Sunny outlook for solar power

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.thestar.com/living/article/299053

Sunny outlook for solar power

It took long enough, but this clean energy source nearly ready to compete with fossil fuels on cost

February 02, 2008
Steve Maxwell
Special to the Star

I finally know what I'm going to be when I grow up, and it's the same career I decided on 30 years ago –then abandoned.

When I graduated from high school in the late 1970s, I knew that the world needed energy. And since oil was obviously going to run out, I enrolled in George Brown College to become an alternative energy guru. Photovoltaics (PV) was one of my favourite topics. We're talking about those flat panels you put out in the sun to make electricity directly, without any moving parts.

But there was one thing I didn't realize as a college student. The world wasn't seriously ready for photovoltaics – except perhaps for powering our calculators. In fact, the situation wouldn't change until PV became cheaper and oil became significantly more expensive.

Those two trends have been happening lately, big-time. According to a report issued by the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute this past December, the magic moment when the cost of photovoltaic electricity drops to meet the price of fossil fuel production is just two years away. No one's talking about this much, but it has huge and bright implications for the future.

...

[bananas]

1. Here's the Earth Policy Institute report

http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Solar/2007.htm

[Fledermaus]

13. The United States has dropped from third to fifth place as a solar cell manufacturer since 2005

Sad, when we gave he world the solar cell.

[philb]

2. Solar concentrator technology, thin film technology, and nano technology are coming on fast

and appear to be leading to much lower solar PV and solar thermal prices.

[patch1234]

3. is any thin-film solar PV, actually for sale?

please provide link, if possible.

otherwise, I've heard the same story
since the '70s.

[diane in sf]

4. Nanosolar in Palo Alto is producing thin film solar right now as I type--google it

if you want to know more.

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. Uni-Solar (United Solar Ovonics AKA ECD Ovonics) has been selling Thin-Film PV for some time now

Nanosolar gets all the press; but they're kind of late to the game:
http://www.ovonic.com/eb_so_solar_overview.cfm

http://www.google.com/search?q=unisolar+products

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. From the EPI report

http://www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Solar/2007.htm

...

A key force driving the advancement of thin-film technologies is a polysilicon shortage that began in April 2004. In 2006, for the first time, more than half of polysilicon production went into PVs instead of computer chips. While thin films are not as efficient at converting sunlight to electricity, they currently cost less and their physical flexibility makes them more versatile than traditional solar cells. Led by the United States, thin film grew from 4 percent of the market in 2003 to 7 percent in 2006. Polysilicon supply is expected to match demand by 2010, but not before thin film grabs 20 percent of the market.

...

[NickB79]

5. "Nearly ready to compete with fossil fuel"

While, in the meantime, China is adding 90+ GW of mostly-coal-based energy each year.

I'm afraid it's become too little, too late.

Oh wait, that's doomer-porn talk, my bad.

[OKIsItJustMe]

9. You're right

I think I'll just dig my grave and jump in right now. (Will someone please fill it in for me?)

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:21630705~pagePK:34370~piPK:34424~theSitePK:4607,00.html
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/infocus/story?id=51158
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-02/01/content_7538491.htm
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2008/01/28/focus2.html
http://www.wind-energie.de/en/news/article/record-installations-in-us-china-and-spain/166/

[NickB79]

12. When one year passes that China doesn't build a new coal-fired plant

Let me know.

I also note that most of your links discuss X amounts of renewable energy being produced by 2020, 2030, 2050, etc.

In the meantime, the Arctic will be completely ice-free in 2015. Oops.

[OKIsItJustMe]

14. renewable energy being produced by 2020, 2030, 2050

I also note that most of your links discuss X amounts of renewable energy being produced by 2020, 2030, 2050, etc.

Very interesting... and here I thought I was making a conscious effort to focus on projects that were either accomplished, or in the very near future. I guess it shows how perceptions vary. (Huh?)

[NickB79]

15. If we had 20, 30, or 40 years to work on solutions, our perceptions would be the same

Unfortunately, we don't have until 2030 or 2040 anymore.

[losthills]

16. If one reads the news regularly.......

they will see that solar power is moving into the mainstream. From individual homeowners to large public and private utility companies, solar electric power is becoming the common sense choice. Even if you only read in this forum, you should be aware of that, because people are posting good news here every day.

[NickB79]

17. "people are posting good news here every day."

And people who can actually do math are posting this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x132301

Good news indeed....

[losthills]

18. Yes they are.

Sadly, you are not one of them......

[cedric]

6. You may find this of interest

It's a blog by Jeremy Leggett the executive chairman of solarcentury who provides an insiders viewpoint, from a British perspective on the solar industry. His book 'Half Gone' on peak oil is also good.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jeremy_leggett/profile.html

[cedric]

7. Wrong link

Try this one,

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jeremy_leggett/index.html

[diane in sf]

11. Thanks, great articles!!! Here's some graphs from one of them on solar economics

Keep on the sunny side


"The pooled argument, that solar PV is too expensive to be a good way for Britain to cut emissions, is dangerously wrong for three inter-related reasons.
...

First, the long payback argument is an illusion, based on the profoundly unrealistic assumption of a static price for polluting energy over decades to come. The cost of fossil fuel electricity is sure to rise rapidly. Extraction and transportation costs for oil, gas and coal are going through the roof, and fears that oil and gas reserves are overblown are breaking out in the International Energy Agency, in the oil and gas industry itself, and increasingly within governments overseas. Meanwhile, to make nuclear economics deliver we have to omit potentially enormous blank cheques from the balance sheet, and forget about the paper-thin divide between a world building more civil nuclear stations and a world building more nuclear weapons.

Second, the cost of solar PV manufacturing is coming down steadily. It falls roughly 20% every time the industry doubles global manufacturing capacity, which is every two years or so, so fast are solar manufacturing companies scaling up these days. This means that the rising cost curve for polluting power will intersect the falling cost curve of solar sometime rather sooner than most people expect, in most electricity markets. At that time we will have the conditions for a mass market, and then the industry will grow at rates that will amaze people.

Third, is a strategic argument. Energy conservation and efficiency are the most cost-effective and most important ways to cut emissions today. No sensible person can deny that. But we cannot conserve and insulate our way out of the global warming and energy security traps. We need energy supply weapons alongside demand weapons in the same way that bombers need fighters in a mobilisation for war. Solar happens to be a vital member of energy-supply-for-survival family. Without being a magic bullet, it is the only supply technology today that can give you electricity right at the point you need it. And it will marry brilliantly in the years ahead with the advanced storage and efficiency technologies under development now.

Even today, with gold standard energy efficiency designed into a new house, that house can be taken to zero carbon with as little as 10 square metres of solar PV rooftiles. What a prize, if it can be done at scale. More than half all UK emissions come from buildings. More than half of them come from residential properties. Worth a bit of strategic investment by governments and individuals, perhaps, in among the conservation and efficiency investments?
..."