Avalanche Effect Demonstrated In Solar Cells

esocid writes "Researchers at TU Delft (Netherlands) and the FOM (Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter) have found irrefutable proof that the so-called avalanche effect by electrons occurs in specific semiconducting crystals of nanometer dimensions. This physical effect could pave the way for cheap, high-output solar cells. Solar cells currently have relatively low output, typically 15%, and high manufacturing costs. One possible improvement could derive from a new type of solar cell made of semiconducting nanocrystals and could theoretically lead to a maximum output of 44%, with the added benefit of reducing manufacturing costs. In conventional solar cells, one photon can release precisely one electron. However, in some semiconducting nanocrystals, one photon can release two or three electrons, hence the term 'avalanche effect.' This effect was first measured by researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratories in 2004, and since then the scientific world had raised doubts about the value of these measurements. This current research does in fact demonstrate that the avalanche effect can occur."

Comments

Or great!

[Anonymous Coward]

One more glorious advancement in energy technology!

Now my laptop can run on batteries 3 weeks instead of 2.

Re:Or great!

[Hal_Porter]

Solar cells only work outside though.

You'd have to use a thick black raincoat, a wide brimmed hat and sunglasses to protect yourself from the ultraviolent radiation though. And cover up any exposed spots with SPF 10000 suncream.

Even then I'd scuttle back into the basement once the batteries had recharged.

Re:Or great!

[LynnwoodRooster]

And cover up any exposed spots with SPF 10000 suncream.

You know it also comes in a new convenient spray can!

Re:Or great!

[mazarin5]

You'd have to use a thick black raincoat, a wide brimmed hat and sunglasses to protect yourself from the ultraviolent radiation though. Horrorshow. Real horrorshow.

Re:Or great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Even then I'd scuttle back into the basement once the batteries had recharged.

I need more power captain!

44% in silica? It would be world changing magic.

The question is whether the recycling plants can be safely dismantled?

What if everyone forgets about toxicity and we all turn into zombies?

Re:Or great!

[Hal_Porter]

I love that movie. It's better than the book.

Wait and see

[Bananatree3]

as with all emerging technology, I am going to wait and see as to how this R & D develops into a commercial application.

However, I'll bet the keys on my keyboard that solar is going to be a lucrative market in the near future. Heck, it already is for solar cell manufacturers.

Re:Wait and see

[necro81]

And if you're wrong, well, that keyboard probably isn't worth much anyway.

Re:Wait and see

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you're going to wait and see. What choice do you have? It's always funny when people forget they aren't important.

Manufacturing Energy Costs?

[Doc Ruby]

Manufacturing solar PV cells is usually said to cost quite a lot of energy. But how much exactly (on average)?

How many joules are consumed from raw materials to a deliverable PV cell of a given output wattage? Of the old "about 15%" (really about 20-25% these days), and of these new proposed "avalance" PV material ones?

I want to compare that energy cost to the cells' projected energy contribution over their lifetime, which is about 30+ years for today's PV cells. How long would the new ones last in typical service?

Re:Manufacturing Energy Costs?

[Animats]

The head of Applied Materials' solar division said in a 2007 talk at Stanford that their current production process costs about 2 years of output for a solar panel. He thinks they can get that down to 6 months of output; he said some things about improvements to the sputtering process. which is derived from IC manufacturing technology where the wafers are smaller.

They'll probably do it. What Applied Materials does is improve semiconductor process technology. They're the world's largest maker of semiconductor fab equipment. This led them into making LCD displays, and then solar panels.

Re:Manufacturing Energy Costs?

[mrbluze]

I want to compare that energy cost to the cells' projected energy contribution over their lifetime, which is about 30+ years for today's PV cells. How long would the new ones last in typical service?

Estimated cost per watt of energy for a household system is about $8-10 US. From what I could determine (Source the expected energy return currently is 10-15 times the 'energy cost of manufacture' over the life of the cell.

That's not brilliant, but I guess a 10% reinvestment of the energy would mean solar cells can power the manufacture of solar cells.

Re:Manufacturing Energy Costs?

[syphax]

The numbers are all over the place and constantly coming down with new technologies, but you're looking at breakeven after 1-5 years or so.

This is pretty good (EROEI is >> 1), and will continue to get better.

Re:Manufacturing Energy Costs?

[marvin_pa]

And of course we should not forget that at least part of the energy that goes into the manufacturing could come from clean sources as well like solar.

Then the argument that solar cells cost more energy to produce loses all validity.

Re:Manufacturing Energy Costs?

[Anonymous Coward]

How could they power there own plant. They would have to build enough solar panels, to make there production for one day which means they would need to use 712 times the output they would need for one day at full production. So if they diverted all there production to making solar panels it would take them 712 days to make all there own panels. Or if they used half there cells it would take 826 days to make all the panels. It would also take some where under 3.8 years for the solar panels to repay the power then used (Assuming panels go online as they are being produced. But the problem is that they want to increase the amount production every couple of years. (open new plants,etc) If you rework the problem with six moth cells it works out a lot better. The next question is how did they get to their 2 year figure. Does this include all the power used to extract and refine the raw materials, the power used by those who work at the solar plant and the raw material plants. (getting to work, office lights etc.) Don't forget the shipping costs Solar Cells suck because of there high initial costs and really should be avoided for anywhere that doesn't have stringent space and weight constraints. At least for the time being.

Re:Manufacturing Energy Costs?

[peragrin]

yes but that is at the 10-15% efficiency that they have now. doubling the efficiency will provide a much larger return over the course of the life of the cell. all of this has only been possible in recent years as we refine your understanding of how it works.

Re:Manufacturing Energy Costs?

[online-shopper]

... we refine your understanding of how it works. Well, somebody's full of himself.

Re:Manufacturing Energy Costs?

[Doc Ruby]

Published on 16 Jun 2006 by Energy Bulletin. [...] This review has concluded that the likely energy payback of a typical domestic sized rooftop grid connected PV cell is approximately four years.

A domestic rooftop grid can receive something like 400W:m^2 (averaged across weather/seasons/night) here in NYC, generating 72W:m^2 (at the more likely 18% efficient PV). My building is 7.6x21.3m, 162m^2, or 11.655KW. We have 4 apartments, which consume (as the average household in NYC) about 2KW each. So we've got 3.65KW extra, or 31.4% surplus to sell back to the grid.

NYC has an average 25850 people per Km^2, with an average household of 2 people. A square KM of PV could generate 72MW for those people's requirement of 26MW. Even if only 1/3 of the City's area were PV, we'd power ourselves completely.

If PV averaged 40% instead of the 18% I used in these figures, that's only 1/6 the area needed. If the City and state offered tax incentives per grid watt self-generated for 5 years (while those PVs paid back their manufacturing energy investment), most roofs would have them. Consider the extra savings from offloading from our blackout-prone Con Edison grid, and replacing blacktop roofs with something insulating, and NYC would probably show a net energy profit after less than 10 years. Which, like everything else in NYC, would be readily converted to actual monetary profit.

Re:Manufacturing Energy Costs?

[Anonymous Coward]

their current production process costs about 2 years of output for a solar panel. He thinks they can get that down to 6 months of output And yet solar panels cost around 25 years their output retail? Are they really making 90% profit margins?

Re:Manufacturing Energy Costs?

[TimothyDavis]

Bit shifting to the right generally doesn't increase the value.

Re:Manufacturing Energy Costs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Total cost != energy costs.

Re:Manufacturing Energy Costs?

[syphax]

I see your CS geek and raise you a math geek

Re:Manufacturing Energy Costs?

[dbIII]

IMHO for a single crystal silicon solar cell the largest energy cost is zone refining of silicon to make the high purity ingots the wafers are cut from. This is going to vary depending on how pure the silica used as a source material is and what has happened during solidification. These ingots are large and a lot of wafers are cut from them so the energy cost to make the photovoltaics is shared with a few thousand microprocessors or whatever else is made from that batch.

Multi-crystal cells don't need this extra care but there are currently huge economies of scale from using the same semiconductor wafers used for electronics.

These are solid state materials with very low diffusion rates between the different parts - the photovoltaics that Einstein worked with when he was young would probably still work. The time in service for a system that uses photovoltaics would depend on the expected life of other parts in the environment they work in - eg. support structures, wiring, storage etc. There are plenty of working twenty year old installations put together by farmers.

Re:Manufacturing Energy Costs?

[peragrin]

that or can't spell and made your out of our.

APDs

[Wilson_6500]

Avalanche photodiodes of certain semiconductor materials have been around for a while now. I believe the novel part of this research is that they're confirming other researchers' data showing that lead selenide semiconductors can exhibit electron cascade effects.

Re:APDs

[noidentity]

I believe the novel part of this research is that they're confirming other researchers' data showing that lead selenide semiconductors can exhibit electron cascade effects.

The fact that it has lead in it will surely prevent it from being accepted in these "modern" times.

Re:APDs

[IorDMUX]

Does anyone know if the "avalanche" behavior observed in these solar cells is in any way related to diode/photodiode avalanche breakdown? If so, could someone explain to me how energy can be produced in this manner?

During a photodiode's avalanche breakdown, for example, the act of a photon hitting a reverse-biased photodiode diode excites an electron into the conduction band. The excited electron gains energy from the strong reverse bias potential and "smashes" into other electrons on its way down-potential, which electrons are also excited, and excite more electrons, and so forth. However, all the energy in the system (aside from the photon's few eV) is supplied by the source that reverse biases the diode and provides the excited electrons with the energy to accelerate through the semiconductor (which is why a photodiode can be used as a switch, trigger, or sensor).

TFA didn't do much to explain this issue... can anyone give me a hand?

Re:APDs

[bperkins]

It's hard to say without seeing the article in Nano-letters, but based on the diagram and a vague description, I'd guess that it works something like this:

A high energy electron hole pair is created by a photon, which then relaxes down to a lower energy state. But, instead of emitting a phonon (heat), it creates another electron hole pair, and you end up with two. I suppose this process could repeat itself, so that many different wavelengths would all produce energy with reasonable efficiency.

This is in all likelihood facilitated by the complex energy band structure of the (essentially) polycrystalline semiconductor.

I'm not so sure how directly applicable all of this is. I suspect that some theorist postulated that this could happen, but it was difficult to prove experimentally. It seems to me that the hard work of actually producing an workable device hasn't been done yet.

From what I can tell, this work is done in PbSe, which I don't think is a suitible for huge volume production.

But I could be wrong in all this.

Re:APDs

[muz64]

Avalanche photodiodes of certain semiconductor materials have been around for a while now. I believe the novel part of this research is that they're confirming other researchers' data showing that lead selenide semiconductors can exhibit electron cascade effects. I agree. What I'd like to see them explain is how not to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics. To create the ideal environment for avalanche to occur requires all those electrons to be energised to a higher state in an electric field of about 40MV/m - where's this energy coming from?

Los Alamos

[TubeSteak]

The avalanche effect was first measured by researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratories in 2004. Since then, the scientific world has raised doubts about the value of these measurements. Does the avalanche effect really exist or not? This is the Los Alamos stuff they're talking about:

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/20/1436213

Solar Cells Get Boost
Posted by michael on Thursday May 20 2004, @02:15PM
from the juiced-up dept.
Science Technology
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory have tapped the efficiencies of nanotechnology to double solar cells' potential energy production. The key to the method is the use of lead selenium nanocrystals which can produce 2 electrons where 1 was produced before. Other optical applications can also benefit."

Someone said it before, I will now.

[Jane Q. Public]

Somebody else said this the last time solar cells were brought up, and it is just as relevant here:

SOMEBODY PLEASE BRING SOME ACTUAL "IMPROVEMENTS" TO MARKET!!!

If all the "improvements" to solar cell manufacturing I have read about in recent decades became actuality, we would all have homes and cars powered solely by a 1-meter-square panel on the roof and the panels would cost $1 apiece.

Please, either DO SOMETHING with this, or stop making predictions!

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[QuantumG]

Yes, to the ever increasing market of solar cells. They put em in calculators and on caravans and ummm.. uhh.. those remote weather sensors and, uhhh, emergency phones on the side of the highway.... oh yeah, and satellites and NASA robots. As you can see, clearly the market is massive and the competition is cut-throat.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[stagnantProse]

Yeah, you tell 'em. And while your on it ask them what's holding up my flying car? Now where did I put my phone-watch?

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[Cairnarvon]

A lot of governments give incentives for installing solar cells on your roof, and a lot of people *are* getting them installed as a result, so yes, there is a market, and a pretty big one at that. The fact that the US is lagging behind doesn't make that disappear.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[QuantumG]

A subsidized market is hardly a market at all. The *fact* is that there are few manufacturers of solar cells.. and most of them are differentiated anyway, so they don't compete.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[wellingj]

Do something yourself if you think development and science are so easy.

I'm pretty sure if it was beyond revolutionary and economically feasible then it would be along faster than you can spit "I want it, and I don't know how it works, but I want it now!"

Or would you rather they make something that can't turn a profit, and just have the government subsidize it?

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[Jane Q. Public]

Phone watches have been available for years now (so have television watches, but not watches that do both).

What is holding up your flying car is not the car itself, it is infrastructure. Letting everybody who could afford to fly go wherever they wanted to, uncontrolled, would be pure mayhem. Death, destruction, and injury on a massive scale. Until they get absolutely reliable tracking and automated control, there will be no commonly available "flying cars". And the technology to do that, i.e., a distributed communications and computing network, did not exist until the cellular phone network was established (and greatly improved).

Now that we know we have the tracking and control technology, you might start seeing flying cars. But it is really no surprise that it has not happened before.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[jberryman]

We need to wake up, and start the new Manhattan Project for energy; I don't think we can wait on the Free Market for this one.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[jberryman]

AFAIK right now the emerging markets are places with little electricity infrastructure like rural India, but cost is still prohibitive.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[syphax]

... you forgot Germany, Spain, California, NJ, MA, etc.

World solar photovoltaic (PV) market installations reached a record high of 2,826 megawatts (MW) in 2007, representing growth of 62% over the previous year...The PV industry raised nearly $10 billion in 2007. 84 identified financial transactions accounted for $7.5 billion in 2007, Of this amount, $5.3 billion came in the form of equity financing, while $2.2 billion came from debt financing.

3 GW (peak), isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but I tend to pay attention to markets that grow at over 50% a year. It'll get even more interesting once all the new silicon capacity comes online, and drives Si costs back to sane ranges.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Silicon cells are important, but keep your eye on companies developing CIGS and CdTe cells. These cells have efficiencies and lifetimes similar to polysilicon, but the advantage of being thin film.

Solar will grow exponentially in the coming years. Just look at the market in Germany.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[JonBuck]

Hear hear!

Get out of the lab, get onto my roof!

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[QuantumPete]

patience... ;)

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[Obvius]

If I remember correctly from my old physics undergraduate days, the total available solar power across the entire spectrum is only just over 1kW per square metre at the Earth's surface. It's a useful thing to bear in mind when considering the viability of solar power. even with 100% efficient solar panels, we're unlikely ever to run a house on a single small panel.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[BiggerIsBetter]

patience... ;) patents :(

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[Anonymous Meoward]

We may not need something as drastic as a Manhattan Project. How about the Apollo program instead?

When JFK pledged to put a man on the moon in 10 years, we did it -- even though the Cold War arguments re: national security were a bit hysterical.

Why can't we have a leader pledge to reduce America's dependence on oil by 50% in 10 years? Sounds just as possible to me as Apollo XI would have in 1960. And it's obviously more practical.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[houghi]

Free market? This will be heavily patentented so that any gain will be lost in the nice way of scre-I mean-doing business.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[jollyreaper]

We need to wake up, and start the new Manhattan Project for energy; I don't think we can wait on the Free Market for this one. ZOMG!!!! COMMUNIST!

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[Xandu]

If all the "improvements" to solar cell manufacturing I have read about in recent decades became actuality, we would all have homes and cars powered solely by a 1-meter-square panel on the roof and the panels would cost $1 apiece.

Hmmm. We'd need other advances as well. Forgetting the fact that there are clouds some of the time and the sun is below the horizion about half of the time, and assuming that the roof of your house/car is pointed squarely at the sun at all times (slightly possible if you have pointed arrays) what would a 1 square meter array give you. Well, with 100% efficiency we'd get all of the ~1400 W/m^2 that the sun bathes us in. Multiply by the 1 m^2 array we get, (whew, tough math) 1400W.

For your car, that's (thankyou google calculator) a little less than 2 horsepower. Sure, you could save up some power in batteries, but 2 HP is certainly not sufficient for cars running on todays roads in todays traffic. It's impressive how much stuff you could power off your car (even if you have a very small car) if you hooked a generator up to it. It takes alot to change the momentum of ~1000kg amalgamation of man and machine.

As for your house, if you totally cut back on pretty much everything you use (including your computer to post comments on /.) you might be able to get away with that. (And if you weren't so whiny and insist on only 1 square meter, and installed PV arrays over all of your roof you'd be doing great). And that's assuming you live in a mystical place where the sun is up 24 hours a day (and 365 days a year).

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[SQLGuru]

Last time I checked, my roof is a good bit bigger than 1m^2. The south facing side is probably in the 300m^2 to 450m^ range (purely estimate). Since the only purpose that is serving is keeping the weather out, lining it with solar panels is perfectly fine with me. I don't really need to run my house off of a single panel.

But in order to install that solar, I need the cost to come down such that break even falls within the five year range (or less)....assuming constant / current energy prices and usage.

Layne

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[Ihlosi]

The south facing side is probably in the 300m^2 to 450m^ range (purely estimate).

That must be a really, really large house. How many m^2 floor space does it have ?

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[lareader]

Aye, no one would carpet the land with loads of goop just in order to let any asshat accelerate a chunk of mass in excess of one tonne to speeds easily beyond thrice that of a running man, not without having centrally control over these behemoths.
The result would only end in pure mayhem, with a side-order of "death, destruction and injury on a massive scale."

Of course, some people thought different, and a lot (too many?) people zoom around in their "cars" as it were, and they have had the temerity to demand even more funds be allocated to subsidize their chosen mode of transportation.

The real issues with "flying cars" are a) flying requires energy to stay up there (or some sort of of balloon structure, which brings problems of its own due to increased size and wind effect), b) problems during flight are more risky (and needs to be handled differently than in cars where, say, an engine failure is not a major cause for concern, if irritating) and c) flying requires more training than driving, mostly in taking off and landing (how much is dependent on the vehicle, of course).

Theoretically, the airspace is much bigger than the mostly two-dimensional road system. Unfortunately, due to our current infrastructure, a lot of people do end up going to a very small part of the surface, which would tend to increase the probability for collisions.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[ckedge]

FAR FAR easier to stop having IDIOT reporters report on RAW FUNDAMENTAL research results as if they were going to be immediately applicable or as if they were guaranteed to be capable of going to market.

The problem isn't research. This is exactly how research goes. You investigate 1000 things for 10-20 years, and ONE comes out the door to use in widespread industry.

So - 1000 slashdot stories, times 10 dupes and repeats over the 10 years, times 10 because it's re-reported on all the other bloggies/forumish/etc/etc "news sources" - do you see where this is going? If reporters report this basic raw fundamental research like this, you MUST read 100,000 fucking slashdot style "stories" over 20 years before a single one gets commercialized.

We need a category called "basic/fundamental research", to which stories are assigned by people with brains, which then we can all exclude from our views. :)

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[Ioldanach]

The south facing roof of a 35'x40' house (1400 square feet per floor) with a 7:12 slope is roughly 800 square feet, or about 76 square meters.

An example of a currently available solar panel intended for roofing application is 136 watts, and about 30 would fit on that sample roof, for a total possible 4,080 watts at any given point. Where I am, I can expect an average of 4.5 hours of full production per day, or 18 kwh/day, or 540 kwh/month. That's possible, but would require avoiding high load items like electric cooking, dryers, heating, and cooling. Oh, and the total cost would be $775*30 or $23k, plus installation, charge controller, inverter and storage (batteries).

A much more efficient solar panel, not designed to be applied directly to the roof but which would require a frame mounted on the roof and fit in a 7x7 grid, or 49 panels, could generate 9,800 watts max, or 44kwh/day, or 1,323kwh/month. That's a much more useful number, and might even handle an electric dryer, cooktop, and cooling. Still doubt it could handle heating (excepting heat pump or geothermal). And it would cost $53,900, plus installation, charge controller, inverter, and storage. Amortized over 20 years of service, that's $225/month, which is probably cheaper than your electric bill. Though if you had to take a loan, it would cost $414/month for those 20 years, which is probably more than today's electric bill for that amount of power.

And none of that includes the cost of storage and storage maintenance, which is currently usually battery power.

Both the cost of the panels and the cost of the storage need to come down for the solution to be viable for the average person.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[monkeythug]

There's another problem with the "solar roof" scenario apart from cost; in order to maintain maximum efficiency, you have to have your entire roof cleaned on a regular (maybe weekly) basis.

Which, assuming you don't fancy doing it yourself, is a not insignificant ongoing cost.

Of course some people have some flat roof sections on their house (more common in the US than here in the UK), in which case cleaning the panels yourself might be more feasible.

Alternatively a smaller panel that could be mounted on your wall alongside your upper floor windows sounds a lot more practical to me.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[Ihlosi]

Still doubt it could handle heating (excepting heat pump or geothermal).

Don't forget _solar_ heating. That way, you can squeeze a bit more efficiency out of the space on your roof, plus it can be used to cool the solar cells, which improves their efficiency also.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[mhall119]

I always thought that the biggest hurdle to implementing "flying cars" were an effective means of breaking. Imagine a highway were none of the cars had breaks, and you'll see why there would be death, destruction and injury in the sky.

Also, there's the whole falling thing. Think back to every car you've seen broken down on the side of the road. Now think of that car falling hundreds of feet onto your house.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[pedestrian crossing]

The subsidies are a temporary measure that serve to kick-start the build-out of the infrastructure to support a new market in the face of opposing forces, such as cheap coal or subsidized nuclear.

IMHO, "free" markets are not always the most efficient way to achieve change, especially when there is a large capital barrier to entry.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[mhall119]

Why can't we have a leader pledge to reduce America's dependence on oil by 50% in 10 years? Sounds just as possible to me as Apollo XI would have in 1960. And it's obviously more practical. It's significantly harder if you go and think it through. The Apollo project required the efforts of maybe several thousand people, where as reducing consumption of oil will require the efforts of millions of Americans. The Apollo project required the construction of several facilities and large infrastructure in only a handful of locations, where as reducing fossil fuel use will require a nationwide architecture upgrade, and at least hundreds of large facilities.

If the Apollo program were at the scale required for reducing oil consumption, we'd have colonized most of the moon by now.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[dpilot]

It doesn't require effort from millions of Americans.

All you have to do is make more economical energy generally available. It's still a project with participation in the thousands or tens of thousands. Once a way to save money is readily available, the millions will do so.

The hard part is when the way to save money is available, but not readily. In other words, when it's available, but you have to make substantial changes or investments in order to realize it. For instance, imagine photovoltaic panels with a 10 year payback vs either a 1 or 2 year payback, or some sort of "encouragement legislation" in place that turned the 10 year payback into a 1 or 2 year payback.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[blueturffan]

that's $225/month, which is probably cheaper than your electric bill.

Thank you for reminding me how much I enjoy cheap hydro power!

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[MrSteve007]

The *fact* is that there are few manufacturers of solar cells.. and most of them are differentiated anyway, so they don't compete.
That right there should be enough to show that you know next to nothing to what you're talking about. Here's a non-exhaustive list of just the USA's commercial solar panel manufacturers:

Suniva, GreenBrilliance, Signet Solar, Advent Solar, Innovalight, SunPower, Miasolé, DayStar Technologies, ASE Americas, Inc., Kyocera Solar, Atlantis Energy Inc., EPV Solar, Crystal Systems Energy Conversion Devices, Evergreen Solar, Powerlight, PowerFilm, Silicon Valley Solar (SV Solar), SunWize, TerraSolar, Inc., United Solar Systems Corp. (UniSolar), Solaicx, Alps Technology, OptiSolar, ICP Solar, Day4Energy.

Some of the larger ones worldwide include Shell Solar, BP Solar, Sharp Solar, and Sunpower. The US based Sunpower Corporation had an annual revenue of over 3/4 of a billion dollars in 2007, and profits of 147 million dollars. Not exactly chump change.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[MrSteve007]

As someone who designed, built and maintains 800+ square feet of a solar panel array, I can assure you that they need cleaning at most every 6 months. Even with 'bird strike' spots, the rain washes away 99% of everything within a couple days.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[Gilmoure]

Unless the energy density is high enough to power my flying car or jet pack, I don' want to hear it! And where's my food pills and synthehol?

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[10Ghz]

I wonder how much subsidies the oil-industry has received, all things considered? And those subsidies can include stuff like legislation, politics, urban planning etc. All kinds of things that benefit oil-companies.

How about farmers? I guess there is no market for foodstuffs, since farming is so heavily subsidized? There's no market for weapons, since weapons-manufacturers are swimming in all kinds of subsidies?

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[retiredtwice]

Well, OK, but current panels used for PV Solar installs are around 200 watts. I just had a 3.3Kw installation done and they used 205 watt panels.

So taking a ratio (I did not redo your calculations), the 4080 watts becomes 6150 watts using the 205 panels.

That is probably more than the 1400 sq ft house uses. (unless of course, the basement is full of outdated computers all running 24/7 - LOL)

My 3000 sq ft house uses about 30kwh per day. (and yes, I know, I am not energy positive).

Incidently the payback calculations (taking into account incentives) are between 9 years (Their estimate) and 12 years (My estimate). This is California in the Bay Area.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[Ioldanach]

I couldn't find any shingle or standing seam panels rated that high, I'm curious what you installed?

Also, read the second paragraph too, where I cover a higher efficiency 200 watt panel that requires a frame on the roof.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[retiredtwice]

Sorry, I misread your first paragraph about "applying to the roof" as "roof mounted". And I didnt follow the link in your second paragraph. I mean, its slashdot, after all...

Yes, the panels I used are 205 on a frame about 3 inches off the roof. That also reduces the summer heat load by a large percentage (I didnt calculate it) which the directly mounted panels do not do.

I still think your numbers are pessimistic however. I use about 30kwh per day for a house twice that big although admittedly use natural gas for heating but individual room air conditioners in summer (only needed about 2 weeks out of the year but then the heating is only needed for about 2-4 months a year).

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[Anonymous Coward]

My car gets 35MPG, at 35% efficiency we end up with ~11 kWh per gallon. Assuming 12,000 Miles Per Year it would take (12000/35*11kWh/365) = 10.4kWh / day to keep my car on the road. Which works out to around 11.6m^2 of solar cells.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[mishagam]

Recent Big promises of Hydrogen economy (in general economy area) and of going to Mars (in space area) were about the same quality as would be the pledge of reducing dependency by 50% in 10 years. I can also add California experiments with Zero emission vehicles. All these projects were and are impossible with current technology restrictions. Making promises or even being stubborn isn't enough. You have to be clever, really understand science and understand, what is possible and desirable, and what is not.

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[mattack2]

You say that it can be used to cool the solar cells. That sounds like what I've wondered (which is what you may be referring to) -- couldn't you have water running directly below the solar power cells? I would presume they'd get hot, so I've always thought that you could get more use out by heating water underneath the cells. Even if that didn't get the water warm enough to be used for faucet hot water, it would seem that you could pump it around the house to provide heat in the winter (for areas like CA that are still mostly sunny in the winter).

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[Ihlosi]

That sounds like what I've wondered (which is what you may be referring to) -- couldn't you have water running directly below the solar power cells?

That was basically what I am referring to. There's a little more engineering involved (how do you interface the solar cells and pipes for the hot water without getting the former wet, but still getting enough heat to the pipes?), but basically you're using some of the energy that the solar cells cannot convert to electricity as a heat source, while at the same time cooling the solar cells (which improves their efficiency).

Re:Someone said it before, I will now.

[Jane Q. Public]

Well, I might know somebody who can get you the pills... their value as food might be questionable, but you won't care, and you would be willing to testify in court that your car can fly...

Thermaldynamics?

[mlts]

Without violating thermaldynamic laws, I wonder how much electricity output this will add. I don't think it would double the current flow with 2-3 electrons popping out for each photon that strikes the array, but I know this should add a significant amount of efficiency.

I just hope all these advances, especially ones that make solar cells cheaper to manufacture go into production. There are huge chunks of the world that are lifeless desert, and would be perfect for large solar and wind arrays, assuming one could find a way to transport the generated electricity to cities without too much current loss. Perhaps some chemical reaction that pulls carbon from the air directly to make ethane, then another reaction that converts the ethane to ethanol to be piped to places that can burn the ethanol for electricity. Yes, the chemical reactions to pull carbon from the air, and get it into ethanol are wasteful, but for very long distance transfer of energy (100-200+ miles), it would be less wasteful to do that, than to use standard power transmission lines. Even though the ethanol electricity generating plants would be adding carbon into the air, it would be carbon neutral due to the carbon being extracted at the solar/wind site.

Re:Thermaldynamics?

[Anonymous Coward]

I frequently try to break the laws of thermaldynamics. Especially ones involving Intropy and the Carnal Cycle.

Re:Thermaldynamics?

[Yetihehe]

Perhaps some chemical reaction that pulls carbon from the air directly to make ethane, then another reaction that converts the ethane to ethanol to be piped to places that can burn the ethanol for electricity.

Would methane be ok? If so, it is already done with CO2 and sunlight.

Re:Thermaldynamics?

[mlts]

Methane works, but ethane is a lot easier on metal compounds (far less corrosive) and safer in general (although its still highly flammible). Drink ethanol (assuming not denatured), one gets drunk (or dies from alcohol poisoning). Drink methanol, and the optic nerve gets permanently polymerized by the by-products such as formic acid, which renders a person permanently blind.

Re:Thermaldynamics?

[Capt James McCarthy]

"Drink ethanol (assuming not denatured), one gets drunk (or dies from alcohol poisoning). Drink methanol, and the optic nerve gets permanently polymerized by the by-products such as formic acid, which renders a person permanently blind."

Are you now using a brail keyboard? Or are you the lucky one who drank the ethanol and typing while drunk.

Re:Thermaldynamics?

[Ihlosi]

Perhaps some chemical reaction that pulls carbon from the air directly to make ethane, then another reaction that converts the ethane to ethanol to be piped to places that can burn the ethanol for electricity. Yes, the chemical reactions to pull carbon from the air, and get it into ethanol are wasteful, but for very long distance transfer of energy (100-200+ miles), it would be less wasteful to do that, than to use standard power transmission lines.

Why turn perfectly good ethane into ethanol ? That doesn't make any sense. Ethane is much, much easier to work with than ethanol. Forget fscking ethanol. Ethanol is only good as a fuel when you can make it in bulk from agricultural waste and/or non-food crops (and even then, biomass-to-liquid could also produce a liquid fuel from this stuff that is much, much closer to gasoline/diesel than ethanol). Other than that, keep it in your beer/wine/hard liquor.

Re:Thermaldynamics?

[marcosdumay]

Without violating thermaldynamic laws

You can get a 95% efficient PV cell without violating those "thermaldynamic laws".

Re:Thermaldynamics?

[marcosdumay]

I don't know... You got moded Funny, but I can't think breaking the Carnal Cycle could be any funny.

Re:Thermaldynamics?

[Ihlosi]

You can get a 95% efficient PV cell without violating those "thermaldynamic laws".

Citation needed.

Sunlight isn't just visible light. If you want to get that high efficiency and use sunlight, you would need solar cells that are sensitive far into the far infrared range, which means that you'd essentially have to convert heat directly into electricity. Second law of thermodynamics says that that's a no-no.

Of course, if you can somehow shine monochromatic light on a solar cell which is sensitive to exactly that wavelength, you can reach fantastic conversion efficiences that are totally useless in a real-life situation.

Re:Thermaldynamics?

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I recall, and it's not my field, going from a single to a many exciton material increases the theoretical energy capture by about 25%. That would be about 30% theoretical max efficiency to 40% or so. Nathan Lewis at Caltech would argue that the lower voltage and higher current will induce losses which will probably wipe away this efficiency increase. He argues that we would use some form of chemical bonds for energy storage. Like splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen during the day, and using a cheap catalyst aided reaction to create an alcohol with air born CO2. He gave the department colloquium at UW-Madison where I'm a grad student recently, and has a similar talk on his webpage.

Naturally, with transfer inefficiencies and other losses, we can't really reach those theoretical numbers.

Re:Thermaldynamics?

[online-shopper]

But what is the antidote for methanol...

As per wikipedia, it's ethanol. Yay!

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

Re:Thermaldynamics?

[mentaldrano]

The thing about the avalanche effect is that it converts a single energetic electron into several less energetic ones. Normally a single photon has way more energy than can be easily harvested (energetic electrons tend to convert their excess energy into heat), so spreading that around to more than one electron will definitely help with the efficiency.

Re:Thermaldynamics?

[ISoldat53]

The nice thing about PV is that it can be distributed and a lot can be generated right where it is used so you don't need a distribution system.

Re:Thermaldynamics?

[value_added]

Drink methanol, and the optic nerve gets permanently polymerized by the by-products such as formic acid, which renders a person permanently blind.

From the "If You're Going to Put It Like That" Department:

I'm reminded why Obama did so poorly with the common folk living in rural West Virginia.

Re:Thermaldynamics?

[WeirdJohn]

Where are these "huge chunks of the world that are lifeless desert" you speak of? Deserts tend to be rich and complex ecosystems. Or do you mean "I can't see how modern humans can live there or otherwise profit from there, so lets find a way to exploit it".

That being said (and overlooking all the comments on "thermaldynamics") deserts could be places for large solar farms, as long as you can deal with transmission losses. There are remote communities in Oz that make use of solar and wind to provide most of their power needs. There are even solar powered public telephones. I personally find it a shame that here in Australia there is not more work being done on industrial scale solar farms in the more marginal areas, as we have large areas that could be used, and a lot of sunshine.

Re:Thermaldynamics?

[marcosdumay]

Just calculate the Carnot cycle efficiency of a machine that has the hot source at Sun's surface temperature and cold source at Earth's surface temperature. That is near 95%. (Wikipedia has the data if you need it, I'm just too lazy to research it again.)

So, PV could be 95% efficient without breaking 2dn law of thermodynamics. I, obviously, don't know how to make such PV, otherwise I'd be rich.

Developing nations

[William Robinson]

This is great news, especially for developing nations whose energy demands are on rising trend. Countries like Indonesia, India and other middle east countries, where sun light is available in abundance, will benefit most.

Re:Developing nations

[dakameleon]

...Countries like Indonesia, India and other middle east countries, where sun light is available in abundance, will benefit most. As opposed to Europe and the US, where sunlight isn't available in abundance?

Colour me confused.

Re:Developing nations

[QuantumPete]

you obviously don't live in England. When the sun deigns to peek out behind the clouds for five minutes, 7 million people try to cram into Hyde Park at once.

Re:Developing nations

[somersault]

It's cloudy in Scotland, you insensitive clod!

Actually, the weather has been really nice here for a couple of weeks now :)

Let's be realistic

[actionbastard]

Whether they're hairy, nanotube, or amorphous, cheap, efficient solar cells are always going to be thirty years away as long as there is 'cheap' oil around.

Re:Let's be realistic

[BungaDunga]

Since when is $135/barrel "cheap"?

Re:Let's be realistic

[syphax]

I know a couple people who made/make their money in private equity and managing investment funds, people who hard-nosed financial types, who are convinced it's more like 5 years away.

There's been a huge run on Si that's kept Si prices high and solar prices slightly up; once a ton of in-process Si capacity turns on, it should get interesting (hint: don't go long on Si right now).

BTW the qualifier to your prediction isn't that valid these days...

Re:Let's be realistic

[Chuck Chunder]

Since next year!

Re:Let's be realistic

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is $135/barrel "cheap"? @ $135/barrel, people are still wasting energy left and right. So it is still cheap.

Re:Let's be realistic

[Capt James McCarthy]

"@ $135/barrel, people are still wasting energy left and right. So it is still cheap."

I agree. Give it some time though. These large social changes take time. Hell, people still use Snail mail for bills and communication. And where the hell is that "paperless environment" while we are at it? Late in 2007 the futures for Oil were predicting $200/barrel by the close of 2008. Then the fun will begin.

Re:Let's be realistic

[Anonymous Coward]

Epic Lulz.

Re:Let's be realistic

[dpilot]

I wonder how much of that $135/bbl is true consumption supply and demand, and how much is investment supply and demand. (ie, speculation) While I would guess that a fair amount of the current price spike is speculation, as masses of money move out of the "financial instruments" of subprime mortgages and into commodities, I still think that there is a a large amount of "unrealized demand" in India and China that will fill in as speculation subsides.

In other words, I think that we're in the midst of a speculation-driven bubble. But as that bubble starts to pop, new demand will come in and keep the price from falling too far.

Re:Let's be realistic

[__aailob1448]

I drive at 80mph when I know that 60 mph would be more efficient.

Therefore, I must think oil is cheaper than my time. It doesn't mean it's cheap though. I live in suburbia and my commute to Miami and back costs me $40 a day. Oil prices have doubled since I came to the U.S in 2002.

Re:Let's be realistic

[GSPride]

In a recent interview on NPR, it was claimed that 10%-15% of the price of oil is speculation, so even if the speculation bubble burst today, oil would still be well over $100 a barrel, and going up. The fact is that the demand for oil is growing consistently, while the supply is, at best remaining static.

Re:Let's be realistic

[Abcd1234]

I live in suburbia and my commute to Miami and back costs me $40 a day. Oil prices have doubled since I came to the U.S in 2002.

Yeah, that's a shame. On the bright side, maybe this will encourage you to live a more sustainable lifestyle.

Alternatively, you could just complain about oil prices and demand the government repeal the gas tax, but in the long term, people will eventually just have to adjust to the higher prices... oil is, after all, a nonrenewable resource, and there's only so much to go around.

Re:Let's be realistic

[dpilot]

I don't think I disagreed with what you say. I just didn't know a number to assign to the speculation. The key part here is that we have "survived" $135/bbl oil now - it has become an annoying, but permissible price. I suspect that when the speculation bubble pops, the pent-up demand in the Far East will drive the price right back into that range, very quickly.

Re:Let's be realistic

[CowboyCapo]

Yeah. Live a more sustainable lifestyle, don't go to work, just live on Slashdot all day long!

Slightly more seriously, though, the daily commute is still better than the daily dodging bullets, just look at the number of peeps they kill off on CSI every week!

This snark is sponsored by the letters F and U.

Re:Let's be realistic

[Abcd1234]

Yes. Your alternates are commuting, being unemployed, or being shot.

Let me introduce you to a new term. It's pronounced "false dichotomy".

Re:Let's be realistic

[moosesocks]

Well, the NanoSolar folks seem to be "here and now," with mass-production fully coming online over the next year or so.

It's been demonstrated. It works. The estimated costs are quite low, and they think that they can bring them even lower once economies of scale kick in. The efficiency sadly isn't anything revolutionary, though still quite good.

They're also sold-out through the next three years of production.

It may not be the holy grail of solar power, but it's cheap and versatile enough, that owners of flat-roofed buildings in the right climate zones will have few reasons not to install the devices, given the costs of obtaining power from other sources.

Re:Let's be realistic

[Anonymous Coward]

I walk to work every day, takes about 20 minutes. $40 a day is monstrous. Ever considered moving home or job?

MOD UP

[gorim]

Was about to say the same thing. At least twice a month something about new improvement in solar cells is posted, but they never materialize into something people can use!

Sunlight is better used for heating

[flyingfsck]

Using sunlight for electricity is not particularly attractive, but for the neat 'no moving parts' aspect. It is far better to use solar power for light, water and space heating - those remarkable innovations called windows and skylights for example.

Re:Sunlight is better used for heating

[phantomfive]

Man, let me tell you about skylights. I have a skylight, and I thought it was cool. Here's how it works: I get free light all day long, except at night when there isn't enough light coming in through the window.

I get free heating all summer long, but in the winter it's too cloudy to make a difference. Yeah, skylights sound good and all, but give me a solar panel over that any day.

Re:Sunlight is better used for heating

[Cairnarvon]

This may come as a shock, but you can do both at the same time.

Re:Sunlight is better used for heating

[RuBLed]

Real nerds use RTG for electricity and heating, perfectly suitable for basement use.

Re:Sunlight is better used for heating

[TubeSteak]

Using sunlight for electricity is not particularly attractive, but for the neat 'no moving parts' aspect. It is far better to use solar power for light, water and space heating - those remarkable innovations called windows and skylights for example. Tell that to the entire African Continent which has an abundance of sun & empty space, but a deficit of fresh water, power & air conditioning.

I look forward to a future with solar powered desalination plants.
It's a much brighter outlook than continent wide water wars forcefully giving everyone a skylight.

Re:Sunlight is better used for heating

[1 a bee]

You do realize, though, that if the solar generated electricity is consumed inside the building, the laws of thermodynamics dictate that the electrical power consumed eventually dissipates as heat inside the building. I have nothing against skylights, per se, but this is the same heat you're worried about letting in through the skylight. And besides, what are you proposing here? steam powered laptops?

--
[FaunOS]

Re:Sunlight is better used for heating

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Water heating - sure! Light - sure. But heating? There's not enough angle when the sun strikes the earth in the wintertime, that's why it's cold - the energy is absorbed by the atmosphere.

However, photovoltaics is excellent for powering something else - air conditioning. If you stick photovoltaics on your roof, you get a double whammy: Less heating from the sun because the photons are either deflected or converted into energy, and electricity to power the air conditioning at daytime. I imagine this is particularly interesting for office buildings, since they use most energy at daytime.

The tricky part is covering consumption when it's dark.

Re:Sunlight is better used for heating

[Ihlosi]

Water heating - sure! Light - sure. But heating? There's not enough angle when the sun strikes the earth in the wintertime, that's why it's cold - the energy is absorbed by the atmosphere.

Erm. Some of my colleagues heat their (superinsulated) houses with solar, with a small electric auxiliary heater. This year, they didn't have to use the auxiliary heater from late January on.

So, sure, you may not be able to heat your house with solar all the time, and in all latitudes, but you can use it to significantly cut your usage of other forms of power for heating.

Re:Sunlight is better used for heating

[BigDogCH]

Erm. Some of my colleagues heat their (superinsulated) houses with solar, with a small electric auxiliary heater.

This is our eventual plan. You can often couple this with heat storage bricks to allow you to buy that electricity at a discounted rate.

I really don't understand why people would rather spend their money on a bigger heating system rather than better insulation. Remodel your house, spend $5k on closed cell foam insulation, and heat your house with the waste heat from your PC!

Re:Sunlight is better used for heating

[Ihlosi]

I really don't understand why people would rather spend their money on a bigger heating system rather than better insulation.

"Because insulation keeps things warm, and it gets so hot in the summer that we need to use AC to keep the house cool."

Or at least I guess that this is their (obviously flawed) reasoning. Or maybe companies make more money off selling bigger heating systems than selling better insulation.

Re:Sunlight is better used for heating

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a skylight and a panel with a nice little bank of batteries for supplemental usage.

Re:Sunlight is better used for heating

[BigDogCH]

Funny you should say that..........here in the Midwest, we struggle to heat our homes. Yet I have idiot neighbors who think that adding more insulation will bring up their Air Conditioning bills in the summer.

Here in the midwest, people could get a decent insulation, and a "whole house fan", and AC really isn't needed (except maybe 1-2 weeks per year, where you can survive without it). The fan exchanges your air at night when it is cool.

With closed cell foam in our house, we have been able to reduce our fuel usage by 75%, while increasing the internal temperature from 66F to 69F (and we still have 1/3 of the house to do).

Or, someone could use geothermal, which I believe can cool the house in the winter now too (seems like it should be a simple matter anyway).

Re:Sunlight is better used for heating

[boris111]

Try some blinds. Also new Skylights let in only 1/3 the heat the sun would generate. As for at night... I've caught a few full moons in the right spot where I didn't need to turn on the bathroom light.

Re:Sunlight is better used for heating

[moosesocks]

You do realize that the Sahara doesn't cover the entirety of Africa, don't you? There's quite a diverse range of climates present on the continent.

Penny wise, pound foolish

[hyades1]

We seem to cavil about a few million dollars, or even a few hundred million, being spent to jump start emerging energy technology, but we have no problem spending billions on oil industry subsidies.

We need to acknowledge that any new tech investment involves high risk. Success brings high rewards. We accept exactly this reasoning when oil executives tell us that oil exploration is expensive and risky, and therefore requires continuing subsidies even when record profits are rolling in. A few million spent on alt energy research that tanks, however, is usually reported as a "this is what happens when you listen to the tree huggers" story.

An attitude adjustment as 'way overdue, and a rediscovery of our spirit of adventure and innovation. Perhaps putting some money into finding out whether this kind of solar cell works and can be mass produced would be a place to start.

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget 3 trillion dollars for Iraq (plus years of ongoing medical care for the veterans).

Basically spent on oil defense AND in response to us sending that area money which some parts use to make trouble with.
The islamic countries would be a lot more reasonable if we were not sending them huge piles of money.

Three trillion in solar technology would go a looong way.

You could build photo-voltaic systems for 60,000 homes.
You could subsidize 120,000 homes.

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[LynnwoodRooster]

We seem to cavil about a few million dollars, or even a few hundred million, being spent to jump start emerging energy technology, but we have no problem spending billions on oil industry subsidies.

Maybe because most alternative energy sources are big money losers? Take a look at page 16 of this report for the actual numbers about subsidies...

I predict once you can start to get alternative energy sources like solar and wind down an order of magnitude or so in terms of cost you'll see things turn around. However, for now they're getting somewhere around 100X the subsidy per Megawatt-hour that "Big Oil" gets.

An improvement from 15% to 40% simply isn't enough - natural gas and oil get around $0.25 per MWhr, while solar and wind get 100 times that amount per MWhr. And remember, those nasty "Big Oil" companies also pay over $3 in direct federal taxes for every $1 in profit. Over $200 billion flows into the Federal government every year in terms of direct taxes and fees (that's not including the taxes you're paying on consumption of their products).

Right now, and for the last 20 years, wind and solar have been huge money-losers, and only exists BECAUSE of the massive subsidies. If we subsidized wind or solar at a level to get useful output levels, we'd spend literally trillions more per year.

And then there's that whole baseload thing...

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[dmgxmichael]

The problem isn't oil - it's the abuse of it. Like an adict we've allowed oil to change the entire structure of our nation and our society. When the oil is gone this structure will not be sustainable.

It won't be armageddon. People will simply move back into the cities. The suburbs will become ghettos just as the inner cities are now and then they will die out. By the end of the century New York, Chicago and the other large cities of the US will contract back into the boundaries they had in the year 1900 before the oil infection took hold. It will only occur when people have no other choice - but now that we are beyond Heubert's peak that day is fast approaching.

Another sign of this is that even as the housing market overall is in crisis real estate in the inner cities has actually increased in value. Part of this is the lessors of such properties are usually corporations or affluent individuals, the other part is that the price of oil's rise creates a condensation pressure on cities that is only beginning.

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[jcr]

Three trillion in solar technology would go a looong way.

Not if spending it was up to the people who brought us the DMV and Amtrak, it wouldn't.

-jcr

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[hyades1]

Your overlook many of the less obvious subsidies. For example, the Army Corps of Engineers routinely dredges canals used by the oil industry at taxpayer expense. The explanation is that they're staying in training. Canals that don't serve oil tankers, regardless of need, do not receive such treatment.

There are many, many examples of such hidden subsidies, none of which are accounted for in your numbers. I invite you to seek them out for yourself rather than take my word for them.

An article in Nature 445, 147 (11 January 2007) published online 10 January 2007, and "Money Down the Pipeline: Uncovering the Hidden Subsidies to the Oil Industry" by the Union of Concerned Scientists are good places to start your investigation.

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[Ihlosi]

Three trillion in solar technology would go a looong way. You could build photo-voltaic systems for 60,000 homes.

3 trillion = 3,000,000,000,000

divided by 60,000 equals 50,000,000

Fifty million dollars per home for a photo-voltaic system ? I think you're a few orders of magnitude off. Make that "You could build photo-voltaic systems for 60,000,000 homes", and you're at least in the same ballpark (if these systems are large _and_ use fairly expensive solar cells).

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[dpilot]

I generally agree with your scenario, with one exception. I expect to see some fraction of the suburbs survive with telecommuters. Similar to energy costs pushing physical workers back close to their workplace, I expect to see those costs push "telecommutable" jobs into telecommuting, and an expansion of technologies that enable telecommuting.

The other piece of work that needs to be done behind all of this is to make the suburbs more foot-friendly. Once you don't need to drive to work, the next thing is to not have to drive, or at least not as far, to get the basics of living. I'd expect to see humongous grocery stores fade back into the neighborhood supermarkets.

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[LynnwoodRooster]

I assume you mean Hubbert's peak, about peak oil? The problem is that the proven reserves keep increasing. We're not at the peak yet. The current oil bubble - and it is a bubble - will pop once output increases (which it is - look at the excap - extra capacity - growth in pumping) and additional refinery capacity is brought on-line.

Peak oil is at least a good 10 years away, if not more. Look at the proven reserves of all the big oil companies (mainly State-owned; EXO and the like are small players) and you'll see that - even in spite of all the production - proven reserves either are flat or increasing. Meaning more finds.

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[dpilot]

Of course the highest dollar/MWH recipient on that chart is "refined coal", as it is on the chart on page 14 (tax relief) and page 10. The other "heavy getter" is alcohol, according to those charts.

I'd like to know how much good has come out of "refined coal", given that it has gotten so much. I seem to remember hearing in the past few months about a "clean coal" power plant getting canceled. There's also a lot of noise about the evils of using food crops for ethanol. In terms of dollar contributions, (not dollar/MWH) those two dwarf everything else combined, except low-income heating assistance. Seems to me that lobbying capability plays a role, here.

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[dmgxmichael]

Proven reserves will increase until the end. Hubbert's peak is about production, not about reserves. We peaked in 2005, '06 being the first year global production fell. Now yes, it will take 10 years to confirm the trend, but the ride is at or near the top and any argument otherwise wishful thinking at best.

Further, the easy oil is gone already. These new finds are in locations where extraction will be difficult - offshore, polar, etc. We can get to it, but it will be much, much more expensive.

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[LynnwoodRooster]

No, we haven't reached the peak of production. Please look at excess capacity over the historical record. We've never had a negative amount. Excap is a measure of the unused pumping capacity of oil producers. In the last 5 years, OPEC alone has had at least 1 MILLION barrels a day of excess capacity, on a 60 day window. We're not at the peak of pumping.

New oil is getting more expensive, but that's because of extraction, not supply. The actual cost of pumping isn't that high, accounting for a few dollars per barrel; the cost is driven by exploration, royalties, transport, and refining. There's plenty of reserves AND pumping capacity - both are actually on the upswing. Peak oil isn't even close in terms of reserves OR pumping.

Aside: there's one thing the US Congress could do TODAY to eliminate $1 per gallon of gas: simply eliminate Federal taxation of gasoline and the oil companies. That accounts for about $1 per gallon. ""Evil Big Oil" is lucky to make $0.10 per gallon of gas, and they have to pay $3 in taxes for every $1 in profit they make. In the mean time, the Federal government not only gets that $3, but a direct $0.182 per gallon - about double what "Evil Big Oil" makes, per gallon.

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[LynnwoodRooster]

Solvent refined coal is something we shouldn't be pursuing, at all... It's mainly a way of converting high-sulphur, high-ash content, low grade coal into something comparable to the normal stuff we get from North Dakota and most of the Appalacian mountains. Rather than using solvents to convert the lower grade coal into burnable coal, we should be looking at liquefaction of that type of coal.

Just my 1/50th of a greenback...

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[LynnwoodRooster]

Can you point to any of those canals that only carry oil tankers, and not other freighters? I'd rather the ACOE work on heavily-trafficed canals rather than lightly used ones, and concentrate on those that move the more important cargo...

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[hyades1]

Of course those canals carry other traffic, too. My point is that important, heavily-used canals that don't serve oil tankers don't get the freebie.

And I've already given you a couple of URL's. Beyond that...I'm not a grad student anymore (thank god), so I'm done with doing other peoples' work for them. If you're really that interested, go find out for yourself. If your aren't, that's your business.

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[LynnwoodRooster]

Maybe you can help... I didn't see any URLs in the post I responded to, and the issue you refer to doesn't contain your article.

However, I found another reference to that article which contained a few excerpts, notably:

oil industry profits from preferential treatment in tax laws and government support. While the non-oil industries are taxed at a rate of 18 percent, the oil industry is taxed at a mere 11 percent.

Which is provably false. Take a look at 2007 ExxonMobil Annual Report in which (on page 38 of the report, 40 of the PDF) you'll find EXO paid $32 billion in sales taxes, $41 billion in other taxes and duties, and $30 billion in income taxes, for a tax load of $103 billion.

On that same page, you'll see total revenues of $404 billion. And a net income of $41 billion. Meaning that for every 4 dollars in revenue, EXO paid one dollar in taxes. And for every dollar in net income, they paid $2.50 in taxes.

All that adds up to a taxation rate of either 25% on revenues, or 71% of gross profit. How that report gets to 11% is - I guess - left to the reader. So if the first big claim of that report that I can find is provably false, where does that leave the rest of the claims made by the unknown article, such as canals being dredged for oil tankers only?

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[An Onerous Coward]

Oil companies don't seem to pay $200B/year. The $3 of taxes for every dollar of profit is also unlikely.

From the Exxon-Mobil 2006 annual report: $39.5B profit (after taxes). $30.3B "sales-based taxes" and $39.2B "other taxes and duties". So we're already at less than a 2-to-1 taxes to profits.

But it gets better. Go down to the "liabilities" section, and the "income taxes payable" section is only $8B. Another $20.8B is listed as "deferred". I looked at earlier reports, and it's a striking pattern: They claim to incur two to three times more tax liability every year than they actually seem to pay.

I don't fully understand what's going on there, or what sort of taxes fall under "sales" and what falls under "other", but I know that if I was making a 32% return on my money every year, and the IRS let me defer most of my tax burden for even a year, I'd call that a huge tax break.

There's another subsidy you could argue over: estimates of the economic damage caused by the global warming effects of each barrel pumped range all over the map, but $50/barrel isn't unreasonable. Factor that in, and the oil companies are actually operating at an enormous loss.

Then you have the I-can't-believe-this-isn't-obvious principle: pulling natural resources out of the ground doesn't generate wealth. From an accounting standpoint, it should be considered capital depletion, not income. To me, the oil industry as a whole is like a trust fund kid who says that going to the ATM is his "job".

On an unrelated note, the whole "baseload" problem is easily surmounted. Read up on concentrating solar power. Short version: sunlight heats a fluid, which drives a Stirling engine. The fluid doesn't go cold just because the sun goes down. Hell, with a big enough, insulated enough reservoir, it could probably produce for weeks without input. Additional heat input could also come from burning natural gas.

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[An Onerous Coward]

Also, I think subsidy per unit production is a very misleading way to evaluate it, when comparing an entrenched primary power source with upstarts that generate a tiny fraction of our energy supply. I'm guessing that the total subsidies for the oil industry are higher, even though the current price of oil makes any subsidies ridiculous.

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[LynnwoodRooster]

Please see page 40 of the PDF for the 2007 annual report. In it you'll find the following:

- Total revenues of $404 billion
- Sales based taxes of $31.7 billion
- Other taxes and duties of $41 billion
- Income taxes of $29.9 billion

That's a total of $102.6 billion in taxes on revenues of $404 billion, or a little over 25% of revenue.

Now look at their net income: $40.6 billion. Meaning that for every buck of taxes and profit, EXO gets to keep $0.28 and the Government gets $0.72. Even if you look at just income tax on gross profit, you're looking at a 42% tax rate.

EXO pays a LOT more taxation than most people realize. Understand that $100 billion is more than 40% of all the individual taxpayers in the US - COMBINED. And those "windfall profits" they're getting? Seems that the Feds are getting a LOT more windfall than EXO.

As far as return goes, they're not make 32% - they're making, at best, 10%. Sell $400 billion, keep $40 billion. That's a far cry from 32%...

For the environmental damage, let's charge wind with the damage from mining all that copper, steel and aluminum. Solar with the chemicals needed to make them. Both with the oil needed to run their systems, and on and on... If you want to get extreme, you can make ANYTHING look bad.

The fundamental point is that solar and wind - as they exist today - are FAR from economically viable. And the supposed boogyman of "Big Oil" is getting 1/100th of the subsidies of wind and solar, in terms of payments versus output gained.

By all means, I support research into wind and solar, but to foist it upon us before it's economically viable is insanity. Keep researching, and when you can get the subsidies down to the range of nuclear ($1.59 per MWhr) then we can consider it...

Re:Penny wise, pound foolish

[An Onerous Coward]

I notice that you're still not accounting for the "deferred taxes". For at least one of the big three tax categories you mention, ExxonMobil annually claims something like $30B in liabilities, but only writes a check for $8-$10B. I find that inexplicable.

In the 2007 report, ExxonMobil claimed a 32% return on average capital employed, and a 34% "net income to average shareholder's equity". Perhaps I'm confused about what those terms mean.

Another question I have is whether any of those numbers include the $.18/gallon tax we pay at the pump. I consider most of that tax as returned to the oil industry, in the form of improved roads (and therefore a bigger market for their product).

As I said in a previous post, the subsidies to wind and solar are fairly small in terms of

>> For the environmental damage, let's charge wind with the damage from mining all that copper, steel and aluminum. Solar with the chemicals needed to make them. Both with the oil needed to run their systems, and on and on... If you want to get extreme, you can make ANYTHING look bad.

By all means, let's charge them with it. I'm guessing that if you compare the full lifecycle of wind and coal, including all the resulting environmental damage, and included that in the sticker price, it would be the death knell for every coal-fired plant in the world. Because the current system charges coal plants $0.00/ton for the CO2 they emit. That's the biggest subsidy the energy industry has, and it shows up nowhere in the report you cite.

Oh, ho ho ho...

[Anonymous Coward]

This current research does in fact demonstrate that the avalanche effect can occur. Oh boy, that's a good one.

Isn't price the key?

[jimmyhat3939]

I'm often confused when I see articles about how great it is to improve the efficiency of solar cells.

To me, the big issue is not efficiency but cost per watt. Many regions of the world have plenty of the land, particularly energy guzzlers like the US. What we really need is a super-cheap way to use that land for solar generation.

Re:Isn't price the key?

[Anonymous Coward]

In theory - solar cells built around these new semi-conductor materials would be less expensive to manufacture, with a doubling or tripling of electrical output per panel.

Higher output, lower unit cost - isn't that exactly how one gains a lower cost per watt?

Re:Isn't price the key?

[dakameleon]

To me, the big issue is not efficiency but cost per watt. Read the bloody summary even!

could theoretically lead to a maximum output of 44%, with the added benefit of reducing manufacturing costs So if the summary is to be believed, you're increasing output nearly threefold, and reducing cost of manufacture. The cost-per-watt ratio moves the right way on both sides.

Re:Isn't price the key?

[syphax]

Efficiency matters, for a few reasons, including:

1. Indirect costs (installation labor, racks, mounts, etc.) scale with the area of the array. The area of array required for a given power output goes with the inverse of efficiency. These costs are pretty significant, so efficiency has a direct impact on installed costs.

2. There's lots of area available for solar panels, but solar energy is pretty diffuse, so you need a lot of area anyway. If a 1% efficient system cost a dime per watt installed, great, but you'd have to cover huge areas to generate significant amounts of electricity. There are practical limits. Even at 10-20% efficiency, you're still looking at large areas to generate a meaningful amount of juice.

Re:Isn't price the key?

[Anonymous Coward]

but solar energy is pretty diffuse, so you need a lot of area anyway. I wouldn't describe ~1kW per square metre as "diffuse"

if we could get that (100% efficiency) then say bye-bye to pretty much any other technology...

Re:Isn't price the key?

[somersault]

Well, the company I work for is building a 1MW tidal turbine that is around 25 metres tall, not sure exactly how large the vent is, but to me that says that solar energy is pretty diffuse compared to the tides. Sunlight isn't that predictable during the day either unless you can get rid of all the clouds?

Re:Isn't price the key?

[Bananatree3]

Where can I sign up? Sounds like good job.

Tidal/geothermal power are much more constant and predictable sources than solar or wind. However, I think all of these renewable technologies are each a piece of the overall energy puzzle. Solar, Wind, Tidal, Geothermal...they've all got strengths and individual industries working for them. The current model of a dominant source is fading away into a more diversified energy market. "Never put all your eggs in one basket", as they say.

Re:Isn't price the key?

[somersault]

I think we have all the engineers we need, sorry ;) I just do the IT stuff anyway (though I have been doing the controller and interface software for one of our deep water mass-flow excavators :) )

Re:Isn't price the key?

[Anonymous Coward]

all solar panels are not created equal, look at Unisolar panels a subsidiary of energy conversion devices

they start produce electricity earlier and keep producing it for a lot longer than convential silicon solar cells,and are imo therefore much better than other cells, but on a pure efficieny measure this is not obvious

the poster is right cost per watt is the measure people should be using, conversion efficency imo is perpetrated as a marketing tool by the traditional silicon solar companies

Re:Isn't price the key?

[SQLGuru]

The general assumption is that improving the efficiency improves the cost per watt. If something that costs $10 produces 1 watt at 15% efficiency, then it should produce 2 watts at 30% efficiency; halving the $/watt.

Re:Isn't price the key?

[pedestrian crossing]

Tidal/geothermal power are much more constant and predictable sources than solar or wind. However, I think all of these renewable technologies are each a piece of the overall energy puzzle. Solar, Wind, Tidal, Geothermal...they've all got strengths and individual industries working for them. The current model of a dominant source is fading away into a more diversified energy market. "Never put all your eggs in one basket", as they say.

Just to expand on that a little, we have to accept that there is no silver bullet that is going to give us a single source of renewable energy (yes, I know that it is ultimately all solar). The sun only shines during the day. The wind doesn't blow consistently. Every renewable source has strengths and weaknesses

But, if you can come up with enough ten-percent solutions, you can get there eventually, with the added benefit of distributed generation.

Heck, Germany is already up to 14.5 percent renewable sources, and it isn't particularly sunny or windy there.

Change isn't cheap or easy, but it will be necessary to move to the next level of civilization.

Re:Isn't price the key?

[pedestrian crossing]

Whoops, I just realized that tidal isn't solar, my bad, it's lunar. Nuclear is solar, just not from our current star, so in that sense I guess tidal could be construed as solar, but that's a bit of a stretch.

Like Dr. Sagan said, "We are star stuff"...

Re:Isn't price the key?

[veganboyjosh]

What we really need is a super-cheap way to use that land for solar generation.

Figure out a way to make the solar cells as robust--or more--than asphault, and start replacing/paving existing roads with solar cells.

Re:Isn't price the key?

[online-shopper]

Rather then plant trees for shade, use solar cells along the road.
I can see it now, the streets are lined with solar trees....

Re:Isn't price the key?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't describe ~1kW per square metre as "diffuse"

I would, if you compare that to the amount of power per square meter available from a nuclear reactor, or even a diesel or gasoline generator. Amazon.com is selling a gasoline generator right now which turns out 8,500 watts in a 28 x 20 x 21.3 inch form factor -- 8.5 times the power, with a footprint considerably less than one square meter.

Also, don't forget about those pesky little details like "night" and "cloudy days". You'll be lucky to average a quarter to a third of that kilowatt, and that's before deducting for inefficiency. If these new 44% efficient cells pan out, you might average 150-200 watts per square meter. Maybe.

Re:Isn't price the key?

[dpilot]

>the poster is right cost per watt is the measure people should be using,
>conversion efficency imo is perpetrated as a marketing tool by the
>traditional silicon solar companies

In other words:

Conversion efficiency is to solar panels as clock speed is to processors.

Re:Isn't price the key?

[courtrye]

I agree with you and I believe that as we move away from using heavy glass and silicon in the production of Solar Panels installation costs will decrease http://www.solarpowerauthority.com/archives/2008/05/breakthrough-avalanche-effect-in-solar-cells.html

Re:Isn't price the key?

[Vancorps]

You have clouds in your sky? Must be nice, here in AZ the vast majority of our days are quite clear. Of course we have no tidal forces we can take advantage of.

Re:Isn't price the key?

[somersault]

Yep, here in Scotland it can get rather cloudy. In fact it's definitely more often cloudy than not.

Wasn't trying to slag off solar power btw, just pointing out how 1kW per square metre is pretty diffuse at least by tidal standards, and probably by wind standards too. I think all forms of renewable energy are worth considering though, and things like solar and wind power tend to complement each other quite well, as when it's dark and stormy, it will probably also be quite windy.

Do you get many tornadoes or sandstorms or anything like that in Arizona (guessing that's what AZ is :p )?

Re:Isn't price the key?

[kasparov]

So your turbine is 25 meters tall--how wide is it? Assuming just one turbine and it is 25 meters wide as well (assuming your turbine is a circle!), then 1MW / (25m)^2 = 1600 W/m^2 compared to 1000 W/m^2. Doesn't seem like that big of a difference to me. And I'm guessing that your turbine uses a lot more materials than an equivalent surface area of (albeit mythical 100% efficient) solar panels...I'm just sayin' that the potential of the sun per area isn't too shabby in comparison. (and I hope that my math isn't just plain stupid)

Re:Isn't price the key?

[Anonymous Coward]

"yes, I know that it is ultimately all solar"

Just a nitpick, but the source of tidal energy is most definitely *not* solar. It's gravitational energy, from the moon. Geothermal energy is also non-solar, as it is utilizing heat leftover from the earth's formation, and radioactive decay in the core. The same goes for nuclear energy (unless you count the supernovas that made the fissionable material in the first place)

Re:Isn't price the key?

[An Onerous Coward]

It's one way. Another is to make photovoltaics less efficient, in such a way that the cost drops faster than the efficiency. Going from 10% to 5% efficiency is great, so long as you also go from $400/m^2 to $100/m^2.

Re:Isn't price the key?

[Vancorps]

No tornadoes but the occasional sandstorm, the wind is rarely enough that you'd have to shut a turbine down.

I think you're right in that the winner will be a combination of technology. Solar works great out here as the majority of days we can produce power.

I wasn't disagreeing with anything you were saying, merely that I envy those with clouds. The sunny days here make you feel like you're in the Truman show. Gets a little boring when you've had 100 straight days of sunny and warm. We recently had a three day break with a little rain, it was much appreciated.

Re:Isn't price the key?

[somersault]

The whole structure is 25metres, the turbine section is about half of that :p The potential of the sun is great, wind and solar power wouldn't really work without the sun :P

Re:Isn't price the key?

[somersault]

I've just walked to work in t-shirt and shorts.. in the rain! Hehe. It had actually been sunny for about 2 weeks prior to that though, and I'm hoping that will resume soon. The rain here on the east coast is usually a rather pathetic affair too, I much prefer the giant globules of water that you get in the west to the 'really crap electric shower' effect that you get here.

Re:Isn't price the key?

[griffman99h]

The Sun has a known gravitational effect on the tides as well. Hense higher tides on full and new moons. plus AFAIK a tidal generator would derive some power output from wave action, which is most definitely wind/sun generated (discounting the seismic activity, which has been speculated as being solar induced as well)..... you know, since you're picking nits...

Griffman99h

Irrefutable? Then it's NOT science!

[Mathinker]

There is no such thing as irrefutable in science. In fact, some people attempt to define science as the pursuit of knowledge which can be corroborated and refuted using the "scientific method" (to preempt a lot of comments: I said "attempt to define", because this definition rapidly becomes circular unless you are very careful, and it is not clear that defining the "scientific method" is easier than defining science itself).

OTOH, I rather doubt that the scientists themselves claimed irrefutability here. The journalists are probably to blame.

Flying Car?

[camperdave]

And while your on it ask them what's holding up my flying car?

Anti-grav units? Powerful downward facing thrusters? Wings? Rotors?

Truth be told, there's nothing holding up your flying car except the name. It's not a flying car. It's a personal aircraft, and they come in many different sizes and shapes, from ultralights, LongEZs, and autogyros, to Beavers, Cesnas and Learjets.

Re:Flying Car?

[Gilmoure]

Flying Beavers! What will they think of next?

Re:Flying Car?

[Ksevio]

The idea of a flying car isn't to have a plane that can drive down the driveway and park in your driveway, it's to have a car that can fly without old fashioned techniques like wings or rotor blades.

What people are really asking for is something like back to the future or the jetsons

why come out?

[someone1234]

You can order workers via the internets who tile your roof with Avalanche(TM) solar cells.

Re:why come out?

[Hal_Porter]

You can order workers via the internets who tile your roof with Avalanche(TM) solar cells. Do you know any workers that work at night without having bright lights. I like to be able to supervise without wearing sunglasses. If they have blood type AB that would be a plus too.

but snowballs...

[ILuvRamen]

You know how much it would hurt to get hit by a rolled up snowball of electrons though? Anyway, this is totally sweet but I don't get it. If a photon has the energy to move more than one electron significantly, why couldn't they just simply layer or stack them somehow in a nice, flat way instead of having to do it on some fancy crystal where they have to collide and "avalanche" in a certain pattern and all that? If the photons in fact don't have the energy to move 2-3 electrons with the same energy as it can move 1 in a regular solar cell and...well...just read that back out loud, then this would just be like some pointless executive ball clicker effect that can't possibly have a net gain in energy and they're BSing something to get funding. If photons can in fact move more than one electron with the same energy it could impact one with then why couldn't they have stacked several layers of electron holding substance like blankets on top of each other and the impact on the top layer would cause impacts on the electrons below it with the same amount of energy collected? It all sounds a little fishy to me.

Re:but snowballs...

[marcosdumay]

I am surprised nobody asked that before, but the answer is surprisingly simple. The photons obviously have enough energy do move several electrons, but the photovoltaic cell (junction) is a tiny laywer over some opaque substrate (normaly silicon). So you only have one chance of absorbing those photons.

There are some manufacturing processes that could create one junction over another, but those processes are very expensive and the material isn't completely transparent. Probably because of this (I don't know about all the problems) people are unable to stack more than 2 junctions.

So, making a photon displace several electrons at a time seems to be the best alternative. People are doing that with quantum dots for a time now, but quantum dots are very unstable. Now those researches were able to create the same effect using a well designed crystal. That is a big step foward.

Re:but snowballs...

[AdamHaun]

Because photons can't move more than one electron. An electron absorbs a photon, giving it enough energy to move, then whacks another atom, freeing some more electrons in the process. There's a well-known avalance effect in ordinary diodes, so it's not particularly exotic. But the article is talking about lead-selenide crystals, not silicon, so I'm not sure how applicable this finding is to the current generation of solar cells.

Decentralize - Decentralize - Decentralize.

[dmgxmichael]

Imagine for a moment if we geeks hadn't come up with DNS but instead tried to use a small handful of machines to handle domain name resolution. The Internet would collapse rather quickly no?

Funny then that to date our power grid is based on a centralized model. Sadly, as much as 20-30% of all power generated is lost during transmission over the grid.

Now effective solar panels and batteries to go with them would allow us to move to a more decentralized model. Imagine whole neighborhoods creating most - though not all - of their power needs. If the panels can get to around 80% of the needs of the house then the current power plants we have can be the only ones we need for awhile.

Or even better, instead of having massive plants with a huge footprint make use of smaller pup nuclear reactors - about the size used in a naval ship. One of those could be placed where the power substations are now and pick up the slack that the solar panels can't fulfill. They wouldn't present any real contamination danger as once their fuel was spent after 30 years or so you truck out the entire unit and refurbish (i.e. refuel) it under controlled conditions in a remote area - while in service the internals of the thing aren't opened up.

These things also wouldn't have to make as much power as the current power stations because, by virtue of being closer to the customers they serve, they wouldn't lose as much power in the lines.

Re:Decentralize - Decentralize - Decentralize.

[MrKaos]

Or even better, instead of having massive plants with a huge footprint make use of smaller pup nuclear reactors - about the size used in a naval ship. One of those could be placed where the power substations are now and pick up the slack that the solar panels can't fulfill. They wouldn't present any real contamination danger as once their fuel was spent after 30 years or so you truck out the entire unit and refurbish (i.e. refuel) it under controlled conditions in a remote area - while in service the internals of the thing aren't opened up.

Wouldn't it be better to you a more direct method of energy transfer by processing domestic waste products into energy. It's my understanding that this is already underway in London, an example of where things can be done at an urban level. Some of the things already underway is recovery of waste heat, domestic waste and other micro-generation projects at an urban level. And more proposals are underway.

Now effective solar panels and batteries to go with them would allow us to move to a more decentralized model.

Why can't we just go ahead and do that now? It would have the same effect as bringing not only the energy closer to the consumer but the processes, whilst reducing the pressure on existing centralised infrastructure because when you think about it, generally, to heat our homes we convert heat to motion to electricity over wires to our homes and back into heat again. If our houses already produce a surplus of heat why can't we use something like water to move that heat around on a street or urban level to generate electricity locally?

Why don't we just use our homes to munch up our waste products and convert them to gas to run fuel cells that make electricity or process the at an urban level for gasses and pass that waste product further - for example why can't we use sewage water with a lot of nutrients to soak up carbon from our underground freeways or power stations with algae and produce bio-diesel. Given that the process would have inefficiencies, but who cares - they were waste products anyway, and after the inefficiencies you rightly point out in the grid anyway how much energy do we throw away after we have used it?

Re:Decentralize - Decentralize - Decentralize.

[information_retrieva]

Several years ago, I read an article in the Economist about improving the efficiency of the transmission grid. It indicated that energy lost due to grid inefficiency is one of the most easily tapped energy sources available today. Both the technology and manufacturing methods already exist.

The problem is that the economics of the transmission grid act as a disincentive to make the upgrades.

Sorry I don't have the reference. If someone has it, please post it as I'd like to reread the article.

Re:Decentralize - Decentralize - Decentralize.

[dapyx]

Actually, a number of big powerplants is useful: there are plenty of energy-intensive plants (for instance, aluminium smelters and data centers) and have been built specifically near large energy sources, such as nuclear plants and hydro plants, to make use of the cheaper electricity.

Re:Decentralize - Decentralize - Decentralize.

[mentaldrano]

That would be true if small plants had the same efficiency as big ones, but they don't! The very largest power plants normally achieve something like 40% efficiency (that is, power out / thermal power), but this figure really dives (to 10-20%) for a plant smaller than about 1 megawatt. It's simply a matter of scale - you can cascade turbines at a big plant, which is hard to do for smaller ones.

Unless the difference due to distribution is made up by this (and I don't think it is), we're better off with giant plants. Besides, the grid is old and creaky, and I'm sure its distribution efficiency can be improved.

The only advantage of a small local plant is cogeneration - using the waste heat to heat domestic water or provide heat in the winter.

Re:Move along

[fractoid]

At least they seem to have moved on from the stupidity that was the "hydrogen economy". Basic back-of-the-envelope maths shows that hydrogen is a clear loser compared to battery electric vehicles etc.

PhysOrg says I'm right, too.

Re:Move along

[Ihlosi]

At least they seem to have moved on from the stupidity that was the "hydrogen economy".

Oh yeah. There will be a hydrogen economy if/when we manage to get useful energy out of nuclear fusion. Until then, hydrogen is just a fuel with one advantage on paper and a long list of disadvantages in practice.

Max Power

[Obvius]

If I remember correctly from my old physics undergraduate days, the total available power from the Sun is only about 1kW per square metre at the Earth's surface. That's across the entire spectrum. So even assuming 100% efficiency, it's still a useful thing to bear in mind when considering the viability of solar power.

Re:Max Power

[catprog]

Average of 5 hours a day = total power per square meter = 5Kw

My house + 50% = 30kwh / day

= 6 square meter

30% efficiency

Only about 20 square meters required.

Re:Max Power

[shentino]

Electricity is one of those forms of energy that's hard to store.

Sure, you could power your house on nothing but sunlight, but if you're off the grid, you either need to:

1. Stash all the energy somewhere until you need it
2. Confine your high power activities to the day time whenever the sun just darn well feels like shining.

Re:Max Power

[Areyoukiddingme]

Every time I see those numbers, I curse high panel prices. I'd be up on the roof with a screwdriver tomorrow if I could pay for the panels at roughly the monthly amount I pay now for electricity from the grid. (And the stinking grid-tie inverter. Can't imagine why those things are so expensive too.)

But to address the grandparent, consider for a moment the number of square meters of land area of Earth: 148,940,000,000,000 square meters. If we're going to talk about upper bounds, let's use that one. x 5 hours per day = 744,700,000,000,000 kilowatt hours per day, globally. Lots of that energy is used by cultivated plants, and therefore is ultimately consumed by us already, but there's still plenty left doing nothing except make my attic hot.

This is far from insightful

[Kupfernigk]

Do you have any idea how long it takes to commercialise a technology in volume? Obviously not.

If you actually read up on solar cells instead of sounding off like an idiot, you would know that the cost per watt is dropping quite fast, durability has doubled in the last 5 years, that Sharp are making cells which are nearly twice as efficient as much of the competition and they are being sold as roof panels, that the recently opened German factory can sell everything it makes for many months ahead.

Nobody has ever pretended that a 1 sq M panel would power anything large. There is only so much sunlight, and nobody has ever pretended the second law of thermodynamics would be broken. No-one has ever pretended that 1 sq M panels would cost $1 apiece; you could not make a structure to withstand wind loading that cheaply. There is a huge difference between actual forecasts of an eventual $1 per peak watt, and $1 per sq M. $1 per watt works out at about $140 per sq M for a 14% efficient panel.

To the people who modded this insightful: if you can't tell an obvious troll from engineering reality, plase hand in your geek cards now and go play with Facebook.

Re:This is far from insightful

[PPH]

Solar technology will be commercialized quickly once its economics enters a positive return on investment region. It may be close, or have passed that point already. But to date, solar has only paid off once tax incentives were figured into the return. Tax (or other) incentives were used to get the ball rolling, so to speak and help drive economies of volume in PV production. But until the actual non subsidized profit point is passed, investors will always be a bit nervous about the possibility of political changes that will cause them to be withdrawn.

Any company that expects me to invest had better work the figures for a non subsidized market and prepare a business plan that accounts for it. I'm not saying that I won't invest prior to reaching that point. But I have to know what my risks are and how far away break even is.

Re:This is far from insightful

[The13thSin]

This is far from insightful (Score:5, Insightful) I just love reading things out of context.

Re:This is far from insightful

[Jane Q. Public]

Your comment is out of line.

I do indeed know. And sure improvements have been happening. But you miss the point: I have been hearing about all these improvements and "breakthroughs", probably averaging about 4 per year (or even more), since my early childhood.

And I state again: if even a fraction of the ones touted as breakthroughs had ever came to fruition, we would have very efficient, dirt-cheap solar power today.

My problem is not with understanding engineering. My problem is with all the over-hype when it comes to these "improvements". Show me one on the retail shelf, and I will be impressed. Until then, I think they should shut up about it because VERY OBVIOUSLY they have been flapping their mouths more than their engineering has been able to back up.

Re:Irrefutable? Then it's NOT science!

[CyberLife]

Damn right! :)

Re:Irrefutable? Then it's NOT science!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as irrefutable in science.

So does that mean that statement is itself refutable? However if it is irrefutable then the statement is not science by your own definition.

Wind Energy works, just ask Denmark

[soren100]

Right now, and for the last 20 years, wind and solar have been huge money-losers, and only exists BECAUSE of the massive subsidies. If we subsidized wind or solar at a level to get useful output levels, we'd spend literally trillions more per year. Nice try, troll. Countries like Denmark have had tremendous success with alternative energy sources such as wind power. Currently about 20% of the energy used in Denmark comes from wind power, and there is about a $5 billion market in exporting turbines. Currently over a third of the wind turbines used worldwide are built by Danish manufacturers such as Vestas.

On windy days, Denmark actually generates "too much" power from wind (about 40%) so they are working on an electric car system to act as a "sink" to dump the excess energy. (currently the hydroelectric generating facilities in Norway and Sweden are used to smooth out the changes in energy production from wind)

The wind power project has been such a success that Denmark is currently planning to double its offshore wind farms, after studies showed that it would not harm the environment. The current goal is to increase wind power to 30% of total output by 2025.

Re:Wind Energy works, just ask Denmark

[LynnwoodRooster]

Better a troll that an ignorant ranter...

Maybe you should educate yourself about the economics of those Danish wind farms before you continue your misguided rants? Might I highlight:

Researchers in Denmark have gone a step further and put a value on this effect. They believe that wind power shaved 1 billion kroner ($167m) off Danish electricity bills in 2005. On the other hand, Danish consumers also paid 1.4 billion kroner in subsidies for wind power.

If wind power was such a good payback, why are they PAYING 400 million Kroner to keep them running?

Solar and wind are a LONG way from being as economically viable as coal, natural gas, or nuclear. And solar and wind are HEAVILY subsidized compared to coal, natural gas, and nuclear. The DOE table above should have made that abundantly clear...

Re:Wind Energy works, just ask Denmark

[soren100]

If wind power was such a good payback, why are they PAYING 400 million Kroner to keep them running?

Solar and wind are a LONG way from being as economically viable as coal, natural gas, or nuclear. And solar and wind are HEAVILY subsidized compared to coal, natural gas, and nuclear. The DOE table above should have made that abundantly clear... Price does not always tell the full story. The main goal of the Danish has been to get to energy independence. For them, the 400 million kroner is worth it. The Arab oil embargo of the '70s did serious damage to their economy, and so their goal was more on focusing how to be self-sufficient in energy more than just focusing on profit alone.

    They decided against nuclear energy when the Chernobyl accident happened, which does make sense when you realize that nuclear power plants are uninsurable (an actual accident would easily bankrupt any insurance company you care to choose, making the premiums far too high to be profitable. I am sure that the price of insurance was not put in your calculations of nuclear energy subsidies -- America's nuclear power plants are uninsurable by private companies -- they are insured through the Price-Anderson act

I notice you don't have oil on your list of "cheap" relatively unsubsidized energy sources. You would have if we had this discussion even a year ago. Denmark actually produces more oil than it imports, mainly as a result of their determination to be energy-efficient, and that protects them at a time when oil prices are going through the roof and negatively affecting American business in an already weak economy.

The CIA factbook does not list coal as a Danish resource so if they based their energy program on that, they would be SOL if there were any problems with that.

That leaves natural gas, but when you look at the fact that the wind power industry brings in over 3.5 billion euros every year to the country and is a byproduct of their focus on wind energy, you see that they are much better off than if they focused on natural-gas, which is non-renewable and would not have made them an industry leader.

So how "ignorant" is that? Wind power actually makes sense and is very profitable. Sure, non-renewable resources like oil can sometimes be more profitable on a short-term basis, but you can see how well that is working out every time you fill up at the pump.

Re:Wind Energy works, just ask Denmark

[An Onerous Coward]

You could also have included the next sentence in the article: "But this year, reckons Rune Moesgaard of the Danish Wind Industry Association, wind power will actually save consumers money for the first time, as the benefits resulting from lower power prices outweigh the falling cost of the subsidy."

Then again, quoting someone named Rune Moesgaard would have made it hard to take you seriously. So I understand.

40% is already a reality.

[Kintanon]

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/04/stateoftheart_m.php

So if this is an improvement up to 40%, then it is FAIL. If it can be applied to the existing 40% cells to make them even more efficient then Solar power is about to take off in a big way.

Re:40% is already a reality.

[Ihlosi]

So if this is an improvement up to 40%, then it is FAIL. If it can be applied to the existing 40% cells to make them even more efficient then Solar power is about to take off in a big way.

I'd rather have 40% efficiency solar cells at half the cost than 50% efficiency solar cells at the same cost.

Solar power is going to take off in a big way once the price of the panels drops enough. Let's hope this discovery helps with that.

Is this effect found in nature?

[clyde_cadiddlehopper]

It seems that evolutionary processes usually find these sorts of effects millions of years before we humans do. One recent example is the photonic beetle. If the avalanche effect is three times as efficient as the process that drives photosynthesis, it sure seems we ought to see it somewhere in nature. (Cue the intelligent design discussion...)

Not just africa. How about the middle east?

[phorm]

As the middle east runs through oil reserves, it might very well become feasible in many areas to research more into solar power, and set up efficient solar farms, etc.

When I was last in Australia, I was quite impressed at the various little things they did to use solar power (vs here in Canada where snow cover makes it rather less useful for a good part of the year).

I'd imagine that a middle-eastern country could set up major solar-electric centers, followed by climate-control (air conditioning) powered by such, and then more industrialized centers powered by solar energy.

And yes, there are ways to harvest solar energy (or rather, the byproduct of heat) for overnight use, etc. One could also use a system that actually depends on the temperature dropping. I believe that are already some that tap the currents in air/water caused by temperature differentials to power turbines, etc.

one photon, more electrons means...

[Hasmanean]

more current, less voltage.
Same power, more or less.

The 44% figure probably reflects the fact that increasing one at the expense of the other reduces the effects of some non-idealities in the cell. So the efficiency improves, but not by an order of magnitude.

Re:Irrefutable? Then it's NOT science!

[Mathinker]

Not quite sure if your comment is serious or just an attempt to wring out a few Funny mods, but anyway:

> then the statement is not science by your own definition.

You're right, it's not. It's a philosophical statement about the meaning of the word "science".

ummm... No.

[taharvey]

Sorry but that report says no such thing. And your reasoning is wrong.

Renewables have gotten far fewer subsidies then nuclear and oil: look over the total expenditures by the DOE from 1950-Present. Nuclear subsidies add up to around $1 Trillion, WAY BEYOND RENEWABLES, and yet it has largely been a commercial failure. Meanwhile, solar has managed to surpass nuclear world-wide in new capacity installations in the free market, just as wind did a few years ago. There was more wind installed last year in the US, than the amount of new coal in the last 5 years.

If you only look at the cost to the US in maintaining a modicum of stability in the middle east in order to insure a free flow of oil, the cost has been enormous. Half a our military budget ($500 Billion/year) + $2 Trillion for Iraq. At current large volume pricing ($2/Wp e.g. firstsolar), The war in Iraq alone would pay for converting 50% of the US electric grid to PV, another 4 years of the defense budget, would pay for the rest - and that would be free electricity for everybody in perpetuity.

And we haven't even addressed the concomitant increased value of the grid by having distributed power. Or a mixed solar/wind/geothermal mix, that would be cheaper, more reliable, etc, etc.

Right now the average home has $30,000 of solar energy landing on its roof per year at current gas prices.

Renewables are the only long term affordable choice.

Re:ummm... No.

[LynnwoodRooster]

Sorry but that report says no such thing. And your reasoning is wrong.

Then you're not looking at the report. Please see table 35 - page 16 of the PDF. And in fact - since it's obvious you didn't read the report - here's the paragraph describing the table:

The per-unit subsidies are calculated as the subsidies allocated to each fuel type divided by the FY 2007 electricity generated by each fuel type (Table 35). Refined-coal-related generation receives the largest subsidy in absolute terms, at roughly $2 billion, as well as the highest perunit value at $29.81 per megawatthour. Renewable electricity production, in aggregate, received subsidies totaling $1.0 billion, but the per-unit subsidy in aggregate is $2.80 per megawatthour. On a fuel-specific basis, solar and wind subsidies receive the second-and-third highest per unit subsidies. However, the total value of subsidies received by each of these technologies was roughly in proportion to their relative share of net generation. As, a result, their respective per-unit subsidies are nearly equal. In the case of solar, the per-unit subsidy estimate of $24.34 per megawatthour is a function of the relatively high allocation of subsidies received, $14 million, and its low share of total electricity production. Wind received $724 million in subsidies, valued at $23.37 per megawatthour.

OK - solar and wind are the SECOND HIGHEST per-unit subsidy received. Solar is getting $24.34 per MWhr. Now look again at that table; what do you find for subsidies for nuclear and oil?

Nuclear: $1.59 per MWhr
Natural Gas and Petroleum Liquids (Big Oil): $0.25 per MWhr

And where do we find solar and wind?

Solar: $24.34 per MWhr
Wind: $23.37 per MWhr

There's a reason why all solar and wind systems have other production means for backup: the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. Baseload is the achilles heel.

In fact, did you know that all those wind turbines that power San Francisco are the MOST expensive source of energy down there? Know why? I'm good friends with one of the Boeing execs who headed up all the wind turbine research and deployment Boeing did back in the 80s and 90s...

With SF, when the wind is blowing, it tends to be cooler. When the wind stops blowing, the temperature skyrockets, and electrical demand skyrockets. And so all those 100 year old coal and gas powered electrical plants are ramped up (they're kept on a "low setting" so they can be started within a day) so the electrical demand can be met. Because windmills tend not to turn in still air.

And of course, the State of CA has mandated that alternative energy must be given priority in purchase AND be purchased at the highest rates paid. So those electrical costs of those 100 year old, inefficient plants in SF are what the city pays for the wind. And it HAS to buy the wind, even if the power is not needed.

Wind and solar exist SOLELY as a commercial industry because of subsidies, and heavy ones at that. Many people talk about the subsidies of "Big Oil" but they simply don't exist. Even if you wanted to add in the $106 billion per year ($530 billion over 5 years - your numbers are wrong) we've spent on the Iraq war for "Big Oil" (when in fact the majority of Middle East production goes to the EU, not the US, meaning we're paying to stabilize the energy sources of Europe and not us) you're still only adding another $0.11 per MWhr.

So add all that in, please! We're at $0.36 per MWhr for "Big Oil", and 67 TIMES that amount per MWhr for solar.

Bottom line: subsidies - in terms of dollars in to production out - are HEAVILY tilted towards alternative sources, and until you can get the subsidies down by an order of magnitude or more, alternatives will be an economic no-go.

Re:ummm... No.

[taharvey]

You are looking at a instant in time and without including externalities. Please review the historical subsidies (DOE EIA, other academic reviews). Look at cumulative subsides of time to be useful - solar is tiny on the scale of other subsidies.

But, of course reasonable to assume that newer technologies will have significantly higher investment per unit generation, where as old technologies will need little investment. What is the subsidy per MWh for fusion? Infinite! Does that mean that it shouldn't be studied?

But more importantly, the document doesn't talk about externalities. Just in the cost cost to the US in persian gulf military activity alone in the last 20 years to secure a vital energy resource... the cost has been enormous. The *current* Iraq effort alone has been estimated to cost $2 Trillion by 2010. (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0110/dailyUpdate.html). Again it is important to take ALL costs into account. When taken into account (military, healthcare, land, environmental, global warming, etc etc) The external costs of oil are Staggering.

But here is the math for a national Solar+wind system.
The US uses 4.1x10^12 kWh/Year in electricity.
The average solar location in the US has 2000 peak hours of sun per year (equiv to solar under 1000W/m^2). Large scale solar today can be purchaced at $2/Wp (firstsolar).
The average wind install is $1.50/Wp @ 2800 peak hours/year.

If you calculate that out on a 50%/50% wind/solar split, you get $3.15 Trillion for replacing ALL of the electric capacity in the US. Cheap, compared to external costs of other energy sources. A fraction of our long term national cost to secure energy resources around the world, and oh yeah... nearly free electricity in perpetuity.

Of course, solar will have additional BOS costs, but it also reduces grid loads, and increases grid stability, security, and decentralization , thus reducing grid infrastructure upgrades (which are current desperately needed).

Yes you need baseload capacity, so geothermal, wave, tidal could be thrown into the mix - but for the most part these are more cost effective than solar.

The point is you are comparing the investment costs of an emerging technology, when you scale it up, even at current costs and without subsidy - it looks really good compared to our other activities.

Re:ummm... No.

[LynnwoodRooster]

Couple of things:

1. Why should we power ourselves with outrageously expensive sources? I'm not arguing against subsidies for research and development purposes; but to convert over to solar or wind at this stage of the game would bankrupt this nation in a year. How about waiting to convert until we actually have a technological approach that makes economic sense?

2. Your energy conversion rate doesn't assume the typical losses of wind and solar conversion, as well as power (voltage) conversion. Drop the energy you get by a factor of 10. So it's a little over $30 trillion, about twice our GDP.

I think the sane thing to do is to keep researching, start moving now to lower cost/subsidized solutions (nuclear and hydro), and when solar or wind becomes commercially viable, begin larger deployments. Because right now, the wind and solar suppliers would be out of business in a matter of weeks if it wasn't for the huge subsidies they receive.

Re:ummm... No.

[taharvey]

1. Why should we power ourselves with outrageously expensive sources? I'm not arguing against subsidies for research and development purposes; but to convert over to solar or wind at this stage of the game would bankrupt this nation in a year. How about waiting to convert until we actually have a technological approach that makes economic sense?

Yes solar is more expensive than coal/oil/etc. But it is not more expensive when you add in the external costs.

It is clear that our current strategy fossil strategy is bankrupting us. How many wars can we endure to secure critical off-shore energy resources, and at what cost? The balance of our economy and security rests with unfriendly nations and despots. The CIA report on Energy a few years back spelled out the future with the rise in Oil Demand from China, India and others: the future of international conflict will revolve around energy resources. And that should be no surprise to even the most casual observer: the history of the last 15 years of conflict has been about energy resources.

And of course there are other external issues that cost from environmental destruction, to air pollution induced health problems, to global warming.

These are all real costs. I'm all for removing subsidies. People should be responsible for their own usage. But it has to be applied across categories. Unfortunately Americans don't have the stomach for $9/gallon gas and 30 cent/kwh electric that comprise all of the external costs.

Wind even without the external costs right now is competitive with coal on a global basis. In texas right now you can sign 10 year wind contracts that beat *todays* coal electric prices. It is true that we already have an infrastructure, and unlike my simple example, we won't convert all in 1, 2 or even 10 years... But it is the only sensible out when considering all the issues.

The point I want to get across is the technology is now. With $30,000 of energy/year falling on everyones roof at current oil prices, and the average roof capable of 6 times the production of the average house electric demand (with current tech) - There is no revolution that needs to happen. Only market volume increases, only then will prices come down

2. Your energy conversion rate doesn't assume the typical losses of wind and solar conversion, as well as power (voltage) conversion. Drop the energy you get by a factor of 10. So it's a little over $30 trillion, about twice our GDP.

Nope, conversion efficiency included in $3 Trillion total.

a) $2 buys a watt of peak power capacity.
b) That watt of capacity will produce 2000 watts/year in an average US location
c) It would take 2 Trillion peak watts to product 4 Trillion kWh/year
d) That would cost $4 trillion (if solar alone), $3 Trillion in a 50% wind mix - equivalent to 1.5-2 Iraq wars
e) The install area to produce all of the US electric need would be 1/3rd of the US roof top space (according to the US census data) with current technology
f) That cost assumes free electricity production for all. Which is silly, the actual investment is much lower if you consider keeping the electric rates the same. (and to pay the remaining BOS)

I think the sane thing to do is to keep researching, start moving now to lower cost/subsidized solutions (nuclear and hydro), and when solar or wind becomes commercially viable, begin larger deployments. Because right now, the wind and solar suppliers would be out of business in a matter of weeks if it wasn't for the huge subsidies they receive.

Before california subsidies the PV market was growing at 25% a year for 20 years on average - essentially all free market driven (tiny federal incentives). After the California incentives its growing by 50%. So yes, subsides have an impact, but pre-subsidy, 25% is quite good.

But, understand that subsidies aren't just some government misappropriation. They are getting economic value from it, and not just from kick starting

Re:ummm... No.

[An Onerous Coward]

You're ignoring a few whopper subsidies. The Price-Anderson Act limits the potential liabilities for a nuclear accident to $10B, a figure small enough that they can buy insurance for it. Anything above that is covered by the U.S. I've heard plenty of experts talk about how, without this law, the nuclear industry would be uninsurable.

Also, there is the fact that very little oil is used to generate electricity. So I'm not surprised that the amount of subsidies given to oil-based electrical generation is similarly tiny.

Finally, the subsidies being granted are on the order of a couple of cents per kilowatt hour. So a complete conversion to, say, wind power would be huge in absolute terms, we're talking about paying 30% more for our electricity, max. That's a small price to pay for energy independence and a reduction of greenhouse gases.

Re:ummm... No.

[LynnwoodRooster]

Insurance? OK, let's increase the subsidies to nuclear by a factor of 10 and call that insurance. Still only at 60% of what solar and wind get...

Not a lot of oil is used for electrical generation, but a LOT of natural gas is. And that gas comes from the big oil companies. That's why it's lumped as it is.

Finally, the subsidies being granted are on the order of a couple of cents per kilowatt hour. So a complete conversion to, say, wind power would be huge in absolute terms, we're talking about paying 30% more for our electricity, max. That's a small price to pay for energy independence and a reduction of greenhouse gases.

You may want to reconsider this line... Replace coal and oil with wind and solar and we're looking at another few hundred billion a year in subsidies alone. Not to mention needing to keep some of the coal and oil on-line for baseload capacity.

And we still haven't addressed energy independence - most of the petroleum products we import goes to transportation, not electrical generation (which is nearly exclusively domestic natural gas). So we'll pay hundreds of billions more per year for electrical, and still have to import most of our oil. Seems like a bad tradeoff...

I submit that the wise choice would be to keep researching wind and solar until we can get it's cost of production down an order of magnitude from where it is now. Then we can look at converting over. Trying to convert before then is simply a waste of money and will not yield any significant gains (as we'll want to replace these early, low-efficiency installations with the higher efficiency units as quickly as possible).

In other words, don't take an R&D project, declare it ready for prime-time, and ship it. Wait until it's actually a viable solution.

Re:ummm... No.

[An Onerous Coward]

The actual cost of the nuclear insurance subsidy has been estimated at anywhere between 200M/year and 3B/year. So we're actually talking about an increase of 1.2x to 2.5x, as your report claims about $1.2B in nuclear subsidies.

But, as I pointed out earlier, it's pointless to take a big, established generation source and compare it to a new, marginal technology in terms of "subsidies per kilowatt". New technologies are supposed to require more research, represent greater risk to investors, and lack the economies of scale of the more established technologies. The United States *massively* subsidized nuclear technology during its earliest phases. I wonder how the nuclear industry of 1960 would have fared in your report.

When it comes to wind power, the primary costs are all in capital investment. Once the turbines are up and running, the fuel is free and the maintenance is rather low. So under the current subsidy scheme, all the subsidies I can find are handed out in the first 10 years of a wind farm's existence (depreciation over 5 years instead of 20, and a 1.9c tax credit for every kWH produced in the first ten years of a farm's life. So when you argue as though the subsidies scale linearly with the amount of renewable energy being produced, you're arguing against the flow of reality.

Look at page 76 of this report, where it talks about levelized cost calculations. Looking only at the operations, maintenance, and fuel costs of an installation, wind energy is the clear winner. So in ten years, when the subsidies supporting a wind farm dwindle to nothing, and the comparable nuclear plant is still getting millions worth of subsidized insurance, the "subsidies per megawatt" for those installations will paint a very different picture.

Renewables also have the advantage of being immune to fluctuations in fuel prices. Nuclear fuel (though a small part of the cost of nuclear power, fluctuates wildly in the markets), and the cost of natural gas has shot up by about 50% in the last year. This advantage of renewable power is entirely overlooked when you insist on reducing the whole, complicated picture to a simple analysis of "subsidies per kilowatt".

I also question the mathiness of your analysis of the costs of incentives. Though you say that cost of production must come down "by an order of magnitude" for wind and solar to make economic sense, the primary subsidy (the Production Tax Credit) weighs in at a mere $0.02/kWH. So there is no reason to require huge gains in economic efficiency. Rather small ones will do.

Once again, you bring up the old lie that the vast majority of any renewable penetration would have to be backed capacity-for-capacity by non-renewables. There are a dozen ways to make up for the intermittency problem.

* Geothermal is perfect for baseload, and thermal storage solar's generation profile very nearly mirrors the demand curve.
* The proliferation of plug-in hybrids that interact with a smart grid, charging when demand is low and selling back to the grid when demand is high.
* Interconnecting geographical regions, so that oversupply in one region can be matched to overdemand in another.
* Diversifying sources for renewables.
* Increasing energy efficiency to make it cheaper to build the generative capacity to serve a given human need.
* Weather forecasting to predict the highs and lows.
* Use of emergency generators as standby generative capacity.
* Load shedding.
* Rolling brownouts.
* Shutting off the TV and going to play outside.

Yes, those last three were listed in order of awfulness.

Lastly, you still haven't addressed hde huge hidden subsidy of all fossil power. Producers don't pay a cent for the right to dump CO2 in the atmosphere. Unless the economic cost of a ton of emitted CO2 is really $0.00, then the economic picture is heavily and artificially skewed in favor of the entrenched technologies.

Let the grid be your battery

[Weaselmancer]

You could ditch the batteries part of your calculation if you were hooked to the power grid. Your meter would simply run backwards as you sell your energy back to the grid during those times where you are making more than you are using.

Best part is that will usually happen during peak, so you get a maximum return on what you're selling back to the grid. Also with this setup, if you need some high power application you don't have to worry about overloading your system.

Okay, that's moronic

[SatanicPuppy]

I'm sorry, but that's completely wrong. Insulation is a thermal barrier that slows temperature equalization...In English, it keeps hot things hot, and cold things cold.

So NO, actually, it doesn't heat up your house in the summer. It slows the transition of the outside heat to the (presumably) cooler area inside. If you use air conditioning, it means that you can keep the same space the same temperature for a lower cost given the same outside temperatures.

I hear that crap from people all the time. Put your hand on some insulation. Does it put off heat? Then how the HELL is it going to heat up your house?

Re:Okay, that's moronic

[Ihlosi]

I'm sorry, but that's completely wrong. Insulation is a thermal barrier that slows temperature equalization...In English, it keeps hot things hot, and cold things cold.

You don't need to tell me (read my posting again). But if you're in the US, it might help if you tell your neighbors. :)

Re:Okay, that's moronic

[SatanicPuppy]

Ha! Sorry. I've actually heard that argument so often that the mere hint of it sends me over the edge.

Re:Okay, that's moronic

[Ihlosi]

Ha! Sorry. I've actually heard that argument so often that the mere hint of it sends me over the edge.

Yes, for the layperson there's probably two types of insulation: One that keeps cold and one that keeps warm. :)

I wonder if you could could run an advertising campaign with your "new", "innovative" insulation that does both. I bet that it wouldn't even be the most stupid thing on TV.

flisom and others

[rootpassbird]

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=17&art_id=38649&sid=12309429&con_type=1

just struck me

[rootpassbird]

it's some indian called anil seti - SETI! now that rings a bell!

Call me when I can buy it at Home Depot

[CottonThePirate]

Seriously I've seen a "Solar Tech breakthrouh!" article about once a week for going on 3 years now, but I still have to special order panels at huge cost if I want to make my own little installation. Things have gotten better, but not much. Really only about 10% improvement in the last 5 years at the end user price point per watt. When I can buy a 2000 watt system to run a few plugs at home depot for $350, give me a call.

And we gotta get ourselves back to the garden?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know that Carl Sagan met Joni Mitchell in a hotel room one day? Hm, I smell the plot of a new movie --- oh, never mind, it wouldn't be significant....

Suuuuuure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Next you'll be telling me about materials with left-handed optical effects, materials that act as memristers, and do-it-yourself cold fusion kits!

This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is vapor until it hits shelves. There are many discussions about discoveries seen here that turn into nothing. This will do NOTHING to help alleviate anything in the near or tangible future.

Thanks for nothing.

How about reporting something that we can do something with on any subject?

Solar was mentioned so the nukes came out

[dbIII]

Or even better, instead of having massive plants with a huge footprint make use of smaller pup nuclear reactors - about the size used in a naval ship

Interesting idea. Now I suggest you learn about nuclear power generation to find out why this is an expensive military operation and not a cheap civilian one. It appears that some confusion has been generated by earlier proposals to use existing military vessels that have already been paid for to generate small amounts of energy for civilian use.

Thermal power of any sort scales up - you can get a greater percentage of energy out of the steam if there is a lot of it and you can build very large turbines.

Re:Irrefutable? Then it's NOT science!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, it's not. It's a philosophical statement about the meaning of the word "science".

No I was being serious. And yes it's a philosophical statement which makes it's credibility even more dubious. For example scientists will claim String Theory is more philosophy than science because it is not falsifiable. The presumption is that being not falsifiable is a property of philosophy. Therefore if the so called "falsification test" is itself philosophy it has less epistemological value than a statement of science.

You either believe philosophy is "stronger" than science and therefore philosophy is perfectly able to qualify science. Yet if you do not believe this then it is a contradiction to apply philosophical tests to things scientific.

JinXter

[Anonymous Coward]

you will all feel so dumbfounded when you look into A man from the 18th century's work with "flat metal pannels moving through ether (gravity fields)" the massive amount of electricity produced from putting any rod or panel into the air has been proven time & time again to produce enough electricity to power cities... why do you thing NASA has been trying to drag a wire into space? huh!!! the massive failed attempts are almost all due to the high voltage. so integrate height into your solar panels, i promise you, there is no end. the higher, the more ether captured, the more electricity!!! that 1800's guys name btw "Nikola Tesla", the true inventer of AC current & i believe that we wouldnt be anywhere near where we are today technology wise if it werent for him! ps, i am almost certain that a Perticular solar cell company bought out Nanotechnologies patent on the new solar cell method because I saw the video on Nano's website LONG BEFORE this info was released... IF ANYONE WANTS TO INVEST MONEY IN ANYTHING I SUGGEST NANO TECHNOLOGIES & SOLAR CELL/WINDMILL CO's Screw oil!!! even if we DON'T run out of oil im switching

OFF-TOPIC!!

[Jane Q. Public]

I don't have mod privileges at the moment (and besides this is my own thread), so I will just state my case:

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HOW DIFFICULT SCIENCE AND DEVELOPMENT ARE!!!

The subject under discussion is the making of inappropriate predictions based on the actual level of development of an invention or idea!

I am sick of hearing of how some little bit of pure research is going to make my lightbulbs last twice as long or my gas mileage go up by 50%. I read such so frequently, that... well, read my OP.

Yes, improvements come along. It is the BULLSHIT that draws my ire.