Quantum Dot Recipe May Lead To Cheaper Solar Panels

Science Daily is reporting that scientists have developed a new method for cost-effectively producing four-armed quantum dots that have previously been shown to be particularly effective at converting sunlight into electrical energy. The discovery could clear the way for better, cheaper solar energy panels.

Comments

Oil Companies

[biocute]

I notice oil companies are heavily involved in solar energy, are they securing their future and/or slowing solar tech down?

I would hate to reincarnate into a world where BP is still selling me (solar) energy as costly as what it is today.

Can individuals adequately produce energy themselves in the future, or will big-corps still be the real suppliers?

Re:Oil Companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Can individuals adequately produce energy themselves

Yes, you probably can, right now, provided you absolutely disregard patent law and have a smallish garden. The patent system is used by oil/power companies to clamp down on development - most of the anti-software-patent arguments apply to patents generally.

Re:Oil Companies

[wllmsaccnt]

I would hate to think that they are only securing the technology to abuse the patents. It may end up being a similar scenario to the Vonage/Verizon VOIP patent lawsuit. If a company can make groundbreaking breakthrough in competing markets, they can effectifly shut down growth from that competittion, or at least stiffle it through the threat and presence of lawsuits.

Re:Oil Companies

[Rycross]

I remember hearing here on slashdot that a lot of the energy companies actually recognize the fact of global warming. That, combined with the dual threat of peak oil, and they probably see the writing on the wall. To that effect, they're probably looking for ways to maintain their bottom line. Corporations are many things, but they aren't evil just for the heck of it. They're in it for profit.

Re:Oil Companies

[MightyYar]

I'll be happy if I can buy solar energy tomorrow as cheaply as I can fossil-fuel energy today. Fossil fuel is still pretty cheap, even with the OPEC cartel.

Re:Oil Companies

[vertinox]

are they securing their future and/or slowing solar tech down?

Maybe they know their business model is about to die a very bad death due to market changes we don't know about.

Remember, the oil companies came up with the Peak Oil theory, not the environmentalists.

Re:Oil Companies

[gurps_npc]

Without heavy price protection, I will bet that big corps will not be able to sell power in dry rural areas, particularly in the South West.

But they will DEFINITELY be selling power in major metropolitan areas. The tiny amount of sun my Condo gets in NYC is no where near enough to power my requirements. (On the other hand, my carbon footprint is about 1/3 average, because I use the subway instead of owning a car).

Re:Oil Companies

[amRadioHed]

Corporations are many things, but they aren't evil just for the heck of it. They're in it for profit. I'm confused. Are you trying to say corporations are evil, but it's ok since it helps them make money?

Re:Oil Companies

[Jeremi]

I'm confused. Are you trying to say corporations are evil, but it's ok since it helps them make money?

He's saying they aren't immoral so much as amoral. They don't sit around twirling their mustaches thinking of new ways to ruin the planet; rather, they sit around twirling their mustaches thinking up new ways to make money.

Re:Oil Companies

[Jeremi]

Fossil fuel is still pretty cheap, even with the OPEC cartel.

Don't forget to factor in the externalized costs (air pollution, global warming, terrorism, your children getting sent to Iraq, etc). The price you pay at the pump isn't the only price there is to be paid.

Re:Oil Companies

[Jaqenn]

I'm confused. Are you trying to say corporations are evil, but it's ok since it helps them make money? He's saying that corps will be evil if it helps them make money, and will not be evil if that helps them make money.

I guess it could be comforting, really, because at least then you have a pretty good idea of what will and won't do in a given situation.

Re:Oil Companies

[cheater512]

It is always more efficient to do stuff in bulk.

Re:Oil Companies

[monopole]

The problem is that the profitability metrics tend to be on the 3-6 month timeframe. Consider dealing with people that live on that timeframe and can't be imprisoned or executed.

Re:Oil Companies

[Rei]

So, let's see if I have this straight. If oil companies don't invest in renewables, then they're referred to as dinosaurs and treated as garbage that's holding the world back while they destroy it. If oil companies do invest in renewables -- in the case of solar, outright doubling the amount of investment dollars in it (esp. BP and Shell) -- then they're only doing it to lay out patent minefields and stamp out development.

Tell me -- how do they win? No, really -- what can they do to make you happy? Leave the oil industry altogether, so that prices shoot through the roof, and some other oil company which cares *less* for the environment can take their place?

Meanwhile, people like you just keep driving and driving, taking airplanes and using plastics, and all the while acting like it's someone else's fault. Well, guess what? The problem is *consumption*.

Some oil companies, like Shell and BP, are hedging their bets with investments in renewables and carbon sequestration. While in each case it's only a couple percent of their revenues, the oil industry is so much bigger than the renewables industry that it majorly increases the dollars going into renewables. They're making that bet so that, in case energy sources do change or carbon sequestration is mandated, they're in a position to capitalize on it. Since sequestration and renewables would drive their competitors out of business, you'll find lots of instances of Shell and BP execs encouraging governments to act on climate change. Others, like the monstrously big Exxon-Mobil, aren't taking that bet. As a consequence, you'll find that something like 90% of the anti-global-warming and anti-renewables PR can trace back to them.

That's not to say that even the renewables supporters are angels. They still lobby, like all oil companies, for laws that protect their core businesses**. It's a dirty business, and the stricter environmental controls are for production, the tougher it is for them. Still, I'm a firm believer that A) renewables investments so big that they double the size the investment pool in some cases are a very good thing, and B) instead of complaining about those evil old oil companies, *stop consuming their damn product* if you have a problem with it. If you don't, you're *part of the problem*. The world's burdens shouldn't fall on their shoulders just because *you* don't want to think of yourself as part of the problem when you're the reason why they have to produce that environment-destroying stuff in the first place.

** On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised when I looked up what was being lobbied for and found that most oil companies, even Exxon-Mobil, lobby as "peaceniks" ;) Each major oil company had at least one country that they were pushing for more peaceful relations with. Why? You can't safely drill in a war-torn nation, and you can't drill in a nation that has a cold war going with your country. One wanted better relations with Iran. Another wanted better relations with Libya (they got that). And on, and on.

Re:Oil Companies

[pclminion]

I'm confused. Are you trying to say corporations are evil, but it's ok since it helps them make money?

The OP is saying that their evil has a motive, as opposed to "pure evil" so to speak. The topic of this thread is not the motivation of the oil companies (that is not in dispute), but rather whether their motives will cause them to seek non-petroleum energy sources in the future. The short answer is "Yes, it will." The motive is profit, the behavior is (subjectively) evil, and petroleum has nothing to do with it.

Re:Oil Companies

[Rei]

I don't know where on earth you get that from, but it can take over a decade for a new oil field to come online. You think that they're sinking money a for things that will pay off a decade or more down the line but they're only thinking on a 3-6 month timeframe?

Part of the problem is that it *does* take a while to shift production. You can reopen old wells or expand an existing field in half a year to a couple years, but brand new projects take many years to get started. Consequently, they have to do a lot of gambling on what the state of the world will be. There are tons of oil resources (bitumen, coal liquifaction, oil shale, arctic and deep sea extraction, etc), but we're running out of the "cheap" ones. The question is, how much of the more expensive ones do we think we'll need, ten years down the road? Will Nigerians be sabotaging pipelines, or will the crisis be resolved? Will the middle east have calmed down or will a whole new can of worms have opened up? Will foreign governments make nasty surprises on your projects, like Russia taking over Sakhalin or the Venezuelan goverment taking over joint ventures with PDVSA?

Not exactly an easy problem to solve. Bet wrong, and you'll go out of business. But you have to bet. Oil companies don't stay in business for half a century or more by only looking at their next year. Yet, that's exactly what the supermajors have done -- stay in business, decade after decade.

Re:Oil Companies

[amRadioHed]

So doing whatever benefits them regardless of the consequences to anyone or anything else. How is that behavior distinguishable from "evil"?

Re:Oil Companies

[Rei]

Oh, yeah, you say that now, but just you wait 'till OSEC (Organization of Silicon Exporting Countries) threatens to embargo the US... ;)

Re:Oil Companies

[amRadioHed]

He's saying that corps will be evil if it helps them make money, and will not be evil if that helps them make money. Like I said in a comment above, how is that different from what we would consider evil? Only caring about how consequences of your actions directly influence your wellbeing fits squarely into what I would consider evil.

Re:Oil Companies

[Rycross]

You're getting off track. We're not discussing whether or not their actions are evil. We're discussing whether they're investing in solar to bury it or in order to bring it to a viable means of energy production. My point is that the board room members aren't villains from "Captain Planet." They don't sit around going "MWA HA HA HA! Lets kill off solar! Its good for the planet, thus doing so would be EVIL! And we're EVIL! MWA HA HA!" If they're attempting to kill off solar, it would be done so in order to make profit, since thats their goal.

I then go on further to say that global warming, peak oil, and other various problems with oil as an energy source are starting to gain a lot of focus by the populace at large. I theorize that the oil company executives see where the tides are turning, and are investing in solar to maintain their profits when the tides finally turn. I don't see them sinking R and D money into solar just to ignore a possible revenue stream, especially since investing that money in politicians could just as easily solve the whole "solar problem."

Of course, other posters pointed out that they may have a short-term view, which may be the case. Its all speculation, unless you know someone very high in the decision making process at one of these companies.

At any rate, I'm certainly not suggesting that the oil companies are gee-golly our best friends, nor am I suggesting that doing evil to make money is a-ok.

Reading comprehension FTW.

Re:Oil Companies

[JDevers]

I don't remember 'corporate lawful evil' as a choice in AD&D...

Re:Oil Companies

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I notice oil companies are heavily involved in solar energy, are they securing their future and/or slowing solar tech down?

Oil companies recognized a long time ago that much of their business was selling energy - or the means to obtain usable energy. And long before the whole "global warming" flap (back during the last "here comes an ice age" flap, actually) they recognized that using their products caused pollution, and people were looking for cleaner ways to get energy - which might reduce their market.

It makes sense for them to be able to make money from the big-business end of selling people the means to get usable energy. That way, if the market suddenly shifts to something else, they get to make money off that to compensate for the lost revenue on the old stuff. And if research is needed they had a LOT of money to invest in it - just as they invest in exploration for more oil deposits.

So they did a lot of research on ways to make money by enabling people to make energy OTHER than by pumping, refining, and selling oil.

One of those was photovoltaic panels. ARCO, for instance, did a bunch of work on that, eventually bringing quality modules to market at prices that make them practical in a large number of locations. (That operation has been absorbed into BP Solar if I have my players sorted out correctly.)

They'll be happy to sell you oil to burn in engines. They'll be happy to sell you photovoltaic modules. (They'll probably be happy to sell you fusion engines if they ever work out, too.)

Trying to keep solar energy out of the market does them no good. If somebody else comes up with something practical and they CAN'T stop it, they lose revenue on oil and don't get compensating revenue from the replacement. So their best strategy is to be in that market with a product competitive enough to give them significant market share, at a price that gives them a decent return but doesn't cripple the consumer. (And first company that makes a breakthrough that starts the switchover gets the lion's share of the money to be made.) They're smart enough to realize this.

Re:Oil Companies

[MightyYar]

Of course I was referring to the dollar cost - it is obviously beneficial to get your energy from a place that is not volatile. I should point out that most fossil-fuel electricity in the US comes from coal - a domestic resource - so your list would really be shortened to air pollution and global warming... solar energy won't get cars off of the road.

Air pollution can be mitigated in a coal plant, but it is hard to get rid of CO2 emissions!

Re:Oil Companies

[Groggnrath]

I notice oil companies are heavily involved in solar energy, are they securing their future and/or slowing solar tech down?
They speed it up. Peak oil works like this: Let us say petrol-company "A" can make X.XX dollars per gallon of refined gas. This is because crude oil is cheap, it only costs =~.75 USD per barrel of crude oil. Now lets say Iraq/Kuwait runs out of liquid hydrocarbon (pump-able crude oil) (not projected for another 20 years). And lets say petrol-company "A" makes a deal with Canada for Tar sands Hydrocarbons, to make crude oil, it will cost 1.18 USD per barrel of crude oil, because tar sands require additional refining to make it basic liquid crude.

Who pays the cost?

The consumer?

LoL, Not if there is a cheaper way to get energy.

Companies will help, only as long as they can make a profit, or project a future profit from there activities. It pays to invest now, and patent now, for profit when hydrocarbons are to expensive too mine.

Re:Oil Companies

[geekoid]

IF a petroleum company had good usabe cheap and practicl solar technology, they could make a lot more money lisenseing the tech then they can from petroleum. Factor in the fact that even with 'prefect' cells god enough to run a house or SUV with there would still be a 10-20 year conversion process. During that time thjey would be getting money from both sides of the coin.

Business are about money.

Re:Oil Companies

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> "pure evil"

Yes, evil, much like science, can be either pure or applied.

Re:Oil Companies

[SkyDude]

Companies will help, only as long as they can make a profit, or project a future profit from there activities. It pays to invest now, and patent now, for profit when hydrocarbons are to expensive too mine.

That is what businesses are supposed to do, if they plan to be around in ten, twenty or more years. Their stockholders and employees demand no less.

There were businesses around as late as the 1980s who closed their eyes to the future, and we all know where they are today. Do the names Digital and Wang ring a bell?

Re:Oil Companies

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Don't forget to factor in the externalized costs (air pollution, global warming, terrorism, your children getting sent to Iraq, etc). The price you pay at the pump isn't the only price there is to be paid.

But you don't pay it AT THE PUMP.

And if YOU decide to buy the low-pollution high-price alternative you don't get the benefit of EVERYBODY ELSE doing the same thing. So you still pay the externalized costs AND pay for the "high-priced spread".

The externalized prices are a tragedy of the commons (in the economic-theory sense - the original T.O.T.C. was a fake) and they don't affect individual cost-driven incentives.

Re:Oil Companies

[deviceb]

i plan to power my next home with solar/wind + battery storage. -Along with normal power until the technology develops. By the end of our time we will see this as necessary i think.

Re:Oil Companies

[StikyPad]

I get your point, but where can we find large quantities of powdered unicorn tusk?

Re:Oil Companies

[Tuoqui]

Technically you cant 'stop consuming their damn product' unless other companies stop too. Everything comes in plastic and plastic comes from oil. Even computer parts come wrapped in some form of plastic. If you dont drive a car you probably need to take the bus, train and/or other method of public transit to get to and from places. Even electric powered vehicles are probably getting their power by burning oil at some point along the line (though it could be nuclear which isnt as bad it comes with its own unique set of problems). These oil companies are not just in oil. They are in energy. Energy is what Oil is essentially after all. They're big because they manage to worm their way into every nook and cranny of every other business they deal with.

Re:Oil Companies

[mdsolar]

My Dear Wormwood,

It is a very simple thing to get people to do evil. Simply set up a system where no one person is really responsible but rather all effort is bent towards the common goal. Your idea of a coporation to make money will do just as well as any other. You can easily convince them that their duty to their shareholders is much more important than their duty to their employees, customers of the poeple of their town or city and thus induce them to perfrom the most unspeakable acts. Poisoning the whole city with choking deadly gas for example producing a scene that will remind you of my summer house.

But, you will not generally get the result we really desire, recruits to our cause. This is because they will regret the harm they have done eventually once they see that harm is done rather than finding it more and more seductive. Those dreadful ministers or activists groups will some times be able to get them to change their ways. Most of all, they may be kind to one another, helpful if one of them is sick and devoted to their families.

While you may dabble with these constructs, remember that you will do much more for our cause by leading just one of them into betrayal or corruption. Let them feel pride at their cleverness in deceiving those that trust them and you will be well on you way.

--Screwtape

Re:Oil Companies

[The_mad_linguist]

He's saying they're evil, but not cartoon evil.

Re:Oil Companies

[xtal]

Oil companies know what the score is with actual reserves. Extrapolate from there.

Re:Oil Companies

[autophile]

It's like some kind of demented Turing test. You have two terminals. One is connected to an evil guy twirling his moustache. The other is connected to a profit-seeking corporate board. But you don't know which terminal is connected to whom! Can you tell, just by examining their actions, which is the evil moustache, and which is the corporate board?

Kthxbai,

--Rob

Re:Oil Companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me -- how do they win? No, really -- what can they do to make you happy?

They can't. That's the point -- they're too big to do anything but stumble around the room, breaking the valuables, regardless of good intent.

Re:Oil Companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations are non-chaotic but other than that all alignments are available to the newly formed 1st level corporation. However, as it increases in age and/or level, it invariably abandons the good alignments as well.

Re:Oil Companies

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't individuals, it's cities and urban centers. They require cheap portable energy to run.. there's lots of reasons I don't live in a city and that's one of them.

You need a much bigger garden than you think to survive. It's not an option for most people. If you're actually worried about the food supply, get some reserves, a weapon and a safe place to hide or live far enough away from an urban center.

Re:Oil Companies

[Red Flayer]

There are tons of oil resources (bitumen, coal liquifaction, oil shale, arctic and deep sea extraction, etc), but we're running out of the "cheap" ones. The question is, how much of the more expensive ones do we think we'll need, ten years down the road?

The other question, which relates to this thread, is, "Will renewables be less expensive than these expensive-to-access-and-refine oil resources?"

Throw in a carbon tax to the issues you've touched on, and the answer may very well be yes. Plus, in the short run, greenwashing is good for consumer relations and the bottom line.

Re:Oil Companies

[12357bd]

Easy, Salomon test: Tell them to split the child. The corporate one will try to negotiate.

Re:Oil Companies

[Alioth]

The telling thing is that they are no longer oil companies. BP hasn't called itself an oil company for years - it has called itself an ENERGY company for years. The energy currently is mainly oil, but BP and others are certainly not wedded to it - they'll deal with all energy production and storage.

Re:Oil Companies

[AGMW]

even with 'prefect' cells god enough to run a house or SUV

SUV? Is that the generic name for a car now? Good help us!

It might be that 'prefect' cells might be god enough to run a small car? Maybe something like a Ford Perfect perhaps?

It kinda implies that it's OK for you to run an SUV, and it's the Petrol/Energy Companies fault they guzzle gas? There was the statistic I saw a few years back that suggested that an average increase of something like 4 MPG in US vehicles would be the equivalent of finding the Alaska oil fields EVERY YEAR, and yet US-ians still seem as welded to their inefficient IC engines as they apparently are to their guns!

Re:Oil Companies

[tsalaroth]

I wish you could be modded higher than 5.

The international oil companies seem to realize they're in their last days of the "bread-and-butter", and are putting a lot of money into alternatives research - especially renewable alternatives.

The American companies? Nope. Very little money, other than a few hundred thousand here or there for a tax break, the rest go to campaigning AGAINST the research into alternatives.

Re:Oil Companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Has it ever occurred to you that corporations do not exactly make money for the heck of it, and that said money is what pays your salary and guarantees that you will be able to have a salary for the rest of your life?
Try running your own business one day, you will come to understand that most of the "evils" of capitalism are strictly necessary.

Re:Oil Companies

[torpor]

Meanwhile, people like you just keep driving and driving, taking airplanes and using plastics, and all the while acting like it's someone else's fault. Well, guess what? The problem is *consumption*.

right. and the whole point is that patents are being used to force people - nay, lock them into - cycles of consumption, whereas what the world wants is easier, smaller, cheaper, lighter, less restrictive, less controlled and easier to maintain production.

show me how to violate Big Oils patents in my backyard lab and grow a garden/solar array that will provide my family with enough energy to suit their needs, for free (or whatever it costs for us to personally harvest it), and I'll step off the Big Oil treadmill *today* .. but the fact is, all this investment and all this development is only being done by the people in these companies in order to prevent people from ever having to give up their consumption addiction and stop sending $$ in directions that Big Oil benefit from ..

i'm sure the technology exists to maintain a family household using available materials and harvest the free energy that pervades our universe. i'm sure i could look at the patent database and find hints about that technology. and i'm sure there are police states poised to prevent me from doing it in my local backyard ...

Re:Oil Companies

[Anonymous Coward]

I do believe you've just summed up the US and Chinese attitudes about pollution/oil consumption. Congrats, here's your stone age hammer. There's a problem over there, try hitting it with the hammer. I'm sure it will look like a nail to you.

Re:Oil Companies

[Rei]

Sure there are. You just need to hook your house's wiring up to a unicorn horn, which you've stabilized in a box of pig feathers and money-tree leaves, after soaking it in milk from cows that have come home (driven by toothed chickens across the frozen wasteland of hell).

Re:Oil Companies

[FooAtWFU]

Sir, I appreciate your concern, but Iraq is not about oil. It's about an attempt to effect regime change in a failed state. It's about the United States trying to make the world a better place. It's about deposing evil dictators and putting up nice huggable parliaments in their place. It's about Freedom and Justice, and telling the world that Oppression is not something that will be tolerated. It's about bringing stability to the Middle East in the midst of a bunch of Islamic nations ever more and more leaning towards really honest-to-goodness Dangerous radicalism that really is a threat to the future of the freedom of the world. And, to a very small extent, about WMDs (they were more of the Excuse than the Reason, really).

It's a mediocre failure on most of those counts, and a massive failure on the others. (Especially Oil. No one in their right mind would set up an oil field that they expect to be repeatedly bombed by the locals.)

Re:Oil Companies

[drinkypoo]

Yet, that's exactly what the supermajors have done -- stay in business, decade after decade.

If you inflate your prices so that you are making record profits due to people paying record prices, then you can afford to bet wrong.

The price of gas is controlled by the biggest price-fixing cartel ever to exist. I notice that the federal government doesn't seem to be interested in doing anything about that...

Re:Oil Companies

[drinkypoo]

(And first company that makes a breakthrough that starts the switchover gets the lion's share of the money to be made.) They're smart enough to realize this.

To me, this is what gives your argument any weight at all. They're just incredibly greedy motherfuckers and they would love to be first. They'd be prepared for the new order, and all of their competitors would be scrambling to rid themselves of their now-useless assets and get on the train.

Re:Oil Companies

[drinkypoo]

It's about the United States trying to make the world a better place.

Yeah, a better place for American companies to make money.

Specific companies to which our leaders have ties, I might add, like Halliburton. Which was "amazingly" the only company that was "ready" to go rebuild these countries we just turned into crater landscapes.

Oil is just one piece of the puzzle. War in an oil-producing country means the price of oil goes up and everyone around the globe can charge more for petrochemical products. So yes, the oil companies in the US do benefit very much from the war, even though Iraqi oil production is down.

And don't forget that the cost in cruise missiles alone is staggering... What do you do when you launch a bunch of missiles? Build more! Dollar dollar bills, homeboy.

Re:Oil Companies

[Rei]

The price of oil is partially controlled by a price-fixing cartel. Biggest in terms of dollars, yes, but not in terms of percentage of the market. OPEC's market share has been falling, and looks like will continue to. Nations like Russia ignore their quotas; actually, more appropriately, they sabotage them by taking advantage of OPEC-induced scarcities to sell more oil.

The price of gasoline varies depending on many, many factors. First off, there's the production of the gasoline. This is done not by a cartel, but by many different companies in many different countries, most of which are quite hostile to one another, some of which are controlled (in part or in whole) by foreign governments, etc. Then there's blends; the reason why some states and even cities have notably higher gasoline prices is because they require specific blends; the smaller the "batch" a company needs to produce, the more expensive it will be. There's transportation issues -- if you're close to the big pipelines, your gasoline is cheaper. There's what the station charges (the largest single jump in prices is at the station; refiners make very little per gallon refined, but they make it up in tremendous volume). Then, the really big one: taxes. Half of what you pay at the pump is taxes, and much more than half in many countries (esp. in Europe).

Now, for who profits when.

Prices are rising:
  * Producers make steadily better and better profits
  * Refiners lose money. Since they absorb the curve, they're buying high and selling low.
  * Oil "services" companies (like KBR) do killer business

Prices are stable, but high:
  * Producers do killer business
  * Refiners do slightly better than they did at lower prices (assuming demand remains). If demand falls, they lose money.
  * Oil services companies do good business.

Prices are falling:
  * Producers make steadily worse and worse profits.
  * Refiners gain money -- they're buying low and selling high.
  * Oil services companies do lousy.

Prices are low:
  * Producers do lousy
  * Refiners do slightly worse than they would if prices were high -- unless demand rises.
  * Oil services companies do poorly.

Another business, transport, mostly depends on the volume of oil being shipped.

Now, the supermajors are generally diversified among all aspects of the oil industry. In general, they tend to do well when prices are high. However, no supermajor has the ability to fix prices high because their competitors will undercut them on unbranded crude and refined products. The biggest ability to set prices is held by OPEC, but it's always been tenuous -- and is even moreso today than before. The higher prices are, they risk people consuming less, and it also encourages non-OPEC companies to spend more on opening up more expensive (but vast) petroleum resources. It also encourages people to buy more efficient cars and promotes and fuel-efficiency/alternative fuels/syncrude production research. Not only does OPEC have decreasing market share these days, but they're constrained by another factor: they don't really have excess capacity. Nowhere in the world does right now, with Iraq's oil being produced at half the rate it should be, tensions high with Iran, Colombian and Nigerian pipelines being sabotaged, etc. That's why prices have fluctuated so wildly. Something like Katrina comes along and sends a few dozen rigs to the bottom of the gulf (just looking at a rig gives a sense of how bloody expensive those things are), prices shoot up. In a few years, all of the new production that these prices have been encouraging will start to come online, and the market should be a bit looser (which will strengthen OPEC), but for now, OPEC has almost no wiggle room.

Re:Oil Companies

[Shinmizu]

Don't forget that some places also offer a third degree path in "evil education." But, they tend to not really know a whole lot of core evil material.

Re:Oil Companies

[Ungrounded Lightning]

... here's your stone age hammer. There's a problem over there, try hitting it with the hammer. I'm sure it will look like a nail to you.

What's your point?

I wasn't proposing any solution to anything. I was just poionting out that the previous poster's claim of avoided costs didn't produce an economic incentive on individual decisions.

Dealing with "tragedy of the commons" situations requires group activity: Social pressure, voluntary agreement, a collection of individual moral decisions (finding value in "doing the right thing", even if it costs more unless most other people do it, too), or government action (either to map the hidden costs into real costs or to impose centrally-planned decisions).

Right now we're in the stage of determining if there really is a problem that requires such costs to be borne, with those convinced there is making individual moral decisions and using social pressure.

Re:Oil Companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Blast! I have mod points and there isn't a 'this guy is totally whack' category. Unfortunately, you'll get it in about 20 years. At this point, all I can say is that I'm a very very smart person and you are totally whack. If a very very smart person told me I'd lost the path, I would listen to him and truly re-examine by belief system. You probably won't.

Re:Oil Companies

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy twirling his mustache will obviously be typing one handedly.

At least, you better hope his mustache is what he's twirling while talking to you...

Re:Oil Companies

[xappax]

They'll be happy to sell you oil to burn in engines. They'll be happy to sell you photovoltaic modules.

I disagree. I see what you're getting at, namely the fact that oil companies have no emotional attachment to oil, and will be happy to adopt whatever business model is most profitable.

However, selling solar panels is a good example of the last thing they want to do. Why? Solar panels allow people to be energy self-sufficient. Once you have enough solar panels to provide electricity for your personal needs, they're not going to see another dime from you. Oil companies thrive off the fact that we can never get "enough" of their product, so they're willing to do pretty outrageous things to make sure it stays that way.

The most effective business models are designed around ensuring that the customers always have need of the business, and the more dependent they are on the business's goods and services, the better. Distributed solar technology is the opposite of that.

Re:Oil Companies

[DeputySpade]

show me how to violate Big Oils patents in my backyard lab and grow a garden/solar array that will provide my family with enough energy to suit their needs, for free (or whatever it costs for us to personally harvest it), and I'll step off the Big Oil treadmill *today*

These guys built a 3KW wind turbine in their back yard.
http://www.otherpower.com/
Not all projects on this site are as complicated as the big turbine on the front page. Lots of ideas for generation, storage, and reduced consumption of power on these pages. Join the forums, start a project, and quit bitching.

Trust me. "Big Oil" (every industry can be evil. just put "big" before it) does not have a patent on windmills. That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard.

Re:Oil Companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Homebrewing solar is probably out of the question right now, since making the cells typically involves work with toxic chemicals and having a high degree of technical knowhow to pull off sucessfully. Now if nano replicators ever become a household item in the future, then home-made solar might be an option.

As for living off grid on homebrew tech, it is possible if you're in a windy spot or near a quick flowing river. If you can get some strong magnets, spools of wire, and have other materials/tools to fabricate a wind turbine or waterwheel - then you can make your own electricity easy peasy. (YMMV, based on craftsmanship and knowhow. At least there are online resources for starters.) The tricky part is making the electricity compatable with various devices. (Power converters/conditioners and things to moderate battery charging so nothing goes boom.)

YASPB

[ScrewMaster]

Yet Another Solar Panel "Breakthrough". Wake me when it's over.

Re:YASPB

[hey!]

The problem is not that solar panels aren't improving fast enough.

The problem is that petroleum is still so cheap.

So for the time being, we have not crossed any economic thresholds for application types, nor are we looking at any such developments in the next serval years. So while basic engineering developments are promising, we aren't going see much investment aimed at making solar part of our daily lives.

We haven't reach world peak petroleum production yet. As we approach it, and the rate of production increase slows relative to world economic growth, things will change.

Re:YASPB

[ScrewMaster]

It's no different than how automobile drive trains magically get more efficient when gasoline prices are high, and giant SUVs get popular when it isn't.

Re:YASPB

[leathered]

Well you got modded down for it but I share your scepticism. Never a day goes by (especially here on slashdot) without some 'breakthrough' in energy tech by some researchers who appear to be trying to justify their grant money. Even those that do have a realistic chance of going into production often do not meet performance expectations or have environmental side-effects that negate the reasons for persuing them in the first place.

Re:YASPB

[hey!]

Similar, but different in scale. You can make an automobile drive train a bit more efficient by spending some money or adjusting some design parameters. That's what you do when gasoline goes from $2 to $3 gallon. When it goes from $3 to $6/gallon, that's when people start giving serious consideration to a plugin hybrid.

Re:YASPB

[ElephanTS]

We haven't reach world peak petroleum production yet.

You sure about that? I think we're there just about now.

http://biz.yahoo.com/seekingalpha/070502/34218_id. html?.v=1

Re:YASPB

[burnin1965]

The problem is not that solar panels aren't improving fast enough.

The problem is that petroleum is still so cheap.

The problem for solar power is that the efficiency is low enough and manufacturing costs high enough that it makes it difficult for the average home owner to invest in a system. The cost to purchase and install a solar voltaic system for an average home owner is in the realm of $30k and it will take about 20 years to pay for itself based on reduced power bills.

What we need is better efficiency which will allow for a smaller system, cheaper manufacturing techniques to reduce the cost, or a combination of both.

Obviously a precipitous increase in the cost of petroleum based fuels will help to justify the cost of existing solar voltaic systems but I'm hopeful that improvements in efficiency and manufacturing costs will be the real driving factors because I don't look forward to handing over a large percentage of my income to energy companies whether its petroleum or solar.

burnin

Re:YASPB

[pclminion]

Blah blah blah. This is a tech site. The articles are about technology. Up there, in the upper left corner, see that slogan? Does it read "News for nerds, stuff that matters, but only if it's a miracle of modern science?" No, it does not.

You don't have to jizz yourself because somebody discovered something. But remaining willfully ignorant and coming in here only to ridicule people who actually take interest in this stuff marks you as a dunce and a Luddite.

Re:YASPB

[icsEater]

Exactly.

The technology is already there, but it's the economics that haven't been worked out yet.

I remembered back in December, Slashdot covered the high efficiency multi-junction solar cells with a 40% conversion efficiency from Boeing's Spectrolab. According to the press release, they already had a fully functional 33 kilowatt generator in the Australian outback.

Too bad according to Wikipedia, it costs up to $40 per cm^2.

http://www.boeing.com/ids/news/2006/q4/061206b_nr. html
href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell%23Gal lium_arsenide_.28GaAs.29_multijunction

Re:YASPB

[drix]

There are methods of generating electricity from the sun that exist right now, today, and are or will soon be competitive ($/MW) with coal, oil and NG-fired generators. See www.stirlingenergy.com.

This whole addicted to oil this is not nearly as intractable as the entrenched powers-that-be would like you to believe.

Re:YASPB

[Rei]

Yawn, yet another peak oil nut. Wake me when we hit it.

Oh, and while you're at it, explain why bitumen, coal liquifaction, thermal depolymerization, oil shale extraction, methane reformation (including methane hydrates and clathrates), sugarcane ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, and outright Fischer-Tropsh/Sabatier synthesis from CO/CO2 (using, say, nuclear power), won't work. Not just a handful of them: ALL of them, because each one alone has the potential to majorly cut (if not completly eliminate) the load on natural petroleum. Yes, they're more expensive (although some, such as bitumen, coal liquifaction, and sugarcane ethanol, are economical at current prices). Yes, expanding our capacity using them would take 5-10 years (but you'd have to believe that there's a huge international conspiracy to believe that we're going to "run out" in that timeframe -- also, investments in syncrude production have been way, way up for a couple years already). Yes, some of them would do a number on the environment (widespread use of sugarcane ethanol? Goodbye, rainforests!). But they all exist, they all work, and they all have their price. If you really believe we're due for peak oil, explain why *none* of them will work at any non-civilization-collapsing price.

Re:YASPB

[ScrewMaster]

I don't want miracles. Miracles won't keep my lights on at night, or run my microwave. What I want is practical, manufacturable technology. Don't misunderstand me ... I think the mass-production of highly-efficient, cheap PV cells would revolutionize a lot of things. For that matter, the topic of solar power has interested me for the better part of forty years: I built a solar furnace as a kid out of several Fresnel lenses and some firebrick. Vaporized coins with the thing. On the other hand, I am getting tired of this flood of articles loudly proclaiming that this prototype cell technology, for sure, is the next big "scientific miracle" of the century. Let me know when I can pick up a 4x8 of the stuff at Home Depot for the price of sheet of plywood. Now that would be a miracle.

And maybe this one will be the one ... but I doubt it. I also didn't ridicule anyone. You'll pardon me while I go read comments by people a little more tolerant of other's views than you are. Huh. I guess I did ridicule someone after all.

Re:YASPB

[Waffle Iron]

I think that "peak oil" usually refers to extraction of petroleum oil in the ground. Other than oil shale, all of those examples are converting something that's not oil in the ground into a liquid hydrocarbon fuel. If and when those processes are start to be used compensate for a shortage of oil, it will be a good indication that peak oil has indeed occurred.

Re:YASPB

[Belial6]

OK, explain how not pumping more in a particular year shows any correlation to how much is actually there, as opposed to showing how much has been used, or how much pumping power is being utilized. "Peak Oil Production" sounds an awful lot like the oil companies have found a way to get wack-job environmentalists to rationalize their artificial scarcity. Unless, your part of the VERY small minority that thinks oil is not a fossil fuel, you would have to agree that all of the oil that there is, and will be in our lifetimes, already exists, and is just waiting to be pumped from the ground. So, please, explain how "peak oil production" is an indication of the amount of oil that exists. Because, I really don't get it.

Re:YASPB

[pipingguy]

We haven't reach world peak petroleum production yet. As we approach it, and the rate of production increase slows relative to world economic growth, things will change.

But politically-motivated "activists" insist on change RIGHT NOW, DAMMIT!

Re:YASPB

[Waffle Iron]

The total amount of oil exists is irrelevant. All that matters is how much oil there is that can be extracted more cheaply than other energy sources. As the amount of easy-to-pump oil diminishes, the cost of oil rises, and the usual market forces result in increased usage of alternative energy sources and conservation. Thus, oil production drops.

Re:YASPB

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]The problem for solar power is that the efficiency is low enough and manufacturing costs high enough that it makes it difficult for the average home owner to invest in a system. The cost to purchase and install a solar voltaic system for an average home owner is in the realm of $30k and it will take about 20 years to pay for itself based on reduced power bills.[/quote]

It depends on what you install and why, and projections of future energy costs and you need to look at the total energy equation.

For example solar thermal sufficient to provide 50 to 80 per cent of your hot water needs (depends on location, orientation, demand) can be put in for around 20% of the cost of solar photovoltaics. This obviously isn't going to run your TV but it might mean less natural gas required for your home to meet your hot water needs meaning more natural gas available to power gas-fuelled electricity generation meaning that electricity prices are lower so meaning that it is at least cheaper to run that TV. So you still might gain, if indirectly, on the electrical energy front. Those lower electrical costs will mean the payback period for PV will be greater, but if the plant fabricating them has lower electricity bills the panels might also be a little cheaper.

There are all sorts of knock on effects - putting in better insulation might cut down on demands countrywide, thus meaning less electricity and heating demands, again lowering (or less increase) in general energy costs. Water takes a lot of energy to treat and pump so storing rainwater for the garden rather than running the hose off a supply of drinkable pumped and piped water can also be seen as a reduction in energy consumption in this way.

There are plenty of things which don't have an immediate and direct effect on bills that do have an ultimate effect.

But I would say that energy efficiency (insulation, windows, awnings, etc. to reduce heating and air conditioning costs) is the first thing to look at, renewable hot water provision the next (it takes a fair bit of energy to heat water) and probably photo voltaics last in terms of the return on investment. If quantum dots make it cheaper and easier to deploy photovoltaics domestically it will ultimately have an effect, but there are a few years of reworking current infrastructure on the other points I noted that will make a bigger impact whilst solar photovoltaics improves.

Re:YASPB

[Anonymous Coward]

"The problem is not that solar panels aren't improving fast enough."

It is a problem and it is not a problem.

It is not a problem in that the oil price does matter as to whether people buy solar panels. If the oil price is very high, then people will buy solar panels instead. The allocation of resources that are currently going into oils (the payment for oils going to the employees of the company, their training, the seismic equipment, the people building the oil rigs, the lorry drivers who drive the trucks that transport the raw material for the cement for the rigs) will instead go to solar power - in an 'ideal market', that all the employment will shift and everyone spending their time poring over seismology books and getting graduate sponsorships for it will instead do so about solar power.

But what you are saying (and probably the fact) is that oils is still much cheaper than solar energy. So the work involved in generating a given amount of energy from oil is much less than the work it takes to get the same energy from solar power (creating the solar cells, transport, maintenance, setup).

However, if the "resource requirement" per joule from oils was to increase, then naturally solar power would be preferred. It would also though mean that our society would have to spend a lot more resources on solar power. To use a silly allegory, whereby we today may work half an hour a day to get money to pay 1000 people to produce the world's oil, we would in that case have to work three hours a day to pay 4000 people to produce equally much solar power. And oil would take even more than that.

(okay, in reality, a moderate bit of production is from OPEC countries that doesn't spend any more resources to extract, they just increase the pump rate, but them hiking the price means we are working more on their behalf than on our own behalf).

The price of oil increasing has lots of effect on solar energy, including more investments into it which brings down the cost and up the effectiveness. But if _only_ the oil price went up by a massive amount, it would mean a shift to solar energy, but also a big drop in living standards by current measures.

Re:YASPB

[Anonymous Coward]

In the UK it's already ~$9 a gallon. Diesels are quite popular here... Haven't seen a plug in hybrid yet. But if Zap ever releases the Zap-X the US will get a plug in EV that would work before us. Never mind the fact that Lotus helped design it...

Re:YASPB

[hey!]

My point was about investment. Investors won't invest until they can put petroleum's day of reckoning on the calendar.

Not Again!

[Syncerus]

This about the 27th article this month about some nebulous Solar power breakthrough guaranteed to revolutionize the generation of energy as we know it. We'll never hear about this ever again, and we'll still need to burn oil and coal to power our air conditioners and SUVs.

This belongs in the VAPORWARE category.

Re:Not Again!

[SQLGuru]

Even though there are several breakthroughs and no real results yet, I'm hopeful. Even if none of these individual methods are exceptional, if each one provides a 5% improvement over what we already have, we should be able to make solar realistic at some point.

I've run the numbers for my house more than once. I have a favorable rebate program (Austin Energy) and a prime location (south facing roof with no obstructions and a greenbelt behind me so no future buildings being erected). Even with those factors, my payback isn't realistic enough. I've even run them for wind.....but then there's the whole HOA thing to fight.

Any of these improvements that can reduce my payback are welcome.

Layne

Re:Not Again!

[TooMuchToDo]

I'm in the same situation. Just bought a townhouse with a fairly restrictive Homeowner's Association. How do I deal with the fact I can't get renewable energy (even though I get nuclear power from ComEd, I still like to support the cause)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_tags

Renewable Energy Certificates (the consumer version). I take my power consumption on a monthly basis, and then by RECs equal to it. True, it's not like that power is getting to my house. But my effort, along with others like me, help make renewable more financially viable. And you better believe that's the only reason it hasn't taken off like wildfire yet. Make something so that it can actually turn a buck, and people will build it.

Re:Not Again!

[Nefarious Wheel]

Move out. Homeowner's Associations are evil -- far, far worse than a school board for IQ(Mob)=least(IQ(Mob)) /cardinality(Mob). Best of modern economics coupled with the worst of small-town power-mad parochialism. Yes, I have examples, no I won't bore you with them. But you'd better fit in, sunshine!

Re:Not Again!

[yoyoq]

i can second or third that. the amount of energy wasted deciding on the color of paint requires many solar quantum dots to make up for it.

Re:Not Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just bought a townhouse with a fairly restrictive Homeowner's Association

Go outside and burn a fat one on the porch, that'll teach 'em.

Re:Not Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

We can and do have simple ways to store energy. It's called "potential energy", or "gravity". You see this in it's simplest form at dams. They pump water up to a higher elevation with the spare energy created at night, and release the water through turbines during the peak hours during the day.

In the desert, you could use weight and pully methods of storing energy if the evaporation rate is too high for the water method. You could have vast arrays of solar collectors running during the day and storing energy in this way for the nighttime usage.

Everyone tries to complicate the energy storage issue because they assume you would need massive banks of batteries. Simply using gravity could provide the storage necessary (or pick your force... pressurized air - centrifical force (gyros), excited atoms, etc)

The main problem with this is that the solar farms would have to be placed far from most of the population centers they would serve, and there are issues with the transmission of that electricity.

Re:Not Again!

[Dr. Eggman]

Perhaps if some energy tax-credit bill were to be introduced to improve tax credit laws and "Allow[s] a tax credit for the full amount of qualified photovoltaic property expenditures (currently, limited to 30%)" then that might improve people's willingness to buy them, too. (Don't wait, write your congress person today and get this thing out of commitee!)

Re:Not Again!

[dfenstrate]

Those green energy certificates are great.... for states bordering those who require them.

Massachusetts recently required that all power companies in MA had to produce a certain portion of their electricity renewably. Of course, MA also has ornerous restrictions on actually building new power plants or changing anything. The power companies could meet the requirement by buying certificates or paying the state a substantial amount in lieu of certificates or generation.

So what happened? Public Service of New Hampshire built a wood burning plant. They sell the electricity, and then the sell the certificates which go for about the same price as the electricity. Wood is too expensive per BTU to be a viable fuel without the certificates, but with the certificates it's pretty profitable.

End result: Massachusetts Rate payers subsidize PSNH's bottom line and NH ratepayers. Oh yeah, and they burn some wood in a high-tech boiler. Is it 'greener' then before? Maybe it is. Does it F*ck MA ratepayers to the benefit of NH ratepayers and PSNH shareholders?

Yep.

This is from the same state whose congressmen killed a perfectly good wind project (cape wind IIRC) because it would mess up their views.

Yeah, I'm glad I live in New Hampshire. At least for the moment. MA residents are moving in, and some of them are trying to institute the same nonsense that drove them out of MA.

Re:Not Again!

[TooMuchToDo]

http://www.capewind.org/news771.htm

Cape Wind backers enter 'final lap'

Friday, April 27, 2007
NEWTON -- With a critical federal review of the Cape Wind project just months away, supporters of the plan to build 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound are growing increasingly confident that the long-delayed project will finally win approval.

"I think this is the final lap," said Barbara Hill, executive director of Clean Power Now, a nonprofit group that supports the project. "We've been in a marathon and this is the final lap."

Hill's comments came after a public hearing at a Newton hotel last night on offshore alternative energy projects.

Re:Not Again!

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent! It's still shameful the way certain politicians from MA have behaved.

Re:Not Again!

[Firethorn]

So, the solution to the problem that solar panels are uneconomical is government subsidies? That hurts us all, even those who don't invest in solar panels.

I'd prefer to see direct research, with the occasional special purpose install. There are places where solar power does make sense due to the expense of trying to hook it into the grid.

I applaud any solar breakthroughs regardless

[mlts]

Regardless if they seem to be just vapor, the more advances in getting solar panels made cheaper, with less material and less energy, and when deployed, the more electrons it can push per photon hitting it, is a definite improvement in my book.

I'm glad people are putting money into solar, because if done right, it can turn regions of the globe which are otherwise unused (West Texas for example) into very productive areas for energy use.

Research into solar, coupled with innovations in batteries to allow for storage of energy will go a long way into making oil into "just" a raw material for plastics as opposed to a vital fuel source.

Re:I applaud any solar breakthroughs regardless

[mattatwork]

It seems to early to tell how cool this will be...it'll be nice to see how the quantum-dot-based photovoltaics technology performs in the real world

I find it ironic that just about every solution we find to preserve limited resources and create environmentally friendly technology contains at least one toxic compound in it (cadmium selenide in this case)....

Re:I applaud any solar breakthroughs regardless

[The13thSin]

True, but I hope you're not suggesting that this means that we shouldn't use environment friendly technology.
Apart from some anti-globalwarming propaganda and some genuinely "worse than burning oil" forms of eco-energy, a lot is worth our attention. And I for one, welcome our ... ok, I won't go there, but I really think this kind of research is vital, if we want to keep our wealth and as for that matter, keep using our precious internet and therefore ... SLASHDOT!!!

So give a hoot, don't you po-ffing-lute... or at least try to lower it... mmm-kay?

Re:I applaud any solar breakthroughs regardless

[SierraPete]

I'm glad people are putting money into solar, because if done right, it can turn regions of the globe which are otherwise unused (West Texas for example) into very productive areas for energy use.

Neat concept, but I'd be willing to bet you a stack of Sheryl Crow's single sheet wonders that some tree (or cactus) hugger will say that you are destroying the ecosystem created by the direct sunlight in West Texas by having these godawful unnatural solar panels blocking the direct sunlight from hitting the ground.

As an altnerative (and as much as I hate government regulation), a better way to generate this is to make it mandatory to install solar cells on the top of buildings so that all that unused space on homes/commercial buildings/etc could be put to use instead of being wasted and collecting heat in attics that in turn causes us to use more electricity to run our air conditioners. Sure it will add to the initial cost of a house, but it will also diminish the carbon footprint we as a society are creating.

My two watts...

Re:I applaud any solar breakthroughs regardless

[Alioth]

I think an even bigger benefit to solar is it can turn unused regions of my house, such as the roof, into a productive area for generating electricity. The trouble right now is that solar is far too expensive, and roof mounted panels will only actually pay off if you live in the desert. Get the price down to about a tenth of what it is now and with panels of decent longevity, then it becomes a practical proposition for even a roof in northern Europe.

At the moment it's far better to go for the low hanging energy savings fruit. Riding my bicycle into work three times a week instead of driving saves more fossil fuel energy than converting my house to entirely off-grid renewables, and the payback period is extremely short.

Infinite quantum dots!

[Scareduck]

1. These dots have four arms.
2. Four arms is an odd number to have.
3. The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
4. Therefore, these dots really have infinite numbers of arms!

hat tip

Re:Infinite quantum dots!

[Anonymous Coward]

5. Four is infinite.

Re:Infinite quantum dots!

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 4 simultaneous day rotations in 1 earth rotation.

Coincidence or are you educated stupid?

Re:Infinite quantum dots!

[Anonymous Coward]

At first I thought you were making a time cube reference:

"I have Cubed the Earth, with 4 simultaneous corner days in 1 rotation of Earth!"

Re:Infinite quantum dots!

[SirBruce]

Actually, the way I heard it in college:

1. Alexander the Great was forewarned.
2. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
3. Four arms is an odd number of arms to have.
4. The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
5. Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite numbers of arms!

Re:Infinite quantum dots!

[Anonymous Coward]

Infinity isn't a number. :cP

More information about quantum dot solar cells

[mo]

From:
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060603/bob8. asp

"Both the Los Alamos and NREL teams calculate a maximum of 42 percent conversion of solar power to usable electricity. Conventional cells, by contrast, operate at 15 to 20 percent efficiency."

Re:More information about quantum dot solar cells

[maxwell demon]

a maximum of 42 percent

Surely this is somehow related to life, the universe and everything?

Re:More information about quantum dot solar cells

[qmeg]

A calculated value of 42% should be compared to calculated values for other solar cells (e.g., for a single junction solar cell, the theoretical limit is ~32%, multijunctions are higher, it could be > 42%, depending on how many junctions you want to have). The 15-20% is industrial level for single junction cells, it is much higher in the lab (e.g., > 40% for a triple-junction solar cell). The current level of the quantum dot cell is ~ 1% in the lab.

Hacking Matter on Quantum Dots

[metlin]

Wil McCarthy has an interesting book called Hacking Matter, which talks about Quantum Dots and explains a bunch of applications.

Quite an interesting read, and well written. And I think you can download the book online at his website, as well.

Highly recommended - entertaining, informative read.

Sounds like a Nextel commercial...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's messing with my dots?

A long way to go yet

[flend]

As the summary points out, this is just a new recipe for making quantum dot tetrapods, for use in, for example, thin film solar cells where the cadmium selenide dots are encased in a polymer layer.

As with all stories about incremental progress in solar cell there are still a few hurdles yet to overcome:

Power conversion efficiencies from these cells are typically below 4% (eg. 1.8% original report, Sun et. al Nano Lett 3, 961). A good crystalline silicon cell will give you 12-15%.

Stability. Nanocrystals tend to go off pretty quickly and you don't want to be replacing your solar cell every week or so.

Cadmium is hella-toxic and _may be_ more so in nanocrystal form. A little vial of the stuff is enough to kill you, apparently. Makes you wonder about all those Ni-Cd batteries.

However, I welcome the (eventual) coming of our new tetrapod overlords.

Re:A long way to go yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Cadmium is hella-toxic and _may be_ more so in nanocrystal form. A little vial of the stuff is enough to kill you, apparently. Makes you wonder about all those Ni-Cd batteries.

I wonder the same thing about table salt. When I see crazy people add it to their soup I pray to God that it won't explode or outgas and make them cough up blood.

Re:A long way to go yet

[mcrbids]

As with all stories about incremental progress in solar cell there are still a few hurdles yet to overcome:

What's funny is that progress is almost always incremental, and we adjust to each of these changes easily so we don't notice the advances.

My 5-seat Saturn burns down the highway at 90 MPH, and gets over 30 MPG doing it, fully loaded, and has great handling all the way up. Try that in a 70's Comet. My dual-core laptop with 2 GB of RAM burns less power than an amazingly slower (but power efficient for its time!) K6-2 processor-based from 10 years ago. The concept of the Internet was mind-boggling 12 years ago when it was first introduced to me. Now, my 1.5 Mbit fixed IP DSL internet connection is ho hum by today's standards.

Progress is constant, slow, and incremental. But go back 10, 20, or 50 years and compare life then to today and you might be amazed. I don't imagine that Solar power will be any different.

Remember when a solar calculator was a big deal? Now, they're commonly available at the local $1 store. Nowadays, a 120-watt incandescent light bulb uses more electricity than virtually all the lights in my house, since the Compact Florescent bulbs I use everywhere are so efficient.

I recently added a 1,500 foot extension to my house. So, I'm a big energy waster, right?

Well, it looks like it actually REDUCES our energy consumption! Its got outer walls built with 2x6 instead of 2x4s, has double-paned windows, and over 2 FEET of insulation in the attic. Because of the double-pane windows, lighting needs are minimal, since we don't need to use lights during the day. The insulation is so good that when the doors/windows are closed, the temperature deviates by about 10 degrees through the day even though outside it has climbed to over 90 degrees. WOW! I don't think we'll even bother running the A/C in the older part of the house - to get comfortable, just go into the new extension!

A big part of making solar work will be in reducing our demand for power.

Re:A long way to go yet

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent up!

Re:A long way to go yet

[jericho4.0]

NiCd batteries contain cadium hydroxide, not a cadium nickel compound. They are not safe to eat.

Re:A long way to go yet

[jelle]

"Power conversion efficiencies from these cells are typically below 4% (eg. 1.8% original report, Sun et. al Nano Lett 3, 961). A good crystalline silicon cell will give you 12-15%."

2007/04/18: -> "Plastic solar cell efficiency breaks record at WFU nanotechnology center"

The global search for a sustainable energy supply is making significant strides at Wake Forest University as researchers at the university's Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials have announced that they have pushed the efficiency of plastic solar cells to more than 6 percent.

http://www.wfu.edu/news/release/2007.04.18.n.php

Because they are flexible and easy to work with, plastic solar cells could be used as a replacement for roof tiling or home siding products or incorporated into traditional building facades. These energy harvesting devices could also be placed on automobiles. Since plastic solar cells are much lighter than the silicon solar panels structures do not have to be reinforced to support additional weight.

Re:A long way to go yet

[radtea]

As with all stories about incremental progress in solar cell there are still a few hurdles yet to overcome:

Yet scientists can confidently predict that solar cells made with techniques that don't exist yet will be cheaper than conventional solar cells.

As a scientist I have always tended to dismiss Mark Twain's comment that science was the field where you got the greatest return in speculation on the tiniest investment of fact. But apparently he understood the human aspects of science pretty well.

Re:A long way to go yet

[Ceriel Nosforit]

In Mythical Sweden, where every geek has a hawt girlfriend and pixies lick your eyeballs whenever you want, they build houses that require next to no heating at all, even in the middle of winter. A meter of insulation in the attic and half a meter in the walls. Big tripple-pane, xeon gas between two panes to reflect heat radiation, windows towards the south and small such windows towards the north. Thanks to the big windows they get heating and natural light, so often they don't even need to turn the lights on. Add a heat-pump air conditioner and your electricity bills are from appliances mostly.

Re:A long way to go yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, plastic solar cells have been pushed to 6%, from a previous high of 3%. But the very article you referenced (3rd paragraph, second sentence) states: "Traditional solar panels are heavy and bulky and convert about 12 percent of the light that hits them to useful electrical power." It also mentions that "In order to be considered a viable technology for commercial use, solar cells must be able to convert about 8 percent of the energy in sunlight to electricity."

bad timing ...

[A_Lost_Frenchman]

If only we didn't have to darken the sky to protect ourself from global warming !

Re:bad timing ...

[Anonymous Coward]

In space no-one can hear you screaming...

Kudos to the chinese researchers of the Rice university! xD

Inflexion point?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Would cheap, good solar panels be an inflexion point in how we generate and use energy?

If our home generate lots of juice, then home-charged electric (or hybrid) cars could suddenly become significantly cheaper to operate than gas cars because charging them could become cheap. Which in turn could significantly lower our reliance on Russian and Middle Eastern oil, making it easier for us to disengage from meddling over there.

Pipe-dream or possibility?

Re:Inflexion point?

[ScrewMaster]

Pretty much a pipe-dream, unless your home includes enough a couple acres of extra land that you can cover in solar panels.

The unfortunate problem with solar power, indeed all forms of "alternate" energy, is that they are comparatively low-density phenomena. When you figure the physical plant required to generate enough solar power (including nighttime and off-season storage!) to be competitive with a nuclear or coal-fired power plant the difference isn't as extreme as you might think. Yes, a solar plant's "fuel" is free but the up-front costs are still significant: a typical 2400 mW nuke is the equivalent of one hell of a lot of solar cells, and it runs 24/7.

Personally, I think that solar energy is a non-starter, in terms of supplanting mainstream power sources, so long as we are trying to acquire it on the Earth's surface. The time is past that we should be working on orbital solar collectors beaming microwaves down to Earthbound antenna farms. Need more power? Launch another collector satellite and point it at your ground-based array.

Once we have efficient panels that can be manufactured cheaply, we can unfurl thousands of square miles of the things in geosynchronous orbit. In space, immensity can be bought very cheaply: you don't need much of a supporting structure. Yes, I know we don't currently have the spacegoing technology, but we could. And like the Apollo program before it, such a development and production program would have enormously valuable spinoffs.

Re:Inflexion point?

[Spy der Mann]

Pipe-dream or possibility?

A big possibility. Remember the time when we used this black solid thing called COAL? It's just the way science and technology goes. We're hitting a new industrial revolution where the key technology is nanotech.

Just as the discovery of the transistor made a revolution in electronics, the discovery of methods to create and handle nanomaterials is preparing us to make better tools, leading to more methods, materials, and so on.

The problem right now, is not that we can find cheap energy - but that we WASTE TOO MUCH of it. For example, the internal combustion engine wastes a lot of energy as heat; Many countries in the world still use incandescent bulbs because the energy-saving ones are too expensive; TV's still use Cathode Ray Tubes (unless you can afford a plasma one); and what to say about computers? Too much electricity is wasted as heat because of the way transistors work.

Nanotechnology aims to change all that. Against CRT TV's there are Field Emission displays (with nanotubes as electron emitters); against incandescent bulbs we have extra-bright LED's (with quantum dots as their key ingredient for light generation); against silicon in solar cells, we find tetrapod quantum dots; against internal combustion engines we are seeing fuel cells; Against silicon transistors we see quantum dots, nanotubes, graphene transistors, nanofibers, and what not.

These technologies are currently very expensive and aren't even in diapers yet; We need still a lot of discoveries that will make these technologies economically viable. What excites me about revolutionary discoveries is that they DON'T depend on time. They're discovered almost by accident, like peniciline. It could happen in any time, but in the meanwhile we have to depend on the slow and steady advance of science and technology research.

So if you want to help this become a greener earth, please support science and technology funding in your country.

Re:Inflexion point?

[esampson]

Unfortunately even if the electricity were free there is a major hurdle that electric cars need to solve before they can really replace chemical fuel powered vehicles (gasoline, alcohol, bio-diesel, et al.). Namely the problem of recharge time.

As it is if you currently want to drive an electric car further than it is able to go on a single charge you are forced to stop somewhere along the trip and spend hours recharging it. That's just not practical since it is quite possible for a person to drive two to three times the range of a single charge in one day.

That doesn't mean you need to be able to fully recharge an electric vehicle in the time it takes to fill an empty tank. I would suspect you could get by if it took ten or fifteen minutes to charge the car since the only people who would need to do so would be people on long trips (otherwise they would just charge up at home) and after three or fours hours driving they probably wouldn't mind fifteen minutes while they stretch their legs and eat some lunch.

Forget about all the other arguments against electric cars; energy cost to produce, battery lifetime, etc.. Until it's practical to drive for at least five or six hundred miles in a day (if not more) electric cars will never really come to dominate the market.

That doesn't mean the current electric cars are useless. I know the figures about most people living within fifteen miles of their work, or whatever and truth to tell I've thought on more than one occasion about getting an electric car to commute to work (if I could afford it), but I also would never get rid of my gasoline powered car because I know that I occasionally have to make trips further than I could on a single charge.

Re:Inflexion point?

[ScrewMaster]

One possibility would be a standardized battery pack that could be physically swapped out at the (ahem) gas station. Unfortunately, that would require some serious automation and robotics, and a major investment in infrastructure. Not to mention a massive upgrade to the power grid.

Re:Inflexion point?

[Anonymous Coward]

a typical 2400 mW nuke

That is only 2.4 Watts.

And I'd STILL have to ask the government to take my waste and reprocess it. Some government agents think, combined with a hammer, I might have a terrorist weapon.

Seems like a whole lot less hassle to just have a PV panel VS the 2,400 milliwatt nuke.

Personally, I think that solar energy is a non-starter,

Where is your math to back up your think'n?

The time is past that we should be working on orbital solar collectors beaming microwaves down to Earthbound antenna farms. Need more power? Launch another collector satellite and point it at your ground-based array.

Lets see - the Earth MAY have a global warming problem. You are proposing that energy should be added inside the Earth's atmosphere. Exactly how does your plan NOT increase the heat?

Once we have efficient panels that can be manufactured cheaply, we can unfurl thousands of square miles of the things in geosynchronous orbit.

As taken from another source today:

What?
Just to get back-of-the-envelope on your ass: We consume around 15 terawatts as a species.

With 10% efficient solar panels, that's about 150,000 square kilometers of sunny land. Call it 6x as much for a reasonable load and infrastructure factor. So we need approximately 1 Sahara Desert worth of solar panels spread over the world, costing at $1/watt (which is claimed for CIGS panels), 60 trillion dollars, at current levels of technology.

Do you really think that's impossible for humanity?

It currently costs about $20k per kilogram to launch into geostat orbit, mostly in raw hydrocarbon cost. Let's take the simplest technology: mirrors. Let's assume you can accurately focus the space mirrors onto boilers on the ground. Let's assume that your boilers on the ground are 20% efficient. You need about half the solar exposure of mirrors that the ground-based PV approach does: 75k square kilometers. At a 45 degree angle (to maximize exposure), that's 106k square kilometers of mirror area. Let's say you build it out of Kapton at a paltry 12 grams per square meter:
You need 1.2 million metric tons launched into space just for the mirror material.
That's 25 trillion dollars right there, in launch costs. Without counting the boilers, the control equipment, the tensioning equipment/superstructure, the propulsion of the craft against solar wind, the replacement of the craft when hit with meteorites, or any of the electrical gear necessary to get the job done on the ground. There is every reason to believe that these costs would dwarf the cost of the mirror materials. Anything that costs more than 12 grams per square meter? Well, you can multiply.

In reality:
You won't be able to tension a hell of a lot of plastic very tightly for an accurate focus, period.
You won't be able to create any superstructure that with solid backing to preserve focus, because of launch costs, period.
You won't be able to protect against micrometeorites, which will shred your scheme with great prejudice, and in all liklihood, cause enough debris in total to prevent us from ever escaping the gravity well again.

Re:Inflexion point?

[TheRaven64]

Orbital solar is likely to only be cost efficient if the panels can be made in space. There are lots of rocks in Earth orbit that could be mined, although finding the ones with the right minerals would be non-trivial. You might want to boot-strap the process by deploying small plants built down here and then using that power to run the orbital factories, but either way we're a good few decades away from being able to.

In the mean time, this technology does two things. First, it helps us reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, even it if doesn't eliminate it. Second, the better we understand how to build efficient solar panels, the easier it will be to start fabricating them in orbit.

Re:Inflexion point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would cheap, good solar panels be an inflexion point in how we generate and use energy?

Yes. Because people who have land (to place cells on) and money (to buy cells) will be far better off than people who rent and have ability to save money to get out of such a low-energy ghetto.

Remember - all the energy sources on this planet are due to the reactions of solar bodies. (because wave power is experimental) Years ago, other suns compressed matter to make Uranium and other fissionables. Not as many years ago, photons striking Earth were captured by plants and made into coal/oil/gas. And not long ago, photons hitting Earth grew the trees we burn now, the plant oils, the sugars fermented, the water vapor moved to dam, the wind that blows, and the photons hitting a PV panel.

The cheapness of fossil fuels VS what they do has allowed the system we now live with. If one looks at the photons used to make 'em... PV is quite the deal.

Re:Inflexion point?

[Floritard]

C'mon now that's easy enough. You don't recharge, you exchange. For a fee you exchange your spent fuel cell for a fully charged cell from a station. These stations, instead of importing fuel and selling it at a premium like gas stations, generate free fuel and sell it to you in the form of a charged fuel cell. They would have to cover a fairly large area to generate that energy, but we are talking about long trips here not so much intra-city driving so these places would probably be out in the middle of nowhere (if there is such a thing in our overcrowded future). Now that I think about it, it's kind of nice to imagine a future where I don't have gas stations littering my city.

Re:Inflexion point?

[TheRaven64]

There are three use-cases for a car:

1. Driving around a built-up area.
2. Driving short distances around rural areas.
3. Driving long distances between built-up areas.

In urban areas, it would be possible to deploy over-head or in-road power supplies that could be used by a running car. Recharge time is not an issue here because (once the infrastructure is deployed), you aren't using the local power supply. You might even want to use a city car that didn't have a battery, since it would be lighter and thus cheaper to move about.

Short rural drives can be accomplished with current technology. You can get a range well over 200 miles (closer to 300 in some cases) with a modern battery-electric vehicle. Assuming an average speed of 60 miles per hour, this gives three to five hours of driving between charges, which happen either overnight or when you drive your car in an urban area (assuming the infrastructure discussed in the last point actually gets built).

Longer drives are slightly more of a problem, but we already have a good mechanism for getting long distances; trains. If you are going a long way, then driving your car onto the back of a train and having it take you (at several times your car's maximum speed) would be fairly easy. Or you could do away with the trains, and just have the cars hand over control to a road management system while on long distance powered roads.

The final case not mentioned is exploring environments away from habitation. I am not going to discuss these here, because the needs are quite different from those of a car for daily use. If you need to do this, you would be better off buying or renting a specialised vehicle.

Re:Inflexion point?

[redcane]

There are multiple solutions to this problem, all of which require infrastructure that won't exist until electric cars are more popular. 1) Battery swapping stations. Batteries are built in a standard modular fashion, you park at a swapping point, and the battery in your car is removed, and replaced by one that has been charged at the swapping station. Like "swap and go" gas bottles for BBQs (if you have those in your locality) 2) Batteries based on Zinc Air or similar technology, where the energised component is drawn through the battery from an input tank, and pumped through a "battery" (which starts to seem more like a fuel cell), and spent zinc is put into an output tank. When you get to a fuel station, you pump out your waste zinc paste (it gets recharged), and you pump in new stuff. 3) Systems of electrolite replacment. Basically your battery has a drain valve, you drain out your acid (from a lead acid battery), and pump in new stuff. Similar to 2, but your pumping around acid, which is potentially dangerous. 4) In road charging systems. Especially in combination with self drive highways, your car hooks into a power rail like an electric train would, and gets it's motive power (and a recharge to boot!) while driving. 5) The trailer method. On a long trip you hire a range extender trailer. It could be a fuel cell, or biodiesel generator, or even just a battery bank that you swap when it runs out, by stopping in at the next "Service station". Of course, the thing is you are currently much better off driving an electric car for your daily commute, and *hiring* a car for longer trips. You save money on a daily basis, and you can use the savings to pay for the car hire when you need it. Your reduction in fuel usage should help reduce the price of petrol, so when you do hire a petrol car, it's cheaper to fuel! In any case, I firmly believe all the problems are either solvable now, or your better off working around them anyway, they just won't sell any electric cars in Australia, so I'm left considering building my own.

Re:Inflexion point?

[Alioth]

It doesn't matter if electric cars are cheaper than gas powered cars - people still won't drive them. Most people would rather commute 1-up in a gigantic SUV than buy an already existing fuel efficient car. A Volkswagen Jetta TDi is much less expensive than most SUVs, but you hardly see the TDi out on the roads in the US. Even in Britain, where fuel is three times as expensive as in the US, people buy the most fuel inefficient car they can possibly afford.

To most people, saving energy as a priority is somewhere far below having a nice haircut. They talk about how wonderful it'd be to have a solar panelled roof, yet they still haven't gone for the low hanging energy saving fruit that's available today, such as driving a car that does 40mpg instead of an SUV that does 12mpg, or better still - riding a bicycle to work (I can save more energy by commuting on my bike for 3 days a week instead of driving, than taking my entire house off the grid and putting it on renewables. But most people simply won't do that. They all have a myriad of excuses why they can't get on their bike, yet are happy to witter on about the energy savings they'll be getting with some solar panel technology that's at least 20 years away from hitting the market).

Re:Inflexion point?

[Alioth]

If you want a greener earth, also consider going for the low hanging energy saving fruit that's not two or three decades off - but available right now. Things like living closer to work (so you can walk in, or use public transport), choosing a more fuel efficient car instead of an SUV, perhaps riding your bike to work. I save more energy by cycling into work instead of driving my car than taking my entire house off the grid. I can do this now, and I am doing this now. Unfortunately, to most people, saving energy is a very low priority.

That's not to say we shouldn't support science and technology - it's also very important to do this too. However, the only thing that will make changes in the long run are shifts in attitudes. For example, recently, a poll was conducted by BBC Radio 4 - it showed that most young people in Britain were deeply concerned about excessive fossil fuel usage. However, when they were asked if they would change their lifestyle as a consequence, most of them said no. I expect this is because they just think it's somebody else's problem and the Government can wave a magic wand and it'll all go away - when in reality it's driven by their own demand for fuel. They are claiming deep concern about it but aren't actually prepared to make a lifestyle change to address it.

Re:BASIC REVIEW FOR SLASHDOTTERS

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick question: How on earth can you criticize "Captain Taco" for being famous? Who is this "Captain Taco"? And why isn't it "Capitan Taco"? Are you referring to the infamous "Cmdr Taco? Aside from regular Slashdot readers, he's not very well-known. Therefore, it's not exactly a biting criticism.

More dots?

[leathered]

WoW players have known about this for a long time.

Armed and dangerous...

[flyingfsck]

Imagine being attacked by an army of quantum dots.

Show me the cheap pannels!

[Deagol]

I've been a /. member for 10 years now, and these "cheaper, more efficient" solar panel techniques have popped up at least a two or three times a year. When the hell can I go shopping for consumer grade panels and find something substantially below $4/Watt?

Given the subsidies solar research has had since the 70s, I can't figure out why progress has been so slow for the past 30 years. I'm not a big conspiracy buff, but, given the explosive rate of technology on other fronts over the same period, something just doesn't seem right.

Re:Show me the cheap pannels!

[sien]

Solar research has not had a lot of research dollars compared to fusion research, let alone any form of military research. This wasn't unreasonable when it seemed like there was no good reason for not using coal for power.

There has actually been fairly consistent, gradual improvement in solar panels.

If you're interested, get a hold of the May 8th Economist and check the Technology Quarterly. The article is online but requires an Economist subscription. There was an article on solar panels that was very informative. First, on price:

Even so, many people believe the prospects for solar energy have never looked brighter. Decades of research have improved the efficiency of silicon-based solar cells from 6% to an average of 15% today, whereas improvements in manufacturing have reduced the price of modules from about $200 per watt in the 1950s to $2.70 in 2004. Within three to eight years, many in the industry expect the price of solar power to be cost-competitive with electricity from the grid.

There is also a very interesting quote on how the technology can be compared to other technologies dealing with silicon and thin films.

The solar industry has in the past profited from the manufacturing improvements of chipmakers, and is now finding ways to benefit from innovations in other high-tech fields. "I think of the silicon solar-cell industry as a marriage between the semiconductor industry, where it gets its base technology, and the CD industry, which is very high volume," says Richard Swanson, SunPower's president and technology chief. Applied Materials, a leading maker of chipmaking gear, recently decided to apply its expertise in making flat-panel displays to thin-film solar panels.

There is also a graph in the article showing installed solar power capacity from 1994 to 2004. In 1994 there was about 0.2GW of installed solar power. In 2004 there was about 2.5GW of installed power.

From the article, you could go ahead and make up a 'Sol's Law', similar to Moore's law. It would not have anything like the 18 month double of transistor packing, but may have 10 year order of magnitudes of increases in installed solar panels and considerable reductions in cost.

Re:Show me the cheap pannels!

[Deagol]

Even so, many people believe the prospects for solar energy have never looked brighter. Decades of research have improved the efficiency of silicon-based solar cells from 6% to an average of 15% today, whereas improvements in manufacturing have reduced the price of modules from about $200 per watt in the 1950s to $2.70 in 2004. Within three to eight years, many in the industry expect the price of solar power to be cost-competitive with electricity from the grid.

That must be in huge lots. If you can locate panels online for end-user purchase that are $4/watt you're doing pretty good. If I could find $2.70/watt I'd spend a lot of money very quickly.

I've followed consumer-level solar stuff for the past 7 years or so, even subscribing to Home Power Magazine for a few years. Prices haven't gone down much at all during that time.

Re:Show me the cheap pannels!

[DerekLyons]

I've been a /. member for 10 years now, and these "cheaper, more efficient" solar panel techniques have popped up at least a two or three times a year. When the hell can I go shopping for consumer grade panels and find something substantially below $4/Watt?

I've been watching solar power issues for thirty years - and "cheaper, more efficient" solar cells have been "coming Real Soon Now because of this Cool Discovery" about every six months all that time.

Re:Show me the cheap pannels!

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you're interested, get a hold of the May 8th Economist and check the Technology Quarterly."

- 'Honey? Have you seen my time machine?'

Now where did I put that damn thing...

Re:Show me the cheap pannels!

[Anonymous Coward]

In some places, poorly designed subsidies on solar power have reduced the incentive to reduce price.

Re:Show me the cheap pannels!

[An Onerous Coward]

Subsidies for solar are relatively tiny. But I think they get a lot of spinoffs from other semiconductor research.

From some random policy paper:

But such a prognosis neglects the empirical evidence for expecting continued declines in PV prices. For example, average selling prices of PV modules have decreased from $55/Wp (in 2001 dollars) in 1976 to approximately $3.50/Wp in 2001 (Harmon, 2000; Maycock, 2002). For our analysis, we set the breakeven price of PV modules at $1.50/Wp, which is within the range reported in the research literature on PV market penetration (e.g., Payne et al., 2001). PV modules can be expected to reach a real price of $1.50/Wp by 2012,
based on price trends to date.

Note: Wp stands for "peak watt," the nominal unit of solar panel absorption (which translates to different amounts of power generated, depending on location and weather).

The point is, between 1976 and 2001, the price of a given amount of solar capacity has undergone four halvings. Furthermore, it's supposed to more-than-halve again between 2001 and 2012. That's huge, steady progress, but given a half-life of six years, it's not surprising that it seems imperceptible to an eager shopper.

Re:Show me the cheap pannels!

[Anonymous Coward]

You've answered your own question, subsidies. Stop them and the people working on the problem will need to produce more than abstract papers describing what they might or could or plan to do in the future with more funding.
Total BS.

Commercialize or die. Or perhaps an http://www.xprize.org/ X-Price needs to be offered to get non-tit suckling entrepreneurs working on the problem.

Re:Show me the cheap pannels!

[jmorris42]

> Given the subsidies solar research has had since the 70s, I can't figure out why progress has been so slow for the past 30 years.

There are several limits on cheap solar. Start with an absolute upper limit on efficiency. 100% is not likely in our lifetime, I'd doubt exceeding 50% is likely in the next hundred years. There are already panels in the marketplace in the 15-20% range and we are always reading about better stuff in the labs. So there probably isn't even another whole doubling of output power to research. It isn't like semiconductor transistor counts and operating speeds that apparently can keep on increasing for another couple of decades according to Moore's Law.

So that leaves existing power/area systems becoming more affordable sweetened with a little more efficiency now and then. But any panel based photovoltaic system can't escape needing a lot of surface area of fairly hi tech material along with the basic expenses involved in manufacturing, transporting and installing large bulky things. Heck, basic roofing material ain't exactly cheap when you have to buy enough to cover your roof and pay people to go up there and install it. It also implies a pretty hard limit to the maximum power load a home can have and still be a candidate for solar. Environmental control is the big drain now and can be greatly reduced with better home design. But other power drains are growing and if they exceed what can be collected that will scuttle the notion of independence from the grid.

And last there is the final part of a solar system, the control and storage system. Hi current electronics built and installed to code isn't cheap and isn't likely to experience more than a halving in price anytime soon. Storage for now means batteries and we all know they are THE limit on so much modern tech. So until somebody cracks that nut alternative power is going to be held back along with electric cars and portable electronics.

Re:Show me the cheap pannels!

[mdsolar]

It is hard to find panels that cheap because the raw material supply is tight just now. As this clears up in the next couple years $3/Watt should be pretty common (delivered not installed). The other thing that has kept prices high is lack of industrial scale. You can look at page 20 of this report http://www.redrok.com/pvreport.pdf to see that a 500 MW production plant reduces costs by a factor of 4. One of at least two plants of this size going into the US this year is described here: http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/stor y?id=47621. As these crank up, you should see prices drop even farther. If you want to signup for renting panels from the other plant follow the links at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html.

Re:Show me the cheap pannels!

[FluxIntegrator]

It's called "sleeping on the job". It really works, you should try it.

But, seriously, the progress has been slow, to practically nonexistent. Why? One word. OIL. Everybody knows this. How do we stop it? Get rid of big oil. In fact, get rid of ANYTHING with the word, "big" in front of it. Their all bad. Everything from "microsoft" and "sun", the dictators of the software industry, to, YES, even, dare I say it, Gooo... Goooog... Ok, OK, Google. And, of course there's Big Tobaco. And, last, but not least, big George W. Bush. Just get rid of them all, and the U.S. will be a millions times better because you did. Vote democratic and privatize everything, share your toys, and eat your greens, and the world will be a better place.

Re:Show me the cheap pannels!

[Ex-MislTech]

Agreed, the efficiency for photovoltaic can't really even match solar thermal...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEGS

If they can find a way to get these to the consumer market it could be cheap
and could be made more long term reliable.

Re:BASIC REVIEW FOR SLASHDOTTERS

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from regular Slashdot readers, he's not very well-known. Therefore, it's not exactly a biting criticism.

Since the criticism was posted on Slashdot, your criticism of the criticism is not very biting either.

Slashdot Post Title Generator

[dorix]

#!/usr/bin/perl

my @firstwords = ("Quantum", "Solar", "Mysterious", "Ancient", "Lovecraftian");
my @secondwords = ("Dot", "Nanotube", "Lubricant", "Artifact", "Octogenarian");
my @thirdwords = ("Recipe", "Formula", "Scripture", "Rumour", "Box", "Thingy");

my $firstword = @firstwords[int(rand($#firstwords + 1))];
my $secondword = @secondwords[int(rand($#secondwords + 1))];
my $thirdword = @thirdwords[int(rand($#thirdwords + 1))];

print "$firstword $secondword $thirdword May Lead To Cheaper Solar Panels\n";

Re:Slashdot Post Title Generator

[ozphx]

I for one welcome our new Ancient Lubricant Formula bearing overlords!

Re:Slashdot Post Title Generator

[toetagger]

Mysterious Lubricant Formula May Lead To Cheaper Solar Panels!

Nice! Dare to explain how that one works?

Re:Slashdot Post Title Generator

[dorix]

Science doesn't know yet. That's why it's mysterious.

Re:Slashdot Post Title Generator

[mdielmann]

My personal favorite is "Mysterious Octogenarian Thingy May Lead To Cheaper Solar Panels." Priceless.

Well, at least this one...

[msauve]

won't be patented.

I mean, according to the article,

The essence of the new recipe is to use cetyltrimethylammonium bromide instead of the standard alkylphosphonic acid compounds.

which is certainly obvious (heck, there's probably prior art), especially with the new Supreme Court ruling.

A Manhattan Project on Alternative Energy Sources

[presidenteloco]

That's what the energy guzzling nations (particularly the Kyoto-Scofflaw USA) need to put into action
if we want to have any real impact on global warming.

I have no doubt that if the urgency was there and the resources were put into it that we
would be able to meet all our energy needs with a combination of
fusion, new-tech solar, wind, smart-grid, ocean wave power generation,
and large-scale geothermal generation. If we can drill for the last dregs of oil, why can't
we drill for Earth's heat instead?

Major technological challenges exist for all of these technologies except wind power which is
already well-established and optimized. But every single one of them is well within reach
of a concentrated decade-long project with massive resources put into it by a mixture of
government and private sector.

A whole bunch of jobs with a future, instead of dead-end dying industry jobs, would also
be created.

Seems too sensible for actual human politics though, doesn't it.

photovoltaics == vaporware?

[Yonder Way]

So it seems like every time I blink, Slashdot is posting some story about a revolution in photovoltaic technologies. But when are these revolutions going to trickle down to actual products that I can mount on the roof of my home?

Maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but I only ever see incremental improvements in PV technology at the retail level. Perhaps the Slashdot editors should hold back on some of these vaporware announcements and focus more on tangible products that can make a difference now.

How about storage

[phorm]

Even if we come up with some super-efficient way to transfer solar energy into useful electricity, there is one barrier that will remain:

How do we store it?

It seems to me that we will need both a new source of energy and a way to harvest/store it. Current oil/gasoline, as a liquid or vapor, is both. That means that it works fairly independent of outside factors with the exemption of operating-temperature limitations.

With solar energy, we need it to be available not just on the nice sunny days, but the nights, and the cloudy not-so-sunny days too. In countries like Canada or other places that see a fair bit of snow, we'll need ways to properly keep the collectors unobscured (such as heated solar panels) in order to keep the snow off, and ways to clean them when they get dirty.

We're making lots of interesting progress, but there's a whole, huge industry out there if the big push away from fossil-fuels ends up with solar as a primary replacement. Some people have mentioned the oil companies being involved, but my thoughts are that they can find plenty of ways to make money in the new industry. In fact, many of the oil-producing nations would also be prime areas for solar-collection, so they might do just fine in such a new market.

Re:How about storage

[geekoid]

you right, OTOH not needing to use the grid during the day would have a giant impact.

Re:How about storage

[flyingfsck]

Alternatively, you could build a world-wide grid. The sun is always shining somewhere.

Re:How about storage

[pclminion]

Even if we come up with some super-efficient way to transfer solar energy into useful electricity, there is one barrier that will remain: How do we store it?

How about in the grid? Tear down the coal burning plants and replace them with gigantic flywheel plants. During the day, excess solar energy spins up the flywheels. During night, the flywheels dole out the stored energy to meet the nighttime demand. This system might be carefully calibrated so that very little excess energy is wasted (generated by the photovoltaics, but nowhere to store it). And any small amount that WAS left over could just be used to electrolyze water and you'd get a little hydrogen out of the deal.

This doesn't do anything to directly address petroleum oil consumption of vehicles. But it would reduce the significant portion of total CO2 output from fossil fuel electric power generation.

Vehicles inherently NEED a dense, easily mobile power source. This is because they, well, MOVE. We haven't figured out a way to store renewable energy in a vehicle with the same density and mobility. But instead of chucking the whole idea just because we can't see how to apply it to vehicles, at least we might make an impact on other levels.

Re:How about storage

[matt21811]

"How do we store it?"

By pumping water uphill.

Re:How about storage

[phorm]

Interesting idea. I wonder how much leakage would occur with a transatlantic power line though. Not to mention what happens if you have several GV travelling through a line that breaks.

Still, greater minds than mine might figure out a solution.

Re:How about storage

[MtViewGuy]

Problem with flywheel plants: they need very high quality metallurgy, ceramics or composite materials--none of which are cheap--to make them work, especially when you have to factor in the physics of a big, fast-spinning flywheel.

A better solution is to develop MIT's nanotube supercapacitor power storage units, which eliminates the complications of fast-moving parts and still offer quite a lot of power storage in a unit not much bigger than an air conditioning compressor for a whole house.

Re:How about storage

[aproposofwhat]

A much cheaper solution would be to ask the Iranians if you could use their centrifuge cascades as a short term power store - Ahmamadbastid would love the deal!

Re:How about storage

[pclminion]

That idea is absolutely preposterous. Using the value given by Google for the USA's rate of electricity consumption (about 3.7 trillion kilowatt hour in the year of 2004), and using the most optimal estimate of energy density for these supercapacitors (about 5 watts-hours per kilogram), and assuming that only HALF of the total energy must be stored (50% nighttime), you arrive at the result that we require 370 trillion kilograms of supercapacitors. That's ABOUT 400 BILLION TONS.

Why don't you get back to me when you figure out a way to manufactor 400 billion tons of nanotube supercapitors. I'm waiting patiently.

Re:How about storage

[pclminion]

Jesus, my proofreading is awful today. I even previewed that.

Re:How about storage

[ChrisMaple]

The sun is always shining in space. Convert it to microwaves and beam it down to a rectenna farm.

Put some mirrors in orbit; aim them at ground solar stations. That's going to really annoy astronomers, however.

Trailers

[AJWM]

If you know you're going on a long trip, and you have a pure-electric car, just tow a trailer-mounted generator. Yeah it burns gas (or diesel, or whatever), but for most people the most frequent use of their car is not thousand-mile road trips. I can see a market for rental of such, just as there is for renting cargo trailers.

non-toxic quantum dots

[Anonymous Coward]

Indium Phosphide (InP) QDs are around the corner. You heard it here first. My coworkers have been synthesizing them recently. No heavy metals or toxicity there--but then again, even if you were to accidentally ingest (and digest) some CdSe quantum dots, the amount of cadmium exposure would be comparable to smoking a cigarette.

(posting as AC so I don't get in trouble with the company legal team)

quantum dots sounds cool...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a feeling this is getting attention because it has a cool name. Everyone is basically pro 'quantum mechanics', judging by all the general quantum mechanics books available and the fact that girls swoon at the site of any physicist. And 'dots' are a delicious candy.

Obligatory Comment

[Nom du Keyboard]

And here's the obligatory: Production of units for sale to the public is expected in about 5 years.

Re:Obligatory Comment

[dajak]

And after the first billion have been sold prices are expected to come down due to economies of scale and they will be as cheap as a panel of plywood of comparable size.

needs more dots

[Anonymous Coward]

more dots

Re:needs more dots

[fractoid]

Stay the f**k away from the quantum whelps cave!

Re:A Manhattan Project on Alternative Energy Sourc

[vonhammer]

Centralized planning like this always sounds so easy, but it belies the complexities involved in these areas. Perhaps you should have said, "Manhatten projects" because each one would require that level of committment to bring to fruition. Even then, you might find that the market and science had moved in a different direction and that you had squandered much or most of your investment. And that is why centralized planning fails so miserably in these complex problems. The market is vastly superior and more efficient. The best approach is to tie the true cost of energy to the fuel (ie add a tax to fossil fuels proportional to the amount of CO2 they release when burned). Then sit back and watch, as if by magic, the free market adjust and substitutes and alternatives are selected by consumers. Over time, the problems work themselves out.

I am not a scientist but...

[TechnicalFool]

I don't think beaming however many gigawatts of microwaves through the earth's atmosphere would be the ideal way of power transfer. I don't have the relevant degrees under my belt to be able to calculate this exactly, but I'm guessing much of the energy would be lost in the same way as most of the sun's energy is absorbed, with the side effect that you would heat the atmosphere up. Not to mention that you're seriously suggesting building a multi-gigawatt (that's a guess - it could even be terawatts) maser, hoping that it stays pointed at the right place to within several decimal points of 0 degrees accuracy, and hoping that nobody would ever think of using something like that as a weapon. As much as I like science fiction, the whole "let's aim gigantic death rays at the earth" idea, even if technically possible, really doesn't fill me with confidence. Not to mention that an orbital solar array large enough to generate that kind of power would be very, very visible in the night sky and probably require too much maintenance to be worthwhile.

Something more feasible and more peacable may be to find a way of putting enough power into one packet to make a long trip worthwhile. If the system can be automated to a great enough degree, there's no reason why power generation systems, mining, refining, production and maintenance facilities can't be set up on a planet like Mars, providing there are enough resources. The idea would be that once set up, there would be enough redundant production and maintenance ability that anything broken can be fixed (either automatically or via remote), and the whole system remains in as homeostatic a state as possible, sending a steady stream of hydrogen cells or other form of high-density power units to earth for recovery and usage.

I'm also sure there are some real boffins who work on things like this. Anyone want to find a link or leave a comment?

Yeah, dream on...

[Known Brave]

Yeah,

You'll be able to enjoy free energy, disconnect from the power grid, and enjoy singing tomorrows...

Never gonna happen.

Not good for THE ECONOMY!

You gonna pay till you die (and your childrens after you)

Period.

Wake-up!

Market Economy.
Capitalism.

Enjoy!

Re:Yeah, dream on...

[Virtual_Raider]

Never gonna happen. Not good for THE ECONOMY!

I hate you. I was getting all excited, thanks a lot for busting my bubble with your realism =P

I'm reading Blue Mars and the utopian economics they try to set up there seem interesting. I seriously doubt a matter replicator a la StarTrek will ever become a reality —or something like in that boring book with the Lady's Primer nanomagical nonsense whose name eludes me (and while I'm at it I think 300 is dull so mod me into oblivion)—, but having renewable and near-free energy sources such as wind and solar would certainly help a great deal towards making it possible to distribute wealth more evenly.

The biggest barrier to this, IMHO, is western pro-profit capitalist mentality: You must always compete, you must always grow, you must always gain. There is little room for ties or compromises and what might be perceived as a steady-state is instead viewed as stagnation or mediocrity. Some people maintain that we do have the capacity right this day to feed the world, but many issues ranging from distribution problems to plain old greed prevent it. I want to believe that if we could find a better energy source, the cost of living would go down a bit, and the quality of living for many people in extreme poverty might improve. But I could just be naive =(

Re:Yeah, dream on...

[ChrisMaple]

Gee, the market economy must be why I listen to a tube radio in my horse-drawn carriage.

All I want to know.....

[Anonymous Coward]

All I want to know is if these little guys have four arms then how can they be called dots????

Makes you wonder doesn't it.

dave

Re:All I want to know.....

[ChrisMaple]

Dot is short for Dorothy. So they're not guys, they're gals. The inventors, being nerds, can't distinguish legs from arms.

Your roof is often enough

[mdsolar]

A typical home needs about a 5 kW peak system to cover its annual power use. At the surface of the Earth you get about a kW (peak) per square meter so at 15% efficiency you need about 33 square meters of panels. That's a little under 6 meters on a side. Granted, 5 kW does not cover your peak draw, but in 41 states and DC you can do net metering http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/03/net-metering.h tml. So, having a really big yard is not needed unless you want to become a commercial power generator.

I kind of understand the attraction of space, but you can get ground based solar now for what you are already paying for electricity just by renting it so there is not any need to wait http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

HOAs and solar

[mdsolar]

Seantor Menendez of NJ has introduced legislation that would deal with the HOA situation with solar power http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/partner/s tory?id=47928. It has also been introduced in the house by Reps. Cardoza (CA) and Ferguson (NJ). Some states already have this kind of legislation so you might want to check to see if you are already covered.
--
Rent solar power with no installation cost http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Re:HOAs and solar

[TooMuchToDo]

Thank you!

Re:HOAs and solar

[mdsolar]

Thank them: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/65431047 0?ltl=1178165301.

Storage isn't needed yet

[mdsolar]

We can get a pretty large install base before storage becomes a big issue. When you do net metering, solar displaces peak load generation, often natural gas and has the effect of bringing electricity costs down since those expensive sources are not used so much. Going up to about 20% of the grid supply is not a big problem. It is when you start getting close to covering 50% of demand at peak that things get dicey. Then the base load power supply is shutting down and this is not what it was built to do. So, you'd like to shunt the renewable power that is "extra" into power storage to handle night time variable demand. But, at that point, you might not want to use PV, so there is a bit of a dilemma http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/04/smelling-salts .html. But, by that time, if batteries for cars are getting broad deployment, they might be used as storage along with PV, getting a charge at work, then covering some nighttime use at home if employers are willing to supply charging facilities.

Chemical Storage?

[mdsolar]

I got interested in ammonia as a power storage medium after learning of a new (solar) process to produce it. See what you think: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/04/smelling-salts .html.

Bucky Fuller

[mdsolar]

Bucky Fuller wanted just this. I've linked to a site that is working on this issue here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/03/coast-to-coast .html.
--
Cure omnibefuddledness: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

You'd end up with plenty of hydrogen :-)

[cheros]

If a subocean powerline breaks it could be quite interesting to light a cigarette on the surface, I think..

Re:Oooops - wrong date 8 March

[sien]

That Mr AC guy has some good points sometimes.

Re:A Manhattan Project on Alternative Energy Sourc

[Alioth]

No, it's not the government who will wave a magic wand and make it all go away.

Who are the energy users? People. Millions and millions of people. Until we as individuals are prepared to cut our energy usage (and by and large we are not - most people can already save tremendous amounts of energy - probably more energy than taking their entire house off the grid - merely by bicycling into work instead of driving, yet have a huge array of excuses on why they can't) then there will be no reductions. Hell, most people will buy the most inefficient vehicle they can afford, rather than buying a perfectly nice fuel efficient vehicle.

If you live in the USA and don't like it that the USA didn't sign up to Kyoto, why not sign up to your own personal Kyoto treaty? Reduce your own personal energy usage year on year? There's nothing stopping you from doing so, certainly not politics. The ONLY thing that will reduce energy consumption is people wanting to reduce their own personal energy consumption. But to most, reducing energy consumption as a priority falls somewhere way behind having a nice haircut.

I for one ...

[ThirdPrize]

welcome our four-armed quantum dot overlords!

Thermal solar

[mdsolar]

By installing a larger hot water tank, you can use solar thermal energy to heat your hot water. Some installations work reliably for long periods. They do contain moving parts though. The plant you link to needs scale to work because it is going for a high delta T to run a turbine. Because of scale they get to about 20% efficiency. With smaller delta T and smaller turbines it would be substantially less efficient.
--
Solar Power at a fixed rate for up to 25 years: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

timely news

[White Yeti]

I heard on the radio this morning that the Saudis are researching and considering their investment options with regard to renewable energy sources. They want to match their capacity with demand, and keep making buckets of money even if it's not from oil.

Re:timely news

[Rei]

While Saudi Arabia has almost no potential for biofuels (excluding, possibly, oceanic production) due to their limited water supply, the country has among the highest insolation (solar exposure) values in the world. Solar power, even at current prices, should have a very short payback time over there.

Please Mod Parent Up

[wolfemi1]

This is how some load levelling is actually done at modern power plants. During the non-peak hours, a bit of extra power is used to pump water to a higher reservoir, which is then allowed to flow down through the same pump to generate a bit of extra power during peak hours. It is elegant, simple, and awfully cost-effective.

Re:Please Mod Parent Up

[illtud]

This is how some load levelling is actually done at modern power plants.

Plants? National Grids, in some instances! Dinorwig Power Station in North Wales can bring 1800MW online in 16 seconds. It also has diesel generators and what's basically a massive UPS so that it can actually self-start if the whole grid is down, to help kick-start the entire national grid. All built inside a mountain. I visited before they installed the turbines, that was one big rock chamber...

Yes, Pump storage plants will become increasingly important if we move to less constant renewable sources of energy.

Oil companies see the writing on the wall.

[FooAtWFU]

Have you taken a look at BP lately? British Petroleum? No, wait! If you've seen their television ads, they've rebranded: they are now beyond petroleum. Not that this actually means anything to what they're doing, in and of itself, and it's not much more than a gesture. But they can see the writing on the wall. They have some idea of what's coming. And the directors at the big companies will indeed act to preserve their future. That's what their investors have hired them to do.

The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stone. The Bronze Age didn't end because we ran out of bronze. And, likewise, the Oil Age is not going to end because we run out of oil. There will be something better, and these companies want in on it.

$3.15/Watt thin film solar

[mdsolar]

At the top of this http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm price comparison list I found Aten Solar http://www.atensolar.com/14.html selling at $3.15/Watt for thin film solar (minimum 32 panel purchase). They provide a 20 year better than 80% warranty similar to standard silicon panels. This won't fit on your roof and cover you power usage, but if you have yard space, this might get you going right away and be less costly to mount. This is amourphous silicon technology.
--
Get Solar Power on your roof without the hassles: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Re:A Manhattan Project on Alternative Energy Sourc

[presidenteloco]

Firstly, the nuclear bombs worked, didn't they?
Secondly, the governments managed to build and maintain the highway system, didn't they?
Now both of these may have been unwise plans, but they were carried out well by government,
surprise, surprise.
Thirdly, Canadians have a government-planned free healthcare system that works pretty well for the entire population
most of the time.
A government is just a big corporation (city governments actually ARE corporations) and a large corporation is really
similar to a government. It depends more who's in charge as to whether anything gets done right or not.

Secondly, I agree with you that a massive carbon tax would do the trick best, and I'm all for it, but maybe
we should take a straw poll to see what percentage of Americans would go for that. Thought so.

So a diversion of existing tax revenues from government subsidies to the fossil fuel energy sector and the road
transportation sector, into a focussed set of projects, would probably be more palatable to the taxpayers.

People follow economic path of least resistance

[presidenteloco]

So it's up to governments to set the tilt of the economic playing field if society as a whole
needs to make a substantial change. The carbon tax would do this nicely. It's annoying that
the most simple and effective solution is usually the least politically popular one.

Perhaps a better education system, that taught people to think for themselves, to know
how to learn, to know why it would be good to learn, would lead to more responsible citizens
on this and other issues. Right now, anyone that owns a TV or reads the daily newspapers
pretty much has their opinions owned by the economic interests that run (and influence through
threat of advertising holdback) the mainstream media networks. If the majority of people realized
that and realized that that situation sucked, then I think we'd be on the road to progressive
democratic politics and real solutions. Right now, we're being herded by sheep to the malls in
our SUVs.

Re:People follow economic path of least resistance

[presidenteloco]

herded "like" sheep, not "by" sheep, although, with the level of "don't make me think" these days, we probably could be herded by sheep.

Ever hear of patents?

[Radical Moderate]

Oil companies have a tremendous incentive to invest in renewable energy R&D: Create new technologies, patent them, and sit on them so that no one else can use them. If you could sell some one $20,000 worth of solar panels that will last for 30 years or sell them $2000(and rising) worth of oil a year forever, which would you do? Keep in mind you have to answer to shareholders who will toss you into the street if you're not doing what's best for their wallets.

Until they can't sell us oil, oil companies have little incentive to sell better solar technology.

Re:Ever hear of patents?

[Rei]

Hey, guess what? They're *not sitting on them*. They're not only funding half of the solar market's R&D, they're also selling half of the solar market's panels. The four biggest manufacturers are Kyocera, Sharp, BP Solar, and Shell Solar. The same goes with wind; Shell is the biggest player in the world's largest wind farm under construction currently (the London Array), which will provide 1/4th of the power of all of the homes in Greater London. Check out the big investors in carbon sequestration projects -- once again, it's the oil companies.

Your conspiracy theory flies in the face of the data.