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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."
Once costs are the same as that of power from the grid then people will use this. It will help the environment and energy security. The only worry is that peak power production will still have to deal with night-time demand. We need to look at efficient, cheap energy storage.
$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.
When the solar energy knocks those electrons loose, they travel out into the power grid, but unless there is some way to replenish those electrons, we're looking at a dwindling amount of electrons in the substrate. Normally, the additional electrons would be supplied via an electron-rich compound such as water or liquid mercury, but these advanced solar panels are turning solar energy directly into electrical energy, so there can't possibly be any extra electron replenishment without significant reduction in energy production. The alternative, of course, is to let Nature fill in those lost electrons at night when electron activity is at its highest (due to an abundance of free electrons caused by lowered grid electricity usage).
I'm interested in seeing how these researchers are able to de-ionize the silicon gel platters and create extra-electronned wafers that stand up to both the harsh elements as well as the long environmental electron replenishment mechanisms.
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.
$ fortune -m "electron buildup"
Say out loud: I'm an Aspie and I'm somewhat proud, I guess. Uh. Can I write an email in all caps instead? Hm...
And the war is for OIL control.
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.
Who modded this down? This is a genuine aid to small short-term variations. See beacon power. I am not sure that such technologies could cope with day/night fluctuations though, for these long period variations probably pump storage hydroelectric may be better. They are probably complementary technologies, as it takes a pump-storage plant about a minute to reach full load from stand-still, or 15 seconds from "hot standby", where the turbines are kept spinning under zero load.
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.
In 1974 my 8th grade class went to Washington D.C.
One day they took us to the Capitol, and after the obligatory tour, they turned us loose.
In the Capitol. To look around. Really. It was a different world back then.
Anyway, I picked a hearing room at random, wandered in, and sat down.
This was during the first energy crisis, and someone was testifying to the committee about solar cells.
He was explaining that just as advances in IC technology had brought down the cost of ICs,
advances in the solar cell technology would bring down the cost of solar energy.
It sounded plausible, but it was completely wrong.
And for reasons that anyone testifying before congress should have understood.
It costs a certain amount of money (~ $1K) to process a silicon wafer.
We brought down the cost of ICs by making them smaller, so we get more of them for our $1K.
But that trick doesn't work with solar cells.
Solar cells collect photons over their surface.
You can make one smaller, sure, but then it collects fewer photons and produces less energy.
The only way to make solar cells cheaper is reduce the cost of the wafer and the processing,
and that's *hard*.
We've been working on it for 40 years,
and they still aren't competitive with coal/oil/gas/nuclear powered electric generators. (~ $0.10/KW-hr)
"YOU Pay For Solar Energy Research" (whether you wanted to or not).
Last year, I heard a VP from Applied Materials give a talk on their solar panel operation. Applied Materials is a big, profitable company that makes a big fraction of the world's semiconductor and flat panel fab gear. Key points:
This was a big-company manufacturing executive talking. He never mentioned "green" or "eco" anything; he focused on volume and profitability. That's encouraging. This is finally happening for real.