is largely decoupled from the price of fuel, because fueling costs only make up a small amount of the cost of nuclear. This means costs will remain stable, which is good for the economy.

Against all these benefits, dismissing it out of hand because of waste handling and political problems seems overly dismissive, especially when they alternative you are suggesting is much more radical and unproven.

[Sam Stone]

Sure they can cut the price, the way video recorder manufacturers cut their prices to stave off DVDs, but it's hard to sweep back the tide. In 30 years VCR's went from a high tech curiosity purchased by innovators to quaint relics owned by a few grandparents who haven't got with the program.Here's (http://www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625/winchest.html) an interesting historical look at the cost of computer memory over time. From 1994 to 2004 the cost of hard drive memory went from $0.95/megabyte to $8.70 a gigabyte. That's better than two orders of magnitude in 10 years. There's a tipping point, and when it happens, it happens fast.

Why do you think solar power can track that kind of growth curve? Almost nothing does. Moore's law exists for very specific reasons having to do with advancement in the technology of printing circuitry. I don't see at all how this applies to advances in solar power, which more akin to the incremental improvements we see in other materials. I don't see people arguing that glue will be two orders of magnitude stronger in 10 years, or that steel will be two orders of magnitude stronger, or composites two orders of magnitude lighter. What's so special about solar cells that would see them tracking an exponential improvement curve akin to Moore's law?

[beowulff]

Although I'm a huge solar energy proponent, I think that algae-produced biodiesel might be more practical as an energy source. Of course the only way we are going to get out of this mess is by conserving and adopting a variety of RE sources. Solar won't be able to do it alone, just like oil doesn't today.

[Sam Stone]

Even that Scientific American article, which is overly optimistic, says we could only replace 35% of energy sources with solar within the next 40 years. What they don't mention is that our energy needs will grow by more than that amount over that period of time. So even with their grand plan and a half trillion dollars in subsidy, we'd still be pumping out the same amount of greenhouse gases.

Nuclear's the only option I can see.

[Stranger On A Train]

Well, that's an awfully fast dismissal of nuclear. Nuclear remains the only technology we have for generating the power we need without producing greenhouses gases for the forseeable future. We can solve the waste problem, and you'll be surprised how fast political consensus changes when the price of energy skyrockets...Against all these benefits, dismissing it out of hand because of waste handling and political problems seems overly dismissive, especially when they alternative you are suggesting is much more radical and unproven.I'm not dismissing nuclear fission outright as a component of energy development, but it has some substantial drawbacks, both politically and technically, and the costs of fuel processing, plant construction and maintenance, remediation and waste disposal, et cetera are much higher than comperable coal- or oil-fired plants. As for "solv[ing] the waste problem," either you are privy to solutions that have escaped the industry or you are downplaying the issues around nuclear waste disposal. We can vitrify high level waste and contain or bury other waste products, but regardless of how competitive nuclear might become in comparison to other energy sources, you're still not going to find anyone willing to play host to a nuclear dump. The notion that nuclear fission power doesn't create pollution is untrue; while the process itself is contained, the process of enriching fuel to achieve fissile potential creates quite a bit of caustic, chemically reactive waste. And safety concerns about transporting waste to a central entombment site like Yucca Repository are very real, as are concerns about plant accidents and safety failures.

Nuclear fission may very well become an important near term source, but ultimately we should be moving away from fission and into something that is renewable, cost effective, and that has little or no byproducts to process or bury.

Stranger

[MrDibble]

But...but...in 22 years none of this will matter, will it, Ray? We'll all be posthuman and any prediction beyond that is impossible, right , Mr Kurzweil? So all that effort for what, two years of forseen future?

or, less sarcastically - I don't trust Kurzweil's predictive power. But there is a thin solar plant going up in the next town over using thin film CIGS tech, and it's got a lot of German money behind it, so who knows?.

[DSeid]

Kurzweil overstates but solar technology is approaching grid parity and is well suited in many areas for meeting peak demands. There are also a variety of technologies that will make storage of energy (saving for a cloudy day) more cost realistic.

Solar can easily be a major part of a new mix of energy resources and solutions located both in centralized plants and producing energy in a distributed fashion.

[Bill Door]

To get right down to it, it's pretty much all solar, isn't it? Oil, coal, natural gas are all produced from solar energy by biological organisms during the Paleozoic or some such era. Whether you use photovoltaic cells or solar fired steam turbines or biodiesel made from cellulose or algae you're just replacing the storage media. Even nuclear depends on elements forged in the heart of a nova. That oughta hold the tree huggers. It's not nuclear, it's trapped solar energy, we're just letting it out.

[Der Trihs]

Nuclear fission may very well become an important near term source, but ultimately we should be moving away from fission and into something that is renewable, cost effective, and that has little or no byproducts to process or bury.Nuclear is the only technology we have that can produce enough energy. The majority of problems with nuclear are political, and will hopefully ease when people get desperate enough. And solar panels produce plenty of waste, both being manufactured and disposed of; and as has been pointed out, they compete with space for living things. If there's such a terms as "space pollution", solar panels are guilty of it; they are space hogs.

If not, it won't be solar, but probably coal that produces our power, which produces plenty of CO2, and plenty of waste, including radioactive waste ( plenty of uranium and thorium in the coal ). More pollution, and more ecological damage.

As for nuclear's waste disposal problem, that too is largely political. Massive facilities designed to hold nuclear waste for millenia aren't necessary; we could get away with far simpler methods of disposal. The really dangerous stuff doesn't last all that long; it's only paranoia about some tiny bit getting out in a few centuries that makes all these precautions "necessary". Mostly, waste disposal for coal and oil is cheaper not because it's safe, but because it's just dumped somewhere, or into the air. If you want to make nuclear ( or solar for that matter ) more economically competitive, passing a CO2 tax would do it.

[Stranger On A Train]

Nuclear is the only technology we have that can produce enough energy. The majority of problems with nuclear are political, and will hopefully ease when people get desperate enough...As for nuclear's waste disposal problem, that too is largely political. Massive facilities designed to hold nuclear waste for millenia aren't necessary; we could get away with far simpler methods of disposal. The really dangerous stuff doesn't last all that long; it's only paranoia about some tiny bit getting out in a few centuries that makes all these precautions "necessary".Wow, what a bunch of ignorant handwaving. Since you aren't "paranoid" about the "tiny bit getting out", perhaps you'd like to buy some shorefront property on Lake Karachay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay). The history of nuclear energy and fissile processing in the Soviet Union (http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/russia/chelyabinsk-65_nuc.htm) stands as a warning to being insufficiently prudent about safety and storage; not that other nations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire) with nuclear industries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory#Sodium_Reactor_Experiment) have been (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapelcross_nuclear_power_station#Operating_Experience_and_Incidents) immune (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident) to accidents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohunice_Nuclear_Power_Plant). This is only a small sampling of commercial nuclear accidents, and doesn't even get into accidental and intentional release of radiation and radioactive material involved in fuel and weapon grade material processing. It is true that the hazards and risks of the nuclear fuel cycle are manageable and can be mitigated by the intensive and consistent application of risk management methods and redundant safety systems, but the criticality of failure can be very high. Before making blasé pronouncements that the hazards of nuclear waste are nothing but paranoia and politics, you should educate (http://www.radwaste.org/index.html) yourself (http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/radwaste.html) on the issue.

The amount of solar energy potentially available is vastly exceeds current or foreseeable needs, and in the long term is essentially limitless, unlike fissile fuel sources. The issue isn't whether there is enough energy, but how to access and store it in a cost-effective manner. The technology to do this currently is in a primitive state, which may dictate developing nuclear fission power sources to bridge the gap and reduce dependence on fossile fuels, but long term fission is costly, hazardous, and ultimately unsustainable. Those arguing against solar energy based on a conception of PV panels covering the landscape from horizon to horizon are akin to prognosticators who insisted that the need for computers would be limited to a handful in the entire country based upon ENIAC-type vacuum tube integrators.

Stranger

[gonzomax]

Solar energy will become an important tool in reducing our fossil fuel dependency. As time goes on it will improve and become more important. It probably will never provide all our energy needs but it can help quickly. But if the technology gets there The sky is the limit.

[Bryan Ekers]

Wow, what a bunch of ignorant handwaving.

Just for laughs, what say we add up the total amount of environmental damage and premature cancer deaths and whatnot and compare it the current state of fossil-fuel power production?

I'd like to see widespread solar, myself, but let's not ignore the reality. A tightly-regulated nuclear infrastructure can do quite a lot while we wait for the maybe-someday-soon solar bonanza. The biggest barriers now are legal obstructions and political fear, not engineering or realistic environmentalism.

[XT]

Wow, what a bunch of ignorant handwaving.

It sure was...but incredibly it wasn't Der Trihs who exhibited it this time. In fact, I find myself strangely agreeing with him on this one. Even factoring in accidents in the Soviet Union and other communist countries you can't seriously think that the number of deaths or the environmental damage from, say, the generation of energy by coal is comparable to those from nuclear...do you?? Just the MINERS of coal suffer more deaths a year than have died from all the nuclear accidents in the world on a yearly basis...even the year a certain reactor actually melted down in the USSR. And this doesn't even get into all the OTHER problems generating power from coal has caused (respiratory problems, Global Warming, etc).

As for solar...perhaps you would like to tackle exactly the reasonable foot print WOULD be if we switched over based on reasonable projections of the technology...and what the associated costs would be. And what the environmental impact would be. I seem to recall that to generate power for a city you would need 2 or 3 times the cities foot print in solar cells to achieve that...however, perhaps with new projected technology that figure has come down. If so, what do you propose it is exactly?

-XT

[Cheesesteak]

Those arguing against solar energy based on a conception of PV panels covering the landscape from horizon to horizon are akin to prognosticators who insisted that the need for computers would be limited to a handful in the entire country based upon ENIAC-type vacuum tube integrators. PV Panels are never, ever going to be more than 6 times as efficient than they are today. If computers never got more than 6x as powerful as ENIAC, there WOULD be only a handful in the country. Computers are ubiquitous because they are hundreds, thousands of times more powerful than ENIAC, dirt cheap and tiny.

Solar is never going to be tiny, never going to be more than 100% efficient, will always have the problem of cloudy day/nighttime power generation, and will always cost significant money to install and tie into the power grid.

[DSeid]

Nuclear is the only technology we have that can produce enough energy....I just can't let that go unchallenged. The available energy from wind, solar or geothermal could each produce ample energy. The issues for them each is cost and ease of integrating with our current grid system. So that statement is plain false on the front that other sources cannot produce enough energy. It is also false on the front that nuclear can meet those needs. As we have discussed previously (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9299504&postcount=26) nuclear is not a realistic option for meeting much of our energy needs in the near term. There is a bottleneck in producing the parts for plants and for training those who would need to staff the plants.

Some nuclear will be part of the mix. And some less dirty coal (if not FutureGen after all). And wind. And solar. And geothermal. And biomass. And tidal. And so on .... depending on the specifics of each region's resources and needs.

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

PV Panels are never, ever going to be more than 6 times as efficient than they are today. If computers never got more than 6x as powerful as ENIAC, there WOULD be only a handful in the country. Computers are ubiquitous because they are hundreds, thousands of times more powerful than ENIAC, dirt cheap and tiny.

Solar is never going to be tiny, never going to be more than 100% efficient, will always have the problem of cloudy day/nighttime power generation, and will always cost significant money to install and tie into the power grid.
Why not? Is there something inherent in the way solar energy is collected that wouldn't allow for something like nano-technology to make whatever comprises solar cells smaller, more efficient?
And also, with regards to nuclear energy...isn't uranium or other enrichable elements needed for nuclear energy also a finite resource, like coal or oil?

[Stranger On A Train]

It sure was...but incredibly it wasn't Der Trihs who exhibited it this time. In fact, I find myself strangely agreeing with him on this one. Even factoring in accidents in the Soviet Union and other communist countries you can't seriously think that the number of deaths or the environmental damage from, say, the generation of energy by coal is comparable to those from nuclear...do you?? Just the MINERS of coal suffer more deaths a year than have died from all the nuclear accidents in the world on a yearly basis...even the year a certain reactor actually melted down in the USSR. And this doesn't even get into all the OTHER problems generating power from coal has caused (respiratory problems, Global Warming, etc).Solar is never going to be tiny, never going to be more than 100% efficient, will always have the problem of cloudy day/nighttime power generation, and will always cost significant money to install and tie into the power grid.It's like I'm pissing into the wind here. First of all, I didn't, am not, and am not going to say that nuclear fission isn't viable or shouldn't be considered, so we can bury that strawman argument; ditto for the non-sequitur comparisons between the damage done by producing and combusting fossil fuels. What I have said (and provided information regarding) is that there are significant hazards and risks associated with fission, and waste products and residues that have to be reprocessed or disposed of. Lapses in processing systems and safety procedures--which, if you'd bothered looking through the short list previously provided, did not occur only in "the Soviet Union and other communist countries"--can result in failures with a high criticality. There is no question that many more people have died mining coal and in accidents with fossil fuel power production; however, no fossil fuel accident or "excursion" has resulted the kind of long-term damage that uncontained nuclear accidents have or potentially can. While the residue of fossil fuel combustion contributes to in a variety of ways to atmospheric pollution that is not an issue with nuclear fission, this is no way mitigates the potential hazard of nuclear waste and issues with disposal, which are not "paranoia about some tiny bit getting out in a few centuries that makes all these precautions 'necessary'". Dismissing these issues superficially without consideration for the cost and risk is an inane approach to risk management and comparison of the lifecycle costs of the different energy production methods.

Regarding the efficiency of solar power: first of all, the definition of solar power isn't just photovoltaics, but should include all forms of solar and solar-derived energy (thermal solar, wave and wind, et cetera). PV certainly has theoretical efficiency limits, and no, neither PV nor any other form of energy production will "going to be more than 100% efficient". Of course, the efficiency of any steam-cycle power production is also limited by thermodynamics, with the most efficient facilities delivering only <50% through the power cycle, on top of inefficiencies in fuel processing, transportation, handling, combustion, et cetera. No form of solar will ever be as dense as coil, oil, or nuclear power plants owing to how the energy is distributed. But solar has the advantages of being readily accessible (i.e. doesn't have to be dug out of the ground or processed), produces essentially no pollution in the energy conversion cycle itself, and is unlimited in adequate supply for any foreseeable future, which compensate for lower efficiency as compared to other methods of energy conversion. Neither nuclear fission nor any other method of wide scale power production short of nuclear fusion can claim these advantages.

Nuclear fission is no doubt a necessary component in reducing dependence on fossil fuel energy production, but it should be considered a transitory step toward a permanent goal of reducing waste-generating energy production to a minimum. Dismissing the disadvantages and risks of nuclear is facile and nescient.

Stranger

[Rick]

...Finally: everybody buys one of those gas-savings gizmos (from the JC Whitney catalog)-presto: problem solved!
You are still thinking inside the box. You need to think outside the box.
You have everyone buy all the gas saving devices in the JC Whitney catalog and install them.
This one saves 20%, that one 15%, the next one 26% and so on. By the time you are done, everyone will be saving at least 211.5% of the fuel they burn, and the US will be an energy exporting nation. Hell, we might even have to resort to pumping it back into the ground we will have so much fossil fuel.

[Cheesesteak]

Why not? Is there something inherent in the way solar energy is collected that wouldn't allow for something like nano-technology to make whatever comprises solar cells smaller, more efficient?Yes. Solar energy maxes out at something like 1,000 watts per square meter, you can't ever get more power from one square meter of collector, because there isn't ever more than that amount of power hitting that area, often there's a lot less (clouds, night, etc.) Your average is going to be more like 300 watts/m.

There's no technology to go beyond that because that is all the energy available. We're under 20% efficiency now, maybe you can double or triple that in the next decade, but no matter what you do, you will still need huge tracts of land covered in solar panels to provide enough energy for the country.

[Mosier]

I just can't let that go unchallenged. The available energy from wind, solar or geothermal could each produce ample energy. The issues for them each is cost and ease of integrating with our current grid system. So that statement is plain false on the front that other sources cannot produce enough energy. It is also false on the front that nuclear can meet those needs. As we have discussed previously (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=9299504&postcount=26) nuclear is not a realistic option for meeting much of our energy needs in the near term. There is a bottleneck in producing the parts for plants and for training those who would need to staff the plants.

Some nuclear will be part of the mix. And some less dirty coal (if not FutureGen after all). And wind. And solar. And geothermal. And biomass. And tidal. And so on .... depending on the specifics of each region's resources and needs.

I think the point is that nuclear energy will have to be greatly expanded by the time the oil runs out. Hardly anyone is suggesting a 100% nuclear dependent energy economy, but almost anyone with any sense realizes that nuclear should be a BIG part of whatever future energy development plan we make.

[Bryan Ekers]

ditto for the non-sequitur comparisons between the damage done by producing and combusting fossil fuels.
How is it a non-sequitor after you make a point of citing the damage caused by nuclear? Surely a comparison is worthwhile:

Fossil fuel: well-established, significant environmental damage.
Nuclear: somewhat established, less significant environmental damage.
Solar: barely established, insignificant environmental damage.

What I have said (and provided information regarding) is that there are significant hazards and risks associated with fission, and waste products and residues that have to be reprocessed or disposed of.
Well, welcome to the sunny shores of Lake Duh.

[Stranger On A Train]

How is it a non-sequitor after you make a point of citing the damage caused by nuclear?In the context of nuclear fission versus solar, pollution from fossil fuels isn't germane. There's no question (from my statements, at least) that fission power is less polluting and more sustainable that coal and oil, but it is also carries more risk and is ultimately less sustainable than solar and solar-derived energy.

Well, welcome to the sunny shores of Lake Duh.Well, not everyone has joined us. See post #45.

Stranger

[Little Nemo]

Well, that's an awfully fast dismissal of nuclear. Nuclear remains the only technology we have for generating the power we need without producing greenhouses gases for the forseeable future. We can solve the waste problem, and you'll be surprised how fast political consensus changes when the price of energy skyrockets.

Betting our future on solar is ridiculous. We don't really know how to get the power we need, or how much it will cost us in the end. There are political problems here as well - as soon as you try to deploy over large areas of land, you'll run into opposition. Just ask the wind power folks. From what I hear, nanosolar is overhyped.

We need high density baseload power that's available rain or shine, light or dark, windy or calm. Nuclear power plants take up a fraction of the space of other power sources. They emit no pollutants to the atmosphere. Their waste is already sequestered. The cost of nuclear is largely decoupled from the price of fuel, because fueling costs only make up a small amount of the cost of nuclear. This means costs will remain stable, which is good for the economy.

Against all these benefits, dismissing it out of hand because of waste handling and political problems seems overly dismissive, especially when they alternative you are suggesting is much more radical and unproven.Nuclear is the only technology we have that can produce enough energy. The majority of problems with nuclear are political, and will hopefully ease when people get desperate enough. And solar panels produce plenty of waste, both being manufactured and disposed of; and as has been pointed out, they compete with space for living things. If there's such a terms as "space pollution", solar panels are guilty of it; they are space hogs.

If not, it won't be solar, but probably coal that produces our power, which produces plenty of CO2, and plenty of waste, including radioactive waste ( plenty of uranium and thorium in the coal ). More pollution, and more ecological damage.

As for nuclear's waste disposal problem, that too is largely political. Massive facilities designed to hold nuclear waste for millenia aren't necessary; we could get away with far simpler methods of disposal. The really dangerous stuff doesn't last all that long; it's only paranoia about some tiny bit getting out in a few centuries that makes all these precautions "necessary". Mostly, waste disposal for coal and oil is cheaper not because it's safe, but because it's just dumped somewhere, or into the air. If you want to make nuclear ( or solar for that matter ) more economically competitive, passing a CO2 tax would do it.Could somebody please summon medical help for me. I'm experiencing the sensation that Sam Stone and Der Trihs are in agreement on a political issue so obviously I've had some kind of serious brain injury.

[Mosier]

Could somebody please summon medical help for me. I'm experiencing the sensation that Sam Stone and Der Trihs are in agreement on a political issue so obviously I've had some kind of serious brain injury.

Expanding the nuclear energy program shouldn't be a political issue. It should be so obvious that it's just assumed and taken for granted, like printing math textbooks and washing your belly button in the shower.

[Bryan Ekers]

In the context of nuclear fission versus solar, pollution from fossil fuels isn't germane.

We'll just to disagree, then. If the issue is reducing fossil-fuel pollution, we have one good method with significant political barriers (nuclear) and one potentially okay method with significant technical barriers (solar).[/quote]

There's no question (from my statements, at least) that fission power is less polluting and more sustainable that coal and oil, but it is also carries more riskI cheerfully recognize a risk in nuclear, but I'll need more than your statements that it's a greater risk than fossil-fuels....and is ultimately less sustainable than solar and solar-derived energy.
In theory... maybe. We'll need to see solar implemented on a much larger scale before we can firmly say it competes with nuclear. I mean, everything looks good on paper.
Well, not everyone has joined us. See post #45.
I don't see anything in his statement that ignores the risks of nuclear - just that (and I agree) it can be safely managed if the political will exists to do so.

[XT]

Sorry about not having been following the discussion much...work has been a bitch this week.

I won't get into the nuclear hijack anymore but instead just thought I'd drop in this (http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2008-02/shocker-worlds-largest-solar-plant-use-solar-panels) brief article (it has some good links in there) about solar:

The last few years have seen tremendous growth in solar thermal power plants—huge arrays of mirrors that concentrate the sun's energy onto a liquid which then boils and spins a turbine. The process is generally more efficient than using photovoltaic panels, and new solar thermal plants under construction in Spain and Australia will be among the largest capacity solar plants in the world. Old-fashioned PV panels were starting to look archaic, or at least suitable only for small-scale projects like roof instillations. But not all PV panels are created alike.

On Monday, the Hong Kong–based CLP power group announced it will invest $270 million in what will be the world's largest solar plant. Once the plant is completed in 2013 in Victoria, Australia, it will generate 154MW of electricity, enough to power 45,000 homes. Yet they're not using solar thermal. Instead, they're using a similar method called concentrated photovoltaic. The technology is much like solar thermal in that it uses a huge field of mirrors to concentrate light, but instead of heating a liquid to generate steam, this concentrated light illuminates a high-efficiency PV panel that then converts the energy into electricity.

Typical photovoltaic panels are made of silicon, and only convert about 10 to 15 percent of incoming light into energy. One way to attack silicon's cost/efficiency problem is to lower the cost, the strategy of thin-film firms like our 2007 Innovation of the Year winner Nanosolar. The other is to up the efficiency. Using technology that it considers proprietary (i.e., they won't say more), Solar Systems, the Australian company building the new plant, has created solar panels that triple the efficiency of silicon. Interestingly, since the concentrated sunlight at these panels is so intense, the steel-backed panels need elaborate cooling systems to keep them down to a 60°C operating temperature. With only a few small panels working at high efficiency, the company can keep costs down and power output high.

But don't count solar thermal out. Racing the Australian project for the title of the world largest will be Mojave Solar Park, a 554MW behemoth in California's Mojave Desert that will supply power to 400,000 homes.

-XT