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Lessons Learned From Google's Green Energy Bust
the_newsbeagle writes In 2007, Google boldly declared a new initiative to invent a green energy technology that produced cheaper electricity than coal-fired power plants. Sure, energy researchers had been hammering at this task for decades, but Google hoped to figure it out in a few years. They didn't. Instead, Google admitted defeat and shut down the project in 2011. In a admirable twist, however, two of the project's engineers then dedicated themselves to learning from the project's failure. What did it mean that one of the world's most ambitious and capable innovation companies couldn't invent a cheap renewable energy tech?
I think this speaks a lot about how companies and the population are increasingly thinking in rather short terms and how little respect the modern tech elite have for those who came before them. There seems to be this attitude that difficult problems are only unsolved because the 'wrong' people have looked at it and flush with arrogance for solving comparatively simple internet related ones they believe that they are smarter and thus will quickly tackle what those 'researchers' and 'old fogies' could not.
And when gratification is not instant, they move on.
I also see this, on a smaller but more insidious scale, in the almost pathological desire to not learn from the past developers have been fetishizing. Too often learning roots or old technologies 'taints' a person with 'old' ideas rather than teaching them lessons others have already learned so that they can move on from there. So many 'new' technologies that when the developers are asked 'ok, this is great, but how do you plan to address the issues that were encountered last time?' they just look at you blankly and claim this is new and innovative, or that you just don't understand.
Ok, got a bit off topic there ^_^
It means you ain't smarter than the generations that went before you.
If you don't like the choices previous generations made, you first should figure out WHY they made those choices before deciding they were wrong.
The problem is this almost religious fanatical devotion to the idea of "Mother earth" and the idea of "Renewable technology"
Why does it have to be renewable? The actual problem is converting CO2 from a solid to a gas. Stopping that is far more important than being renewable. Fusion isn't renewable... we'd run out of Deuterium in a couple of billion years... so we should abandon that as well?
I have seen - predominantly on Slashdot, obviously, but also elsewhere, a sort of naive technocrats (who are often also libertarians) believing that as soon as some technology is needed, the invisible hand of the market magically creates this technology so one only has to sit and wait for this magic solution to appear out of thin air. The more down-to-earth kind of these people even tried to explain this magic by telling that this process happens by throwing enough money at a problem.
Unfortunately - and TFA is a picture book example of this - reality doesn't work that way. Breakthroughs don't happen by magic, they happen by meticulous research and a shitload of small steps. Solutions don't suddenly appear just when they are needed, a long lead time of research is required. And sometimes this new technology never comes up at all.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The big news to me isn't that they weren't able to invent the tech, but their estimate that even if their most optimistic scenario had come true w.r.t. clean energy tech that it still wouldn't be enough to avoid the "really bad" scenario w.r.t. climate change (if you trust Hansen's models).
You are wrong. The gigantic economic boom of the 20th century was fuelled by cheap oil.
Fusion isn't renewable... we'd run out of Deuterium in a couple of billion years
That's renewable enough.
Solar cell costs are plunging, while their efficiencies rise. I predict a collision, a market and a profit.
You might see one, if you could just plug solar cells into your house and magically get power all day. Most of our power usage in our house is at night, when... oops... there's no solar power.
So now you need batteries and inverters and all kinds of other junk to provide power when we're actually home. And you need enough to provide power to the whole house for a few days to cover the days when there's hardly any sun.
Solar cells could cost $0, and they still probably wouldn't make sense when compared to grid power that isn't made artifiicially expensive by Greenist boondoggles.
You can't "invent" cheaper tech--it only gets cheaper if you invest in mass-producing it. They gave up 3 years ago, and since then market forces have actually achieved price parity for renewables in a lot of the world. It wasn't any new "magic bullet" research that did it, but incremental improvements driven by economies of scale. Yes, government played a big role, but primarily as a driver of demand and investor in manufacturing.
The climate does not have time to wait for a new technology to be developed and go through the whole sequence of commercialization and commoditization. The solar panels, wind turbines and batteries we already have can do the job--and the more we build, the cheaper they get.. This is one place I wish market purists would get on board--put a price on carbon, and solutions will come out of the woodwork and plummet in price.
What did it mean that one of the world's most ambitious and capable innovation companies couldn't invent a cheap renewable energy tech?
Umm, nothing. Google has no special expertise in energy tech. This is WAY outside their core businesses where they have a proven competence. The notion that they would to solve the economic problem of renewable energy where everyone else had (so far) failed is somewhere between well intentioned altruism and pure undiluted hubris. (not sure where on that scale though) The only thing Google has is smart people and a huge bank account. Those are nice assets to work with but just because you can throw smart people and money at a problem doesn't mean a solution will magically appear in a timely manner. Research is unpredictable and requires long term dedication. And even if you do succeed in coming up with a nifty new technology it doesn't automatically mean that the economics of it will be favorable. I'm not saying Google shouldn't try - I'm glad to see them working on and/or bankrolling research such problems. My point is that Google shouldn't be expected to be more likely to solve the problem than any number of other companies/organizations that have worked on these problems.
Really? Its 15.54 currently here in the UK, and its already dark. And I'm not even home yet. When I get home, there's the heating to go on (gas, luckily), food to be cooked (gas hob, electric oven), the house to be lit (electric), housework to be done (electric), and then entertainment for the evening (usually electric consuming). So from when I get home at 17.30 to when I go to bed at 22.30, there's 5 hours of electricity usage.
And that's not counting things like night storage heaters, economy 7 power use washing machines or dish washers that can be put on overnight etc.
So yes, the bulk of our power usage (and Im not the poster you replied to) is over night.
Solar cell costs are plunging, while their efficiencies rise. I predict a collision, a market and a profit.
You might see one, if you could just plug solar cells into your house and magically get power all day. Most of our power usage in our house is at night, when... oops... there's no solar power.
No, actually, in America the highest electrical usage is in the afternoon. It's driven by air conditioning loads in summer, along with the fact that business and industry tends to use the most power only during working hours. There's a slight bump at about 7, but it's not as big as the afternoon peak.
Quick calculations suggest that you can replace about 10% of US electrical usage with solar with no disruption at all, and something like 20 to 30 percent with only minimal disruption.
That's not enough to solve the energy problem. But, with the electricity market in the US at something like half a trillion dollars a year, that's a substantial market (and substantial profit)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It's not Oil being a part of the equation, it's cheap oil, which really wasn't available until he beginning of the 20th, that was the feedstock for all that complexity.
See how much innovation and growth you can manage when just brewing your cup of coffee in the morning either requires you to build a fire or fork over lots of money for a few watts.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
dunkelfalke (91624) writes:
I have seen - predominantly on Slashdot, obviously, but also elsewhere, a sort of naive technocrats (who are often also libertarians) believing that as soon as some technology is needed, the invisible hand of the market magically creates this technology so one only has to sit and wait for this magic solution to appear out of thin air. The more down-to-earth kind of these people even tried to explain this magic by telling that this process happens by throwing enough money at a problem.
--and Anonymous Coward responds
I have seen - predominantly on Slashdot, obviously, but also elsewhere, a sort of naive technocrats (who are often also liberals or progressives or socialists) believing that as soon as some technology is needed, the state magically creates this technology so one only has to sit and wait for this magic solution to appear out of thin air. The more down-to-earth kind of these people even tried to explain this magic by telling that this process happens by throwing enough money at a problem.
OK, somebody should moderate both of these as "troll".
There is some insight here, but the insight is completely washed out by the gratuitous insults and use of deliberately slanted vocabulary.
In fact, the market is good at solving some types of problems. And government is good at solving some of the types of problems that the market isn't good at. But people of all political views always call approaches that don't fit their ideology "throwing money at the problem." If it's a solution that fits your politics, it's "investing in technology," and if it's a solution that doesn't fit your politics, it suddenly "throwing money at the problem." Same thing, different choice of spin.
But randomly insulting political positions for the joy of insults, and substituting buzz words for thinking, really does not substitute for actual analysis.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Tesla thought he could transmit power without wires. He evidently _didn't_ Grok electromagnetism. Despite what many non-EEs claim.
Do tell. Using the same principles Tesla was using.
Wait a second now. Don't put all programmers in the same bucket. Those who think that way will push keys 8 hours a day until they retire. Real programmers are very knowledgeable in the field they work, BUT THEY AREN'T EXPERTS.
As a programmer analyst I actually learned to do people's jobs so I can optimize/automate as well as reduce the number of mistakes. I've automated multiple engineering tasks throughout the last 6 years. Some of these tasks required hours of engineers pounding information into my small little brain. The results is that the knowledge I collected is now valuable in real life.
> When your meter shows 0 net power, you have generated all the power you need (just not at the right time).
With zero net power, your electric bill is zero. Yay!
You tell your neighbor about it. He does the same, and pretty soon everyone is getting all of their power for free. Everyone generates power during rhe day when they aren't home, and uses power at night, when solar doesn't work. Nobody pays for anything.
Of course since nobody pays, there's no money to generate power at night. Moral of story - solar-electric can work, but only if nobody but you does it. If you tell other people about there won't be anyone paying to generate your evening electricity.
Location does have an impact but you can look at peak usage data.
For example in Florida peak usage in summer is from noon to 9PM so yes a good bit of the usage is at night.
In the winter it is 6am to 10am in the morning and 6pm to 10pm at night.
Most power is used in the evening and the morning because that is when people are doing things like cook, laundry and are frankly home.
Your argument about anecdotal evidence is correct but the real usage data does show that peak power usage is in the evenings and not during the day or overnight. BTW Florida is an example of a location where peak load is greatly influenced by ac bills in the summer.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Well, no. What really happened, which you'd know if you read the article, was that they investigated whether google's financial backing could help in speeding up the development of tech that could build renewable power plants for cheap. After a couple of years of building up hard evidence and looking at detailed engineering reports - something that armchair experts like you would never dirty their hands with - they realized the answer was no. This doesn't seem like being 'out of touch' to me. It seems like being quite in touch with reality, unlike a lot of politicians and 'decision-makers' who think that fracking is going to solve all of our problems indefinitely and that oil sands are a good idea.
What is confusing to me, though, is that they call for new breakthroughs in renewables, but seemingly don't want to consider nuclear power as a viable option. Maybe if google started backing new nuclear energy technologies instead of renewables, they could hit their goal of cheap carbon-free power. But we know that google won't do that because it would not be worth it to have nuclear associated with their name.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
Solar-thermal with storage. You get power at night.
The 400 MW Ivanpah solar thermal plant is on the same power line as Hoover Dam (both are near Las Vegas). It didn't need its own storage unit, because the dam already provides huge amounts of storage. Whenever the solar plant is running, the dam can save water for later. Not all locations have an existing dam conveniently near, so solar-thermal will need to build their own storage units on-site. There are several options, and which is best to use is an area of active research.