Slashdot Mirror
DOE Shines $14M on Solar Energy Research
coondoggie writes "Eleven university solar research projects aimed at developing advanced solar photovoltaic (PV) technology manufacturing processes and products got a $14 million boost today from the Dept. of Energy. Photovoltaic-based solar cells convert sunlight directly into electricity, and are made of semiconductor materials similar to those used in computer chips. When sunlight is absorbed by these materials, the solar energy knocks electrons loose from their atoms, allowing the electrons to flow through the material to produce electricity."
$14 million spread across 11 universities = $1.27 million dollars. It is definitely a start but when you compare it to the $2 billion the DOE was going to spend in developing new rural coal plants you have to ask where their priorities lie.
I'm a fairly ecologically minded guy and I do think we need to develop energy sources which don't have us polluting or dealing with unsavory governments. However I question the wisdom of backing specific technologies over others. I think it would better to simply remove all the subsidies on coal mining and coal burning power plants. And then punitively tax ecologically unsound processes or activities. This will bring a parity to energy costs also and it removes the artificial motivations to pursue inferior technologies and cling to outdated ones.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
It would appear that their priorities lie in "generating cheap, reliable power", something which has not happened with solar despite us being "really close now!" for the last 25 years and billions in federal R&D. ($159 million in 2007 alone.)
The Department of Energy estimates that, in 15 years, America will get a whopping 2-3% of its electricity generation from solar power. It isn't hard to understand why: it is expensive, the technology takes a stupidly long time to go energy-positive (and longer to achieve ROI), and solar is and *always will be* hostage to weather conditions which make it impossible to as a main power source in the overwhelming majority of this country.
If you want cheap energy, go coal. If you want cheap clean energy, go nuclear. If you want the undying love of people who understand neither engineering or economics and are not willing to learn either, go solar.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
People spend more on their houses then that, and this is what our country spends on it? Photovoltaics might not be a silver bullet, but there are millions of rooftops that could be taking the edge off of our demand for energy, a demand that helps fuel the conflicts in the middle east, and we spend less money for a year on research then two hours on Iraq? $14M isn't news. Tell me when that M is a B.
Of course a superconducting world grid could solve the problem of darkness at night-time. I would imagine that we are half a century off this technically and who knows how far off politically though.
Meanwhile, in other news, the cost of the war in Iraq is approximately $275 million USD per DAY. http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home
...
So that $14 million is about an hour and a halfs worth of investment, on one of the technologies that would stop us having to fight any more "wars for oil" ever again.
Makes you think
Solar and wind, as they are now anyways, will never be stable energy sources, they are too dependent on the other variables, like the weather. Nations need a constant baseline of energy that solar and wind cannot provide reliably. Solar and wind are useful for summer days or the Super Bowl, when energy use goes above our usual baseline. We need to do more research in one of two fields, increase energy efficiency, so we have a lower baseline, and research cleaner, renewable, but most importantly reliable energy sources. I think, right now, nuclear is our best bet for that.
$14 million? A whole $14 MILLION? Gosh, I didn't think that much money existed in the whole world! Wow! All our problems are solved! Thank goodness the government is stepping in to save us! FOURTEEN MILLION DOLLARS!!!!!
You know, I've tried to be objective when evaluating Bush and his aid to africa package did not escape my notice. Unfortunately the TRILLIONS that will be spent on the iraq war make everything else pale in comparison. Especially when toilet paper is worth more than the dollar. My kids will be paying for this and I happen to love my kids. Right now I'm fucking pissed off. Thanks, George! And I'm a conservative!
$14 Million my ass.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
As I recall, 60% of all the world's solar energy is being generated in Germany.
So, rather than look around the U.S., one should see how Germany harnesses solar energy.
Two technologies have made solar technologies much less expensive.
1. Solar concentrators.
When sunlight hits a solar energy device,
that device needn't convert immediately to electricity or heat.
Split the use of solar energy into two steps,
a. Concentrate/divert the solar light with what looks like a mirror
or microwave antenna, but several meters in diameter.
b. Focus the solar mirror onto your solar energy converter;
essentially our solar cells of today, but able to withstand
large amounts of solar energy.
Producing solar mirrors is far less expensive than producing solar panels.
This concentrator method is being claimed by some Israelis.
They claim that 3 such concentrators save enough energy costs
to construct a new concentrator in 3 years,
thereby bootstrapping the economics of constructing solar concentrators.
2. Thin solar panels.
Thin is cheaper than thick.
Germans have developed this technology.
Germany is one of the last places you'd expect to have half the world's solar power.
From the same solar setup, you can get about twice as much energy near the equator
(eg, Israel) than in high latitude Germany.
Indeed, if we covered the Sahara Desert with solar panels,
we would produce as much energy as used by the whole world.
People on this blog mention that solar energy isn't storable.
But everything on earth is the result of solar energy
-- previous stars exploded to produce uranium and all the other elements besides hydrogen,
oil and coal are sunlight stored in carbon chains.
Which storage method used by nature could we use ourselves?
We could heat water then store it underground,
we could create carbon chains like oils,
we could move Sysiphus proverbial rock (or water) uphill then retrieve it downhill.
Dams once provided much of America's energy,
and now solar energy could move lake or sea water up into dams for later use.
If we go to mostly battery driven cars,
100 million big car batteries can store a great deal of solar energy.
Solar energy can be stored;
but perhaps the greatest technological challenge is not the acquisition of solar energy,
rather the storage of this energy.
The point to take away from the comparison isn't that $14 million is worthless, but rather that the war in Iraq is ridiculously expensive. $14 million, applied in a productive manner, can go a long way. On the other hand, when trying to solve an insoluble problem like Iraq, no amount of money would be effective.
The BUSH has been a complete disaster to science research in this country, we may never recover
Given a competent replacement, I believe we can. Just because we've spent the last 8 years spinning our wheels doesn't mean we have to continue to do so.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
You're looking at it wrong.
Too often, the cost of energy is examined as just the $ that the consumer pays. By that measure, solar, is much more expensive than oil/coal/nuclear for example, and getting it below that cost may be close to impossible.
But, that price of the coal/oil/nuclear is not the REAL price of that form of energy. Much of the costs are offloaded onto the environments they are drawn from in the form of damage and pollution. Other costs are offloaded onto the people who live where the resources are mined in the form of land loss and damage, and low wages.
It is also offloaded as risk. Nuclear is cleaner, but you have greater risk. Risk of an attack/failure at the reactor, risk of what will happen to the waste for the next several thousand generations, risk with the radioactive fuel materials falling into the wrong hands. Etc. These may have higher or lower probabilities but they exist.
So yes, coal/oil/nuclear are cheaper in dollars and cents, but not cheaper when you factor in the hidden costs to society as a whole.
Moral of the story: as we move to cleaner energy sources in the future, the dollar cost may be higher, but there will be fewer hidden costs.