Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gas by half

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Telegragh, London

Within five years, solar power will be cheap enough to compete with carbon-generated electricity, even in Britain, Scandinavia or upper Siberia. In a decade, the cost may have fallen so dramatically that solar cells could undercut oil, gas, coal and nuclear power by up to half. Technology is leaping ahead of a stale political debate about fossil fuels.

Anil Sethi, the chief executive of the Swiss start-up company Flisom, says he looks forward to the day - not so far off - when entire cities in America and Europe generate their heating, lighting and air-conditioning needs from solar films on buildings with enough left over to feed a surplus back into the grid. The secret? Mr Sethi lovingly cradles a piece of dark polymer foil, as thin a sheet of paper. It is 200 times lighter than the normal glass-based solar materials, which require expensive substrates and roof support. Indeed, it is so light it can be stuck to the sides of buildings.

Rather than being manufactured laboriously piece by piece, it can be mass-produced in cheap rolls like packaging - in any colour. The “tipping point” will arrive when the capital cost of solar power falls below $1 (51p) per watt, roughly the cost of carbon power. We are not there yet. The best options today vary from $3 to $4 per watt - down from $100 in the late 1970s.

Mr Sethi believes his product will cut the cost to 80 cents per watt within five years, and 50 cents in a decade. It is based on a CIGS (CuInGaSe2) semiconductor compound that absorbs light by freeing electrons. This is then embedded on the polymer base. It will be ready commercially in late 2009.

“It’ll even work on a cold, grey, cloudy day in England, which still produces 25pc to 30pc of the optimal light level. That is enough, if you cover half the roof,” he said.

“We don’t need subsidies, we just need governments to get out of the way and do no harm. They’ve spent $170bn subsidising nuclear power over the last thirty years,” he said.

His ultra-light technology, based on a copper indium compound, can power mobile phones and laptop computers with a sliver of foil. “You won’t have to get down on your knees ever again to hunt for plug socket,” he said

Michael Rogol, a solar expert at Credit Lyonnais, expects the solar industry to grow from $7bn in 2004 to nearer $40bn by 2010, with operating earnings of $3bn. The sector is poised to outstrip wind power. It is a remarkable boom for a technology long dismissed by experts as hopelessly unviable.

Mr Rogol said he was struck by the way solar use had increased dramatically in Japan and above all Germany, where Berlin’s green energy law passed in 2004 forces the grid to buy surplus electricity from households at a fat premium. (In Britain, utilities may refuse to buy the surplus. They typically pay half the customer price of electricity.)

The change in Germany’s law catapulted the share price of the German flagship company SolarWorld from €1.38 (67p) in February 2004 to over €60 by early 2006. The tipping point in Germany and Japan came once households twigged that they could undercut their unloved utilities. Credit Lyonnais believes the rest of the world will soon join the stampede.

Mike Splinter, chief executive of the US semiconductor group Applied Materials, told me his company is two years away from a solar product that reaches the magic level of $1 a watt.

Cell conversion efficiency and economies of scale are galloping ahead so fast that the cost will be down to 70 US cents by 2010, with a target of 30 or 40 cents in a decade. “We think solar power can provide 20pc of all the incremental energy needed worldwide by 2040,” he said.

“This is a very powerful technology and we’re seeing dramatic improvements all the time. It can be used across the entire range from small houses to big buildings and power plants,” he said.

“The beauty of this is that you can use it in rural areas of India without having to lay down power lines or truck in fuel.”

Villages across Asia and Africa that have never seen electricity may soon leapfrog directly into the solar age, replicating the jump to mobile phones seen in countries that never had a network of fixed lines. As a by-product, India’s rural poor will stop blanketing the subcontinent with soot from tens of millions of open stoves.

Applied Materials is betting on both of the two rival solar technologies: thin film panels best used where there is plenty of room and the traditional crystalline (c-Si) wafer-based cells, which are not as cheap but produce a higher yield - better for tight spaces.

Needless to say, electricity utilities are watching the solar revolution with horror. Companies in Japan and Germany have already seen an erosion of profits because of an effect known “peak shaving”. In essence, the peak wattage of solar cells overlaps with hours of peak demand and peak prices for electricity in the middle of the day, crunching margins.

As for the oil companies, they are still treating solar power as a fringe curiosity. “There is no silver bullet,” said Jeroen Van der Veer, Shell’s chief executive.

“We have invested a bit in all forms of renewable energy ourselves and maybe we’ll find a winner one day. But the reality is that in twenty years time we’ll still be using more oil than now,” he said.

Might he be wrong?

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Solar Breakthrough in SA

Willem Steenkamp
http://www.int.iol.co.za

In a scientific breakthrough that has stunned the world, a team of South African scientists has developed a revolutionary new, highly efficient solar power technology that will enable homes to obtain all their electricity from the sun. This means high electricity bills and frequent power failures could soon be a thing of the past. The unique South African-developed solar panels will make it possible for houses to become completely self-sufficient for energy supplies. The panels are able to generate enough energy to run stoves, lights, TVs, fridges, computers - in short all the mod-cons of the modern house.

Nothing else comes close to the effectiveness of the SA invention
The new technology should be available in South Africa within a year and through a special converter, energy can be fed directly into the wiring of existing houses. New powerful storage units will allow energy storage to meet demands even in winter. The panels are so efficient they can operate through a Cape Town winter. while direct sunlight is ideal for high-energy generation, other daytime light also generates energy via the panels.

A team of scientists led by University of Johannesburg (formerly Rand Afrikaans University) scientist Professor Vivian Alberts achieved the breakthrough after 10 years of research. The South African technology has now been patented across the world.

One of the world leaders in solar energy, German company IFE Solar Systems, has invested more than R500-million in the South African invention and is set to manufacture 500,000 of the panels before the end of the year at a new plant in Germany. Production will start next month and the factory will run 24 hours a day, producing more than 1000 panels a day to meet expected demand. Another large German solar company is negotiating with the South African inventors for rights to the technology, while a South African consortium of businesses are keen to build local factories.

The new, highly efficient and cheap alloy solar panel is much more efficient than the costly old silicone solar panels. International experts have admitted that nothing else comes close to the effectiveness of the South African invention. The South African solar panels consist of a thin layer of a unique metal alloy that converts light into energy. The photo-responsive alloy can operate on virtually all flexible surfaces, which means it could in future find a host of other applications.

Alberts said the new panels are approximately five microns thick (a human hair is 20 microns thick) while the older silicon panels are 350 microns thick. the cost of the South African technology is a fraction of the less effective silicone solar panels.

Alberts said in Switzerland it was already compulsory for all new houses to include solar technology to lessen energy demands on national grids. “And that was the older, less effective technology. With our hours of sunlight, we will on average generate twice as much energy than, for instance, European countries.”

While South African scientists developed and patented the new, super-effective alloy solar panels, other companies have developed new, super-efficient storage batteries and special converters to change the energy into the power source of a particular country (220 volts in South Africa).

Eskom spokesperson Carin de Villiers said any new power supply that lessened the load on Eskom was to be welcomed. She said Eskom was also doing its own research on solar energy. “In fact, we are currently investigating building what will probably be the largest solar power plant, in the Northern Cape - a 100-megawatt facility.” She added that Eskom was also researching wind and fuel-cell technology as alternative energy sources. 

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Muffled warnings on global warming

By Derrick Z. Jackson
Boston Globe
February 4, 2006

THE BURNING issue was the thin ice encrusted on the boulders. The rocks were half-submerged in a small stream at the foot of the White Mountains in Maine. Ribbons of water swirled around them, propelled by two days of nonstop rain.

That was the first problem. It was mid-January. In northern New England, the rain usually would have been a foot of snow. The boulders would have been smothered into giant marshmallows. This aberration was amplified by the seductive warmth in Boston. For the first time in about a quarter century of Januarys, I jogged around the Charles River on consecutive weekends in shorts. The only true blast of winter I have felt this season was with my Scouts, snowshoeing in the White Mountains to 2,700 feet.

The coup de ice came at the end of January when NASA’s chief climate scientist, James Hansen, said Bush administration minions were muffling his warnings on global warming. Hansen said officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in recent months have canceled or rejected interview requests for him and appointed monitors for approved interviews. He reportedly was ordered last fall to remove preliminary information from the Internet that said last year might be the warmest year on record. Last week, NASA announced that 2005 was indeed the warmest on record.

‘’In my three decades in government, I’ve never seen control of communications to the public so constrained,” Hansen said over the phone this week. ‘’Communications from government scientists have never been so constrained.”

Hansen, 63, said NASA, which denies any censorship, seemed particularly petrified by a December speech he gave in San Francisco before other earth and space scientists. He said of the nation’s stonewalling on climate change, ‘’It seems to me that special interests have been a roadblock wielding undue influence over policymakers. The special interests seek to maintain short-term profits with little regard to either the long-term impact on the planet that will be inherited by our children and grandchildren or the long-term economic well-being of our country.”

Hansen said ‘’business as usual” will lead to a ‘’different planet.” The temperature will rise about 5 degrees Fahrenheit over this century to a warmth not seen for 3 million years, a time when sea levels were eight stories higher than today. The human-induced melting of polar ice could bring those eight stories of water back in mere centuries, not a more natural timing of many thousands of years.

Hansen said we can beat the tipping point for runaway change if the United States leads global efforts to limit or eliminate greenhouse gases and pollutants. There is no margin for business as usual. ‘’We can’t afford to wait another 10 years,” he said.

It appears we will lose more time. In his State of the Union address, Bush said, ‘’America is addicted to oil,” but did not mention the top first step environmentalists and scientists say the United States must take to fight global warming—higher fuel efficiency for cars. He said he wanted to support more math and science for schoolchildren and more research in the physical sciences.

But if his minions ignore and stifle the best scientists we have today, there is no point.

In the early days of the Bush administration, Hansen’s credentials earned him two invitations to address Vice President Dick Cheney’s secretive, industry-packed energy task force. He spoke two years ago to US auto executives at ExxonMobil headquarters.

The White House went on to urge energy drilling at all costs. Auto execs rebuffed Hansen on fuel efficiency by saying they only give consumers what they want. ‘’After the meeting, I watched TV and saw all these ads, with cars on top of mountain peaks and fantastic vistas of the American West,” Hansen said. ‘’It’s like the cigarette ads that use sex to sell. All the average person does with an SUV is commute to work or the store. They’re creating a market they claim the public is demanding.”

Listening to Hansen, it was clear he will continue to speak out for science despite the special interests. He said the last time he checked, democracy only works when the public is well informed. ‘’For instance, they’re using the economy as the reason not to consider taking action,” Hansen said. ‘’I’ve been chastised for being a scientist saying we are damaging the economy in the long run. But you need to look at the broad problem. I think I’m free to do so and free to have my opinion.”

The melting polar ice and the thin ice cap on the river boulder in Maine wait for America to listen to the right opinion. The ice cube is the new canary warning of doom. If we do not listen, it will melt in one place, and drown us in another.

Sunday, February 08, 2004

My other car is a hybrid electric bicycle

Here’s how I try to get around as much as possible. I ride a hybrid pedal/electric bicycle. It’s great for short trips and going downtown, provided I can find a place to lock it up securely.

The bike itself is a BikeE AT, a recumbent bike made by a now defunct Oregon company. It has an air suspension for the rear wheel. The seating position is almost exactly like sitting behind the wheel of a car, you sit nearly upright, with great visibility and comfort since you don’t have to bend your neck and back.

The electric conversion was done by Ecospeed, which is only a couple miles away from my house. The motor drives through the 21-speed geartrain of the bike, and you can use the pedals and motor independently or together. I find I can cruise upwards of 30 mph using both, and the range of the batteries is about 10 miles, more if I use it sparingly. The biggest advantage of the motor however, is on hills. Recumbents don’t have the advantage of being able to stand up on the pedals and using your weight for power while hill-climbing, so you end up climbing the hill in one of the lowest gears. Kicking the motor in will just flatten out the hill, almost like it wasn’t even there. Top speed is well over 40 mph during sprints of a mile or so, especially if I have the fairing mounted.

But it’s still kinda fun to blow by the “spandex boyz” on their $3500+ ultralightweight carbon-fiber racing bikes and then watch them disappear in the mirror, pedalling like mad and falling further behind…

OK, so I’m evil ;-)

- Bob Woods