The Solar Tech Revolution

Don't start the Revolution without me!

The Technologies associated with Solar Power are all undergoing a revolution. Right Now! What I mean by a "Revolution" is that not only are the current technologies in use being improved dramatically, but also that promising new ones are sprouting up every day it seems.

Solar power used to mean you had one of two options that were available.

1. Solar Thermal: (Mostly used for hot water heating)
2. Solar Electric Cells (Silicon Crystal based)

As far as storage goes, the only options were thermal mass and chemical battery.

Solar Thermal: A very old technology dating back as early as the 7th century B.C. In 1891, a Baltimore man patented the the first Solar Thermal collector in 1891 and by 1897, one third of all homes in Pasadena, CA had solar hot water heaters. No surprise then that to date, the most successful form of deployed Solar has been Solar Thermal applied to hot water heating. The primary reason being is that it's relatively inexpensive to produce (even make yourself) and deploy. And also that heating your water with Solar can knock off about 1/3 of your electric/oil/gas bill. The disadvantage with Solar Thermal to date is mostly that it has only been useful for hot water and limited space heating applications. Nevertheless, improved materials, methods and Solar-ready hot water heaters continue to make this application of Solar a winner. In fact, in some alt-energy progressive areas of the world (like Israel) it is the most common form of hot water heating and you can see the tanks and panels on nearly every rooftop.

The primary disadvantages have been cost of production, scaling production, cost of storage, weight and applications beyond hot water heating.





The revolution that is occurring in Solar Thermal is coming from Solar Concentrator technologies. Think magnifying glasses! And in the case of Utility scale applications, think GIANT magnifying glasses and lots of em. Theri seem to be two primary flavors of concentrators. Those that are used to heat a liquid to create steam that in turn turns a turbine to create electricity and those that concentrate the sun's power on to high quality PV collectors.




Solar Electric: Solar Electric (Photovoltaics) or PV Solar have always held a lot of promise and have been around for quite some time in the modern age. The first Silicon cell was developed in 1941 and in 1954, three American researchers designed a silicon solar cell capable of a six percent energy conversion efficiency. During the oil embargo of the late 70's when OPEC decided it was going to blackmail us, the Carter administration instituted tax breaks for Solar, $'s for Solar R&D and called for a 20% Solar goal to be reached by 2000. The Reagan administration of course followed and killed all of those programs. You may not like Carter for other reasons, but don't dislike him for lack of vision when it came to America's and the Free World's energy future.

The big disadvantage (until only recently) with PV Solar has always been cost. It costs a lot to build a facility to make Silicon-based Solar cells which to date have proven to be the most efficient in terms of their conversion rate. The silicon crystals have to be grown in a vacuum and it costs a lot of Kwan to acquire such a facility to do so. Size, format, production scaling and weight have also been limiters in the success of PV Solar.

PV Solar is where most of the Revolution is going on though. The Revolution (by the way) is all about lowering the cost/watt for solar til it becomes so competitive with other sources of energy (oil, coal, gas, water, nuclear, etc..) that it becomes a significant or even dominant source.  Revolutions are occurring in the following areas:

1. Materials
2. Production Scaling
3. Integrated Systems
   

Materials: This could be the biggest part of the revolution. The advent of Nanotechnology plays the biggest role. Bottom line is that the raw material being utilized to create solar collectors is getting more exotic, lower cost to produce and more capable of bringing solar into more diverse applications. A good example is Solar paint utilizing nanoscale PV collectors and likewise Roll processed Solar Film. Which brings us to Production. Both can be produced in large quantities utilizing mass production techniques that are quite similar to the way we make paint and newspapers today. Both can be applied to virtually any surface. So instead of big, expensive, heavy solar panels that need rooftops or mounting surfaces one can now just spray or apply anywhere. Can you say "Game-Changer"? Think of your whole house's (roof, siding, windows) exterior now as being a potential Solar collector. Or how about bridges, skyscrapers, roads, etc..?

Right now the efficiency of these materials is not that of the more expensive Silicon PV collectors, but it's coming up fast as new discoveries are made in the lab. More significant is that the cost of production is coming down even faster as it gets scaled up. Cost/watt is the name of the game.

Another way to get the efficiency up and therefore the cost/watt down is to have an Integrated System. Think solar thermal and/or PV integrated with building materials and even sun tracking systems. You won't have the added cost of having to hire a solar installer to put in your system because you or your local general contractor will be able to do it yourself just as we already know how to install windows, siding and roof materials.

Scaling: as it relates to Solar Power

Scaling:

For those that are familiar with Enterprise Software, this is a familiar term. But how does it apply to Solar Power you might ask?

What is meant by "Scaling" is the ability or lack of ability of a system, solution or process to increase in size, speed or distribution.

An advantage of Solar Power as an energy source is that it's a very Scalable technology or set of technologies. Solar can be as small and local as powering up an R/V or a backpack electronics charger or it can be as large as a multi-gigawatt utility scale solar farm.

I want one of these too.





Soooooo.....what this means is that Solar Power can be made available to many different applications, places, budgets, etc.. This is a very different situation than Nuclear (or as our last president liked to call it "Nucular") or coal fired power. Wind is also less "scalable" than Solar but not as much so as the aforementioned. Nuke plants only come in one size/cost option. HUGE! Likewise, Coal Plants are either large or huge as well. I'll defer to another post to tralk about advantages and disadvantages of all of the above as compared to Solar.