Solar Power Headed For 45% Annual Growth

mdsolar writes "USA Today is running a pretty good article on solar power that gives an overview of the current state of the industry. Highlight include production costs of $1.19/Watt for First Solar, 40% annual cost reductions over the last five years, revenues expected to triple in three years, and a prediction for 2014 as the year when solar photovoltaic power plants become cheaper than other forms of generation. From the piece: 'Like wind power, solar energy is spotty, working at full capacity an average 20% to 30% of the time. Solar's big advantage is that it supplies the most electricity midday, when demand peaks. And it can be located at homes and businesses, reducing the need to build pollution-belching power plants and unsightly transmission lines. In states such as California, with high electricity prices and government incentives, solar is already a bargain for some customers. Wal-Mart recently said it's putting solar panels on more than 20 of its stores in California and Hawaii. Google is blanketing its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters with 9,212 solar panels, enough to light 1,000 homes.'"

Lots of solar activity these last few years...

Plus, there's the guys doing electricity by converting solar heat using sterling engines http://www.stirlingenergy.com/default.asp [stirlingenergy.com] and the work converting heat into electricity using an intermediate sound conversion step http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/07060 3225026.htm. [sciencedaily.com]

Re:Lots of solar activity these last few years...

Try this link for the heat to sound to electricity stuff: http://unews.utah.edu/p/?r=053007-1 [utah.edu]

Understatement

Solar's big advantage is that it supplies the most electricity midday, when demand peaks.

Solar's big advantages are that it is essentially pollution free, doesn't up CO2, reduces petroleum requirements which means more lubricants, plastics and so on at reasonable prices, reduction of political leverage of oil rich countries, increase in ability to operate independently at every level from national to individual, and over the long term, it costs less.

Combined with ultracaps, hopefully to be seen as practical power storage come this fall (via EEStor [google.com]), the power supply landscape may change significantly in the next decade or so.

Re:Understatement

Yeah, well said. But let me point out that increase in ability to operate independently at every level from national to individual, while a very real benefit (to society) of solar power is NOT seen as an advantage by the powers-that-be. The energy industry is still fixed on the big-central-plant-generation/regulated-utility-dis tribution model, and there is a lot of money and many careers that depend on the continuation of that model. Solar and other forms of small scale, distributed generation, not all of which is even renewable (e.g. cogeneration, aka. combined heat and power), are a very real threat to those vested interests. Which is one reason (of many) that adoption of these technologies has been so slow.

Re:Understatement

"Solar's big advantages are that it is essentially pollution free, doesn't up CO2, reduces petroleum requirements which means more lubricants, plastics and so on at reasonable prices, reduction of political leverage of oil rich countries, increase in ability to operate independently at every level from national to individual, and over the long term, it costs less."

Excellent points, but it's advantage is also it's disadvantage. Imagine trying to run a steel foundry on solar power. Now, imagine running a third world steel foundry on solar power. That's the gripe many developing nations have with Kyoto - how are they supposed to enter the 20th century if they can use coal fired power?

Re:Understatement

I am unclear whether we have the potential to expand facilities in those appropriate areas enough that they could power the entire country well into the future.

Yes, but we don't need a whole lot of solar plants placed everywhere. This map has just a handful of locations marked that if they had solar panels it would provide enough energy for the whole world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Solar_land_area .png [wikipedia.org]

Granted, those locations are huge, but consider all the empty spaces in the deserts of the world that get tons of sunlight but are otherwise useless. I have seen updated maps with smaller locations that assume a higher efficiency solar cell, since this map only assumes 8% efficiency, and normal panels have about 15% with research being done in the 30-40% efficient range.

Re:Understatement

I think there's a misconception about deserts. (They generally are not simply dunes of sand. There's a *lot* of plant and animal life in the Sonoran ecosystem, for example). Anyway, where I live, according to my local power company we have up to 17% solar power in the summer. I have two solar cookers which work really well for making soups and sauces. Exactly like these: http://solarcooking.org/images/hflame1.jpg [solarcooking.org]
  I also have a roof-mounted solar water heater, part of a hybrid system (I have a gas water heater but it does considerably less work when the solar heater is working, which is almost all the time.) Yes we have hot water at night. The rooftop heater looks like a skylight. Okay, so I live in a desert city with 300 days of sunshine a year. Love it.

Re:Understatement

It's not simply rainfall that determines how lush an area is. Example: northern Australia gets tons of rain, but has very little plantlife. The soil is just too depleted. Rainy areas require a carefully balanced ecosystem (like you get in, say, the Amazon) to rapidly return nutrients from dead plants into the system, or the rainfall will wash them away.

Rainfall is certainly a major factor, but not the only one.

In the desert case, a lack of rainfall is one problem, but a parching sun is another. By putting up shade, you're eliminating the major factor that's drying out the soil from what rain does fall. You're reducing available light for photosynthesis, too, but the lack of moisure is a much greater limiting factor in a desert.

Overall, it'd be a pretty dramatic change. Of course, there's absolutely no reason to "panel the desert", so to speak. With a proper regulatory environment, you can "panel the cities". Perhaps the new slogan could be, "A plug-in hybrid in every garage and a photovoltaic system on every roof."

Re:Understatement

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/solargen/a bout-solar-energy/solar-electricity/production-and -recycling [greenpeace.org]

"The environmental impact and the safety risk of solar cells are infinitesimally small compared to conventional sources of energy like coal, oil, gas or atomic energy. With the latter, the danger is global (emission of carbon-dioxide) and longterm (for example the problems of disposal of nuclear energy). This is regarding regular operation already. If we think about solar panels running for 30 years that don't produce any pollutants, the environmental damage is obviously kept very limited.

The process of production for solar cells is well developed and tested. From the chemical and toxin point of view, even a mass-production of solar cells will not implicate any significant environmental or health problems."

Where is your counter evidence?

Political Power

Solar's big advantage is that it supplies the most electricity midday, when demand peaks.

I like the advantage (over petrofuels) that its fuel is free, without forcing the US to kowtow to foreign tyrants who sometimes try to kill us, and sometimes need to get rescued from people trying to kill them, and nearly always are at the center of global warfare.

45% Annual Growth

Great. So we're just going to use up the sun's energy faster.

I hope you bastards freeze in the dark.

It's been 30 years..

since the first serious calculations were done to determine the feasibility of orbital solar power plants. The results *then* indicated that it was the only economically feasible way to supply the world's future energy needs. Since then, both space and solar cell technology has improved dramatically. Meanwhile, billions of dollars is being sunk into fusion research and there's no expectation that a clean fusion reactor will be developed in the next 50 years.

Seriously

>> USA Today is running a pretty good article

Also, pigs soar above the frozen wasteland that was hell.

B.S. about price dropping

Everyone likes to think that solar is getting cheaper every year just like computers and disk drives, but it's not true. Look at this chart:

http://www.solarbuzz.com/ [solarbuzz.com]

You will see that solar panel prices bottomed out back in 2003 and have been rising ever since. Demand is exceeding supply thanks to ever more generous subsidies, especially in Germany, which have driven up worldwide price. The truth is that solar costs more today than it has for several years, and costs are still rising slowly. It is a myth that solar prices are constantly coming down.

Re:$/Watt

Nope, $/W.

It's how much it costs you to get a panel capable of producing electricity at a rate of 1 watt.

If your panel can produce 100 watts, and you spent $400 on it, that's $4/watt.

If you're buying from your electric company...

If you're buying from your electric company, you don't buy power at all. You buy energy (which would be Joules, Watt-Hours, or, typically, Kilowatt-Hours). If you're buying your own power generation source, then you're very likely buying based off of how much power can be delivered — which is measured in Watts.

Re:$/Watt

Ah - but it DOES have a meaning.

Or it WILL have a meaning.

Currently - the economic terms are based on how much oil we can pump out of the ground in a given time-frame.

When oil (fossil fuels) ceases to be the primary driver of economies - it looks like solar is poised to take over as the #1 technology (with wind/nuclear/geothermal coming in somewhere next); and solar will likely be a function of square-footage-of-sunlight-per-year. The more land a person owns, in a sunny energy-producing region, the more wealth, over time, that person can create. Simply by covering it with solar panels, the more efficient, the better, and praying for sun. Electricity will be a market, there will always be buyers. Locale will probably produce different market rates, because of transmission losses. People will eventually start floating solar farms at sea, and putting them into space (though those, apparently don't scale DOWN well, you need a certain MINIMUM to beam the power via microwaves, efficiently).

But you're right. The $/kw-h calculation looks quite silly when you have solar power. There was a lot of FUD about solar about 5-10 years ago, that solar cells had a reputation for "wearing out" after 10-15 years, or losing power over time. This caused some solar-opponents to create a $/kw-h calculation; how much power you could expect to get out of a solar cell over the lifetime of the cell. Some even claimed that they cost more energy to manufacture than they'd ever produce. This was dead wrong then, and it's dead wrong now: there were some specific kinds of solar cells made in the 1970's that had defects, with dyes that turned brown, etc. Other solar cells went "bad" when their glass enclosures cracked, or their solder joints failed, etc - all things that could be repaired, or engineered for better longevity. These are no longer issues in any modern solar technology. We don't know about these new nanotechnology or thin-film based solar panels. Only time will tell. But it's not likely that they're going to "wear out" like this. For all effective purposes - you manufacture a solar cell, and it produces electricity "forever".

Re:Solar is Limited due to its Low Energy Density

Most people don't want to live in a place that's covered in solar panels and windmills far as the eye can see...

As opposed to... suburban rooftops and utility poles as far as the eye can see? Are black shingles really that much more attractive than black solar panels? Are windmills so much more unsightly than utility poles and power lines running everywhere?

All the large-scale wind farms I've seen are in places where there's barely anyone living anyway. I really have to wonder who is complaining about it.

And on a related note, neither windmills nor solar panels are benign - they both have a subtle effect on the environment ... there's always a tradeoff with energy generation.

The only one that springs to mind is the industrial processes to manufacture solar cells, and that's bad but seriously, industrial pollution is rampant and people who act like the production of solar cells/hybrid car batteries are a deal-breaker never seem to account for the processes involved in mining coal, building a car, or whatever the status quo is in addition to the pollution created by using said coal plant or ICE car.

Or did you mean something like the solar energy being turned into electricity instead of warming the environment? Because it's all going to be released as heat in the end anyway.

Wind power I'll admit has a subtle effect, as you're taking energy from the wind... Frankly I find it hard to imagine we could put up enough windmills to counter the effect of all the trees we've chopped down, but of course that's just speculation and we aren't putting windmills only where trees used to be.

With all that said, for personal / household use solar has much promise, assuming the price can be reduced further, such as panels on roofs, etc to help people augment their energy needs.

Depending on where you live, solar panels are already a good option if you can afford the up-front investment; they will more than pay for themselves by the time they need to be replaced. Lowering the price will certainly make them even more appealing, and also I think we need to come up with better small (as in household) scale energy storage so that you aren't as dependent on the weather that day. There are a lot of folks working on both problems; neither seems out of reach at this point. I'm very hopeful about the future of solar power.

Re:Solar is Limited due to its Low Energy Density

In fact, if you go to western Texas, wind turbines are going up almost as fast as weeds. :-)

But with developments in nanotechnology, we could see a drastic drop in the price of solar panels within the next ten years. A solar panel setup that costs US$30,000 now could cost as little as US$3,000, which would suddenly make home power generation very viable indeed. And with MIT and several private groups working on supercapacitor battery packs built from carbon nanotubes, that also makes it viable to store all that power generated in the daytime for use at night.

Re:Not on my roof

In areas with the highest electricity costs and the highest rebates/incentives, ROI can happen in 5 years.

In tiered markets, where the higher usage of electricity costs you much more than the base usage, a properly-sized solar outfit can do it in 3 years.

As for taking a loan on your solar outfit, look at it this way: Pay money to some electric corp every month, or spend the same amount of money on your solar cells. In the first case, you'll pay forever. In the second, you'll pay for a while, then get to enjoy the benefits. It's like leasing vs. buying a car.

Re:Not on my roof

How many people even live in their houses for that long anymore?
Sure, if you're planning on moving in five years, then you're an idiot to do almost any work on your house. If in doubt, ask a realtor; I believe the investments that tend to help a lot with resale value are things like paint and landscaping, because they improve "curb appeal" a lot, and aren't expensive to do. Solar panels are no different from a kitchen remodeling job in this respect.

Sure, it may add some equity to your home, but not much, especially if the prices DO fall and/or the efficiency of the panels increases significantly during that 10 years. Imagine trying to include your 5 year old computer as part of your home's equity. You're risking a very similar situation with solar.
Apples and oranges. The USA Today article is overstating the rate at which the technology is improving. There's no Moore's Law at work here. It's not like the situation with a computer, where you're guaranteed that it will be obsolete in 5 years.

You're also betting that grid power won't get any cheaper, which may or may not be a good bet, depending on the fuel source of your local power plant.
Where I live (California), the historical trend has been steadily up, in real dollars.

If solar/microgeneration takes off, there could be an abundance of grid power, causing prices to plummet, especially if people start generating more power than they use -- unlikely, but certainly possible if panel efficiencies increase.
No way, not any time in the near future. The number of people who have residential photovoltaic systems installed is extremely small, way too small to lower the market price of power through supply and demand.

especially if people start generating more power than they use -- unlikely, but certainly possible if panel efficiencies increase.
Where I live, the way the deal works is that if you generate more power than you use over the course of 12 months, then you simply don't pay any money to the electric company, but they will never send you a check for the surplus. When you buy a residential PV system, they very carefully size it so that it will cover about 80% of your yearly use. If they sized it too big, it would risk wasting your money by overproducing, which you don't get paid for doing.

Re:Where are PV cells from?

There's plenty of arsenic in coal ash. Probably orders of magnitude more than goes into making solar cells, but I'll admit to not having done the math.

Dude, you're 30 years behind.

Oh, that's right. one of the worst factories ever with regard to the environment; an Integrated Circuit Fab. I like it when hippies talk about how perfect solar is. Let's not forget that we need nasty chemicals like Arsenic to make solar cells.

*ahem ahem*

Berkeley Scientists Synthesize Cheap, Easy-to-Make Ultra-thin Photovoltaic Films [lbl.gov]
40% efficient solar cells to be used for solar electricity [physorg.com]
Titania nanotubes could boost solar cell efficiency [nanotechweb.org]
Pink solar cells provide green power on the cheap [engadget.com]
Carbon nanotubes could help make nanoparticle-based solar cells more efficient and practical. [technologyreview.com]
Quantum Dots Enables New Advances in Solar Cell Industry [evidenttech.com]

Green and cheap enough for ya?

22 years to replace net generation

There were 1.7 GW installed in 2006: http://www.solarbuzz.com/Marketbuzz2007-intro.htm [solarbuzz.com] bringing the world up to about 6 GW. At a typical 5 hours per day equivilent peak generation that comes to 11 billion kWh per year. World net generation was 16,590.6 billion kWh per year in 2004: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb1116.html [doe.gov], so your fraction should be 0.07%, off by about 4 orders of magnitude. At 45% growth, how long would it take to replace world net generation? Somewhat less that 22 years since 1.45^22=3550 which would imply that more than half of the worlds net generation would be fabricated in the year 2028, with the rest fabricated prior to that year. Since panels last 25 years or longer there would have been little need to replace existing solar PV capacity by that time.
--
Rent residential solar power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]

You misinterpret the chart

The grid is actually remarkably efficient for an energy distribution system - it loses only 9% of its energy input. The vast majority of the electrical losses in this chart come from converting heat energy to mechanical energy to electric energy. Converting energy between its various forms is always expensive (those pesky laws of thermodynamics!!)