Google Files First Solar Patent, Builds R&D Team

bizwriter writes "Google has moved beyond investing and using solar power and has started on serious R&D work in the field. Its first patent application in solar energy technology just became public, and the company is staffing a new R&D group 'to develop electricity from renewable energy sources at a cost less than coal' at 'utility scale.'"

Comments

Renewable? Hah!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sun has a limited supply of hydrogen fuel. If we start depending on solar, in a few measly billion years we'll be depending on hydrogen imports from undemocratic planets. And the chance of a meltdown within 5 billion years or so is pretty much 100%.

Re:What a waste.

[Rei]

Solar is usually about an order of magnitude more land-dense than hydroelectric (when you include the area taken up by the reservoir), and about on par with coal (when you include the land taken up by the coal mines required to fuel the plant and the few decades it takes life to regrow on them after an exhausted mine is abandoned)

Daily intermittence is readily countered by a wide range of factors.
  * Thermal storage
  * Pumped hydro energy storage (works with any type of power; already widespread in China for day/night demand averaging) (does not require a river or a large impounded area!)
  * Integrated peaking (you already have a thermal power plant; adding a supplemental source of heat for when demand exceeds supply costs you almost nothing)
  * The natural correlation between solar intensity and power consumption (night is off-peak, sunny days have more AC load, etc - -it's not perfect, but it's a nice start)
  * Generation-source diversity (wind, solar, tide, wave, etc do not all line up with each other in terms of what generates when)
  * Long-distance HVDC power transmission lets you take advantage of the fact that the sun doesn't set in all places at the same time.
  * Smart grids and demand-flexible industry allow to shift when power is drawn to when it's abundant.