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US Funds Aggressive Tech To Cut Solar Power Costs
coondoggie writes "The U.S Department of Energy wants researchers and scientists to 'think outside the box' and come up 'highly disruptive Concentrating Solar Power technologies that will meet 6/kWh cost targets by the end of the decade.' The DOE's 'SunShot Concentrating Solar Power R&D' is a multimillion dollar endeavor that intends to look beyond what it calls the incremental near-term to support research into transformative technologies that will break through performance barriers known today, such as efficiency and temperature limitations."
That's how research investments should always work.
Either low risk, small reward (typically funded by industry), or high risk of failure, but aiming high with benefits for all of society (typically funded by government).
I admit to reading the article (sorry), thus I know it's 6 cents.
A frightfully naive interpretation. How about this: the whole program is just a wash to put more money in the hands of corrupt politically-connected creeps. Look at the history of government funding solar power in America...any scandals come to mind?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Even if solar panels were free, solar electricity still has a high hurdle to jump before it becomes competitive with other sources.
The costs include the mounting structure and the power inverter.
The article isn't about electricity from photovoltaic panels mounted on roofs. It's about large industrial scale solar concentrators like this one. It has the potential to be cheaper than PV generated electricity and it keeps producing electricity after the sun goes down.
The natural counter-argument is the question: Should the government stop funding research simply because some of the funds will (likely) reach undeserving parties?
It's not black and white. If there's been a history of wasted resources related to this particular objective, then more strict regulation should be enacted (and the natural reply to this would be: regulation is both expensive and corruptible... I guess some middle-ground is necessary).
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Because cold fusion doesn't seem to be coming any time soon. If it's possible at all, it's a very long term investment, which this isn't.
In my understanding, there are no problems of this kind to solve in geothermal energy. Drilling is well developed, heat exchange too. There's no particular challenge in manufacturing that could make it a lot cheaper if solved. There's nothing much to throw money at.
RTFA. ""The overarching goal of the SunShot Initiative is reaching cost parity with baseload energy rates, estimated to be 6Â/kWh without economic support, which would pave the way for rapid and large-scale adoption of solar electricity across the United States."
Because the result woudln't be something that can be driven on a real road. It would be a single ocupant tin can without AC or anything else.
Why are you talking about solar panels? This article is about concentrated (thermal) solar, not PV. Better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than hammer out a post and remove all doubt, eh?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
And then you have less research being done, and therefore less chance of success, because only those companies with enough capital to work without pay for years on end can actually participate.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
You could easily swap "solar power" for "defense systems". The scandals related to government support of solar power pale by a few orders of magnitude to the overt graft and fraud in military research and acquisition. What's your point? Are you suggestion that we shouldn't be funding either?
This is solar thermal, not photovoltaic. The basic idea is to grab a large area where the sun is pretty much always shining during the day (you do have a desert or two, you know), set up a lot of mirrors, and heat the top of a tower. Fill the tower with some form of salt that will become liquid at high temperature, and will hold heat well (solving the night time issue), and they use the heat from the salt to power a conventional steam generator. There are a few installations of this sort, and it works well. They're just looking at how to make it a little cheaper.
Yes. Of course the "scandal that comes to mind" ignores the what, 99%+ of those funds that were NOT involved in a scandal there were put to work as intended. Heck, let's be generous to your point and say only 90% weren't scandal-laden. Also, solar power is now beating grid parity in parts of the US, largely thanks to solar incentives and investment over the last several years getting the market going. Not just in the US, but here, in europe, and in china as well. This is a huge moment, where those with enough capital in parts of the us (including the northeast) could choose to "prebuy" their electricity for the next 25 years with PV... WITHOUT incentive... and not lose money compared to grid electricity. In a few more years it's going to be a slam dunk.
Public policy works. Funding research works. Give up the tired, weak whining that it's not perfect. Waiting for teh "free market" to fix it all isn't perfect either, and it cares a lot less for the collateral damage of a sudden catastrophic shift than we do.
http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/guest-blogs/pv-systems-have-gotten-dirt-cheap
The argument goes like this: if the private sector invests in something risky and fails, it is Capitalism and it is Good; when the government does it, itis Socialism, and it is Bad.
All the argument is specious: CEOs invest in their golfing friends' companies, and they don't invest their own money: they invest the shareholder's. Think of the governement as a very large, highly diversify corporation (really, it is not very diversified, it mostly does insurance and has an army; but it also has a whole buch of minor subsidiaries doing a bit of everything). The question is, since the government is this huge corporation which cannot go bankrupt, what should it invest in?
Clearly, high risk, long-term stuff. In a way, like IBM. The only problem with those failed investments (and if you invest in high-risk stuff, you will fail most of the times) is that they clearly were way too application oriented and short-term!
On a more philosophical note, it is wholly reasonable that the governement does the high-risk stuff: it cannot fail. Also, we expect corporations to be profitable every quarter, whereas the government has the luxury of needing only to stay solvant -- which, when you can print your own money is not overly difficult.
The tech belongs to Germany, Japan, China. They did the research and raced to the bottom with production lines churning out many solar panels.
The key ingredient to solar panels (polysilicon) has a very strong U.S. player in the form of Dow Corning's Hemlock Semiconductor.