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MIT Report Says Current Tech Enables Future Terawatt-Scale Solar Power Systems
Lucas123 writes: Even with today's inefficient wafer-based crystalline silicon photovoltaics, terawatt-scale solar power systems are coming down the pike, according to a 356-page report from MIT on the future of solar energy. Solar electricity generation is one of "very few low-carbon energy technologies" with the potential to grow to very large scale, the study states. In fact, solar resources dwarf current and projected future electricity demand. The report, however, also called out a lack of funds for R&D on newer solar technology, such as thin-film wafers that may be able to achieve lower costs in the long run. Even more pressing than the technology are state and federal policies that squelch solar deployment. For example, government subsidies to solar are dwarfed by subsidies to other energy sources, and trade policies have restricted PV module and other commodity product imports in order to aid domestic industry. Additionally, even though PV module and inverter costs are essentially identical in the United States and Germany, total U.S.residential system costs are substantially above those in Germany.
The cost isn't different between US and Germany, The way it's paid for is different. Germany subsidizes solar power far more than the US. Just because tax revenue is spent, doesn't mean it's cheaper. One of the biggest reasons for it being uneconomical is that there is still the huge amount of hazardous waste that needs to be disposed of from the manufacturing process. It may be less of a carbon footprint, but green energy it is not.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
News flash: slashdotter reads article about article, finds something to complain about, stops to post complaint, and never reads actual paper.
What really needs to happen is to remove all gov't subsidies across the board. Indeed this is what alt-energy maven Avory Lovins has been preaching for years, because he knows that without subsidies the fossil fuels can't compete with renewables. We are already near the tipping point where even the massive fossil fuel subsidies won't be enough to prop them up. The switch to renewables is just a matter of time. The only unknowns are how long it will take and how painful it will be.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Bingo.
If we ignored costs we could all eat caviar on the moon.
The main issue with solar is the depreciation. Assuming they last forever... they'd be absurdly inexpensive. Of course they don't. They tend to wear out after 10-20 years depending on what various manufactuers say.
But the really silly thing is that they are not built to be maintained. They can only be built at the factory and when they wear out you have to throw them out.
How green is that especially when the vast majority of the solar panel is going to be roughly identical to how it was when it rolled off the manufactoring line.
What we should be looking at AMONGST OTHER things is figuring out specifically what is not working with an old worn out cell and either how you prevent that situation through maintenance, redesign the cells so they can be maintained, or we need some sort of micro manufacturing system for solar cells.
If you could buy a machine that made solar panels... ideally not with silicon wafers... choose a cheaper material even if it is less space efficient. And then rather than sell the panels you sell the machine that makes the panels.
The guy with the panels on his roof doesn't even need to own the machine but someone in the area probably should have enough manufacturing capacity to maintain the existing solar infrastructure.
Look, all costs are just supply and demand. In the case of solar panels the issue is supply. There is lots of demand for them. The costs get pushed up by a lack of supply. So we need more production and that production has to assume lower prices because it will be a higher supply environment.
Democratizing the manufacturing of the panels solve the problem because the big industrial producers make more money with the cost of panels higher. It isn't in their interests to push the prices lower.
If you move those companies away from selling toast and instead selling toasters... we might get a dramatically lower price.
Someone is going to be upset that I'm advocating the less space efficient panels. The more efficient ones have unreasonably high quality control requirements to be practical in the applications I'm discussing. We need something simple and robust and cheap. Something that when it breaks or wears out can be patched or repaired without going to any great expense.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
News flash: slashdotter reads article about article, finds something to complain about, stops to post complaint, and never reads actual paper.
The article about the article is an accurate summary of the actual article. Current solar tech does not make much economic sense, so we are spending billions to subsidize it, rather than spending enough on research and development of new tech that does make sense. Furthermore, subsidizes designed to encourage solar adoption, have instead been co-opted by the solar industry, and used to prop up inefficient domestic producers at the expense of better and cheaper imports. So the end result is that solar is more expensive to consumers, while the worst panels are being installed. No matter how dumb you think our solar policies are, they are actually even dumber than that.
Cost reductions would eventually usher in utility-scale solar. But to get residential and distributed solar, public awareness and education is needed. But there are places in the world where the grid is very unreliable or non existent. Those places also have very rich individuals and groups. Collectively rich folks in third world without reliable grid have as much purchasing power as all of the middle class of developed countries. They will fund and underwrite the cost of R&D, and deployment and financing of residential/distributed solar. So there is some chance that technology will break the barriers and enter developed countries. There was a time when my Indian relatives all had better cell phones than my circle in USA. Because Indian land lines sucked and US mobile phones had to outdo the landlines. Same thing could happen to the grid.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So what you're saying is, you're terrified of his ideas. You can't stand the thought of simply eliminating subsidies and letting the chips fall where they may.
What's the matter? If you're right, then fossil fuels remain more profitable than renewables and nothing changes.
If you still want to try to defend subsidies, all it means is that you're admitting that fossil fuels can no longer compete.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Depends on how you slice it.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
None of those taxes begins to account for the lack of disposal fees for fossil fuels.
If all fossil fuel users were required to collect and safely sequester the CO2 that they're allowed to spew into the air free of charge, fossil fuels would not be even close to competitive with solar energy. As it stands, the rampant use of fossil fuels is saddling future generations with hundreds of $Trillions of remediation costs. It only looks cheaper because you're kicking the can down the road.
Sorry, I meant silicon vs. thin film. Here's a thing (caution, pdf). The panels, even the newest ones, last a very long time.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Well we spent 2 trillion dollars (and 4000 lives) to subsidize oil from 2000-2008 alone.
If we gave 2 trillion dollars to the solar industry, we'd have flying cars.
Military costs to protect oil field are ongoing and extremely expensive.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
What year are you from, 2005??? Recent solar plant in Dubai, electricity price 6 cents/kWh, no subsidies. Austin Energy has closed agreement with Recurrent Energy, price is 5 cents/kWh. Texas project probably uses federal tax reduction, but even without reduction it would be on par with natural gas plants. And natural gas producers use their own tax breaks and certainly do not pay all related costs that taxpayers pick up after them.