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DOE Shines $14M on Solar Energy Research
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Mar 13, 2008 04:11 AM
from the government-heliotrope dept.
from the government-heliotrope dept.
coondoggie writes "Eleven university solar research projects aimed at developing advanced solar photovoltaic (PV) technology manufacturing processes and products got a $14 million boost today from the Dept. of Energy. Photovoltaic-based solar cells convert sunlight directly into electricity, and are made of semiconductor materials similar to those used in computer chips. When sunlight is absorbed by these materials, the solar energy knocks electrons loose from their atoms, allowing the electrons to flow through the material to produce electricity."
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This has to be good news (Score:4, Interesting)
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What was the US deficit on oil between 2000 and 2008 anyway?
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Funny enough, Bush proposed this back in 2001 [whitehouse.gov], right after he took office. But everybody was so upset that Bush and Cheney would talk with oil companies when drafting an energy.
Yet another case where Bush did a lot but nobody noticed, like aid for Africa [time.com].
Re:This has to be good news (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I've tried to be objective when evaluating Bush and his aid to africa package did not escape my notice. Unfortunately the TRILLIONS that will be spent on the iraq war make everything else pale in comparison. Especially when toilet paper is worth more than the dollar. My kids will be paying for this and I happen to love my kids. Right now I'm fucking pissed off. Thanks, George! And I'm a conservative!
$14 Million my ass.
Parent
Re:This has to be good news (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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The point to take away from the comparison isn't that $14 million is worthless, but rather that the war in Iraq is ridiculously expensive. $14 million, applied in a productive manner, can go a long way. On the other hand, when trying to solve an insoluble problem like Iraq, no amount of money would be effective.
The BUSH has been a complete disaster to science research in this country, we may never reco
Re:This has to be good news (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
World Grid? (Score:3, Insightful)
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There's also the failure modes to consider: losing the cooling probably means the wire will melt.
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Even over long distances, the losses are only around 2-3%.
Given that 2-3% is actually a very large amount of energy, it still would not justify the energy (and dollar) losses of maintaining a super conducting grid.
Huge mass production of cheap, fairly efficient solar cells could might all of the worlds energy problems.
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AC got the head start because it's easy to use transformers to raise voltage for transmission lines (high voltage = low current = less IxIxR resistive losses) and transform back down at the user end. Now that we have modern power electronics we can use inverters to d
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Re:This has to be good news (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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they're making large flywheel systems to store off peak power to release during peak demand... DOE funding them too.
Who modded this down. (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
What will $14 million achieve? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the basis of the evidence... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Department of Energy estimates that, in 15 years, America will get a whopping 2-3% of its electricity generation from solar power. It isn't hard to understand why: it is expensive, the technology takes a stupidly long time to go energy-positive (and longer to achieve ROI), and solar is and *always will be* hostage to weather conditions which make it impossible to as a main power source in the overwhelming majority of this country.
If you want cheap energy, go coal. If you want cheap clean energy, go nuclear. If you want the undying love of people who understand neither engineering or economics and are not willing to learn either, go solar.
Parent
Re:On the basis of the evidence... (Score:5, Interesting)
The cost of setting up a plant is hardly "cheap" and what happens when coal becomes scarce? It IS a finite resource - unlike the sun.
Once again the cost of setting up a nuclear power plant is in the billions. Fissile materials are also finite, when they begin to run out we'll see huge increases in price. See the case of oil now.
I also take issue with your point that nuclear energy is "green". Even if we say that plants are entirely safe (Which seems to be the Slashdot consensus) there are many other issues. First of all, what does one do with the waste? Plutonium 239, the most common material used, has a half life of 24,000 years. That's longer than civilisation has so far existed. None of our current methods of storing waste are viable and many have been proven useless.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0606/S00198.htm [scoop.co.nz]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cumbria/4589321.stm [bbc.co.uk]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7068041.stm [bbc.co.uk]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jul/18/japan.justinmccurry1 [guardian.co.uk]
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003816157_webhanfordleak01.html?syndication=rss [nwsource.com]
Let's not forget the insane amounts of energy required to both commission a plant, continually mine and transport uranium and then decommission it.
I don't understand how you can argue that replacing our dependence on finite resource that pollutes the environment with another finite resource that pollutes the environment is a good thing. I suggest you read the recently commission Garnaut Review (Professor Ross Garnaut is an economist at the Australian National University) which states that nuclear is a non-viable option and the world must develop renewable sources of energy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garnaut_Report [wikipedia.org]. Or the Stern review (also made by an economist) which reaches a similar conclusion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review [wikipedia.org]. I do believe these two in particular have a broader depth of knowledge surrounding economics than you do.
Parent
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Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear.
I personally do not believe they are safe but I have noticed that whenever this is brought up on Slashdot dozens of posts are sent in reply claiming that nuclear has "Come so far" since Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island and "nothing like that could ever happen again". Instead of getting bogged down on whether or not a nuclear power plant is likely to go into meltdown I thought it was better to stick to the inarguable facts.
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Not completely. It's also rubber gloves, overalls, etc, etc, that workers were wearing but are now classed as too radioactive to dispose of in landfill.
Last time I looked, for the UK put 1 smoke detector in a dustbin (240litres) and it can be collected by the dustmen (legally). Put two smoke detectors in the same du
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What?! You're on Slashdot and you're not thinking "hmm, wonder what will happen with technology in the future?".
Do you seriously think that in the next 24,000 years of human science we WON'T come up with a solution to handle nuclear wa
Re:On the basis of the evidence... (Score:5, Informative)
We should be building some of those, not more of the current (ancient) reactor designs.
Parent
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IIRC they keep the fuel in a hot liquid state and basically keep it covered in molten sodium. They use convection for "pumping" the coolant and can process most nuclear wastes as fuel.
I've always thought the fast integrals were good ideas too, if for nothing else than to process our currently stored wastes.
Re:On the basis of the evidence... (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering that Germany(the solar capital of the world) recieves roughly the same amount of sunlight as Seattle. Almost all of the USA could take advantage of solar energy.
Also the average home in the USA recieves enough sunlight on its roof to power itself for 2-3 days worth of energy consumption. (assuming the sunlight was harnessed)
Parent
Re:What will $14 million achieve? (Score:4, Insightful)
Still, we can only hope that these groups meet with quick success and that their work can be brought into development in the near future (not to mention the various other power sources that are much farther along).
Parent
Re:What will $14 million achieve? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a big push to use coal power because the US has so much natural reserves of the stuff and it will help develop the some of the areas of the country that currently have little job prospects. I think the worry with solar is that you'd find a great way to manufacture the cells, but then all the manufacturing would go overseas. Less US jobs created + you still don't have energy independence.
Parent
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Then again, it's going to take nonrenewable resources to fund the research on solar energy
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It is definitely a start but when you compare it to the $2 billion the DOE was going to spend in developing new rural coal plants you have to ask where their priorities lie.
Or maybe I should call it chimp change. 14 million when you're talking about a nation dependent on a line of oil tankers that stretches half-way around the world and pumps billions of dollars a day into one of the most oppressive governments on the planet. A country that just happens to supply the bulk of working terrorists in the wo
Where do the electrons go? (Score:2, Funny)
Solved --- Re:Where do the electrons go? (Score:3, Funny)
$ fortune -m "electron buildup"
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Should we subsidize specific technologies? (Score:4, Insightful)
$14M? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually, the only one that we could have would be the Negawatts obtained from energy savings here and there.
Anyway, solar energy appears to be the only scalable renewable energy source. You sure cannot obtain 100% of electricity production from it, but after some energy savings, 50% nukes + 50% solar panels could be a possibility for most countries.
It is just impossible to obtain more than a few % with either
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- windpower provides between 2 to 5 times as less GWh/(km.year) as photovoltaics panels.
errr... right, I'll try to understand what you mean: You're saying that per square km, the amount of energy produced is 2 to 5 times lower ? That's totally irrelevant. In current state of tech, windpower is one of the cheapest available. People say it is intermittent (it is NOT... more on that later) so let's assume max 20% of energy production wind : that's still 20% CO2 reduced ? right ?
Plus, you cannot use it right next to where it's needed.
huh ??? there's a thing called 'Electrical wiring'
On intermittent availability : Wind 'turns' around high and low-pres
Meanwhile ... (Score:2, Insightful)
So that $14 million is about an hour and a halfs worth of investment, on one of the technologies that would stop us having to fight any more "wars for oil" ever again.
Makes you think
Stable energy sources (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Stable energy sources (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, that's the ticket.
Parent
Re:Stable energy sources (Score:4, Informative)
Combine that with geothermal heat pumps that drive a radiant heating system (preferably built into the floors for maximum efficiency) and some wind power (a few small wind generators won't do too much damage to the local environment but can help a little bit) and some heat recovery methods built into the plumbing of the house and most people will reduce power consumption by as much as a third or even half since most of our energy usage actually comes from heating a house or water for our personal comfort.
Solar doesn't have to be the "silver bullet" that so many opponents use as a reason not to fund it. It just has to be part of the solution.
Parent
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We need space elevators for cheap orbital lift.
Two solar technologies are supposedly economic (Score:3, Insightful)
So, rather than look around the U.S., one should see how Germany harnesses solar energy.
Two technologies have made solar technologies much less expensive.
1. Solar concentrators.
When sunlight hits a solar energy device,
that device needn't convert immediately to electricity or heat.
Split the use of solar energy into two steps,
a. Concentrate/divert the solar light with what looks like a mirror
or microwave antenna, but several meters in diameter.
b. Focus the solar mirror onto your solar energy converter;
essentially our solar cells of today, but able to withstand
large amounts of solar energy.
Producing solar mirrors is far less expensive than producing solar panels.
This concentrator method is being claimed by some Israelis.
They claim that 3 such concentrators save enough energy costs
to construct a new concentrator in 3 years,
thereby bootstrapping the economics of constructing solar concentrators.
2. Thin solar panels.
Thin is cheaper than thick.
Germans have developed this technology.
Germany is one of the last places you'd expect to have half the world's solar power.
From the same solar setup, you can get about twice as much energy near the equator
(eg, Israel) than in high latitude Germany.
Indeed, if we covered the Sahara Desert with solar panels,
we would produce as much energy as used by the whole world.
People on this blog mention that solar energy isn't storable.
But everything on earth is the result of solar energy
-- previous stars exploded to produce uranium and all the other elements besides hydrogen,
oil and coal are sunlight stored in carbon chains.
Which storage method used by nature could we use ourselves?
We could heat water then store it underground,
we could create carbon chains like oils,
we could move Sysiphus proverbial rock (or water) uphill then retrieve it downhill.
Dams once provided much of America's energy,
and now solar energy could move lake or sea water up into dams for later use.
If we go to mostly battery driven cars,
100 million big car batteries can store a great deal of solar energy.
Solar energy can be stored;
but perhaps the greatest technological challenge is not the acquisition of solar energy,
rather the storage of this energy.
Back to the future...with solar cells (Score:3, Interesting)
One day they took us to the Capitol, and after the obligatory tour, they turned us loose.
In the Capitol. To look around. Really. It was a different world back then.
Anyway, I picked a hearing room at random, wandered in, and sat down.
This was during the first energy crisis, and someone was testifying to the committee about solar cells.
He was explaining that just as advances in IC technology had brought down the cost of ICs,
advances in the solar cell technology would bring down the cost of solar energy.
It sounded plausible, but it was completely wrong.
And for reasons that anyone testifying before congress should have understood.
It costs a certain amount of money (~ $1K) to process a silicon wafer.
We brought down the cost of ICs by making them smaller, so we get more of them for our $1K.
But that trick doesn't work with solar cells.
Solar cells collect photons over their surface.
You can make one smaller, sure, but then it collects fewer photons and produces less energy.
The only way to make solar cells cheaper is reduce the cost of the wafer and the processing,
and that's *hard*.
We've been working on it for 40 years,
and they still aren't competitive with coal/oil/gas/nuclear powered electric generators. (~ $0.10/KW-hr)
Re:Back to the future...with solar cells (Score:4, Insightful)
Too often, the cost of energy is examined as just the $ that the consumer pays. By that measure, solar, is much more expensive than oil/coal/nuclear for example, and getting it below that cost may be close to impossible.
But, that price of the coal/oil/nuclear is not the REAL price of that form of energy. Much of the costs are offloaded onto the environments they are drawn from in the form of damage and pollution. Other costs are offloaded onto the people who live where the resources are mined in the form of land loss and damage, and low wages.
It is also offloaded as risk. Nuclear is cleaner, but you have greater risk. Risk of an attack/failure at the reactor, risk of what will happen to the waste for the next several thousand generations, risk with the radioactive fuel materials falling into the wrong hands. Etc. These may have higher or lower probabilities but they exist.
So yes, coal/oil/nuclear are cheaper in dollars and cents, but not cheaper when you factor in the hidden costs to society as a whole.
Moral of the story: as we move to cleaner energy sources in the future, the dollar cost may be higher, but there will be fewer hidden costs.
Parent
Real solar, from Applied Materials (Score:5, Interesting)
Last year, I heard a VP from Applied Materials give a talk on their solar panel operation. Applied Materials is a big, profitable company that makes a big fraction of the world's semiconductor and flat panel fab gear. Key points:
This was a big-company manufacturing executive talking. He never mentioned "green" or "eco" anything; he focused on volume and profitability. That's encouraging. This is finally happening for real.
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