DOE Shines $14M on Solar Energy Research

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."

This has to be good news

[Chrisq]

Once costs are the same as that of power from the grid then people will use this. It will help the environment and energy security. The only worry is that peak power production will still have to deal with night-time demand. We need to look at efficient, cheap energy storage.

Re:This has to be good news

[Aglassis]

Once costs are the same as that of power from the grid then people will use this. It will help the environment and energy security. The only worry is that peak power production will still have to deal with night-time demand. We need to look at efficient, cheap energy storage.

I think the first solution should be to rush into production the superconducting electric grid part of the Grid 2030 project. Being able to efficiently transport power across the country would significantly increase the stability of the electric grid which would allow more solar and other renewable energy projects to come online. This would also be a lot cheaper efficiency-wise and capital-wise than the massive civil engineering projects that will be required for pumped storage [wikipedia.org]. It would also give a lot more flexibility in the use of peaking plants for nighttime use. Until an efficient electric grid is implemented where you can easily and economically transport electricity thousands of kilometers (such as with a high voltage DC grid or a superconducting electric grid) you are still going to need tons of local peaking plants and your renewable energy plants (excluding hydropower) are only going to occasionally cut into the load of your base load plants which will make them less economical. The Albany superconducting line seems to be working well so it is time that a larger system is implemented.

Re:On the basis of the evidence...

[kaos07]

If you want cheap energy, go coal

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.

If you want cheap clean energy, go nuclear.

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.

Re:This has to be good news

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Well - photovoltaics is excellent for powering air conditioning and offices. Maybe there is a business model here: Sell excess power to a storage company that stores the energy, and then sells it back at a slight premium at night? I think that may very well be more cost-effective compared to installing large battery capacity in each house (consider unused storage capacity).

Re:On the basis of the evidence...

[mhalagan]

As far as the USA is concerned, weather is not as large a factor as it is made out to be.

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)

Re:This has to be good news

[Anonymous Coward]

look into beacon power systems...

they're making large flywheel systems to store off peak power to release during peak demand... DOE funding them too.

Re:$14M?

[BlackPignouf]

As you said, photovoltaics is surely not a silver bullet, for the simple fact that there isn't any.
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 biomass, hydropower, windpower or geothermal sources. Sure enough, those renewables should be used wherever possible, but they just cannot cover enough load. For what's left, we should use solar energy and nukes.

Re:What will $14 million achieve?

[ILongForDarkness]

Exactly my thoughts. 1.27M per research group will be about enough to setup a lab and run it for 1-2 years. Yippy. They might be able to buy enough solar cells to power there computers :)

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.

Re:This has to be good news

[hcdejong]

A superconducting grid would be nice, but (assuming current-day superconductors which require liquid nitrogen for cooling) is decidedly nontrivial to build and maintain. Copper/aluminium wire can easily be strung between towers. A superconducting wire has to be enclosed by the cooling medium, making the 'cable' assembly unwieldy and I suspect putting the assembly underground becomes the only option.

There's also the failure modes to consider: losing the cooling probably means the wire will melt.

Re:$14M?

[polar red]

- 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-pressure areas, so if you are at the center of a high- or low-pressure area, there is no wind, that means that a few hundred Km's further (in ANY direction) there will be wind. furthermore : our planet is a blanket of high and low-pressure zones adjacent to each other, and the reason very simple : the moon turns around us, the earth turns around it's axis, we move around the sun, the earth is a globe, clouds : this leads to an uneven warming of the earths-surface --> high and low-pressure zones.

Re:This has to be good news

[necro81]

Another business model is to do energy-intensive things at night, when electricity is cheapest. A local school district, in their new elementary school, has an AC system that produces huge amounts of ice overnight, then uses that to produce cool air during the day. I believe some high-rises are starting to do this, too, because the cost of electricity for cooling during peak hours of the day is exceptionally high. More large buildings would probably do this, but are too short-sighted to see that a larger capital expenditure up front can be cheaper over the long haul.

Re:On the basis of the evidence...

[locofungus]

As far as "nuclear waste" is concerned, "nuclear waste" from power plants is just nuclear fuel that hasn't been reprocessed yet because Carter outlawed nuclear fuel reprocessing back in the '70s.

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 dustbin and the whole dustbin load becomes "nuclear waste".

Story I heard from my physics tutor (so I assume it's true).

When the nuclear physics laboratory was built they wanted to put in a 20MeV tandem van-der-graff accelerator. There were two problems - one, there was a building height limit in Oxford and two, the normal cement they use in Oxford is so radioactive that any nuclear plant would immediately be shut down due to excessive radiation.

The first problem was solved by digging two stories down. The second problem was solved by going round all the builders yards with a geiger counter looking for the least radioactive cement.

Tim.

Re:This has to be good news

[Chrisq]

In the UK strorage heaters [wikipedia.org] are popular for the same reason, at least where houses are not connected to the mains gas supply. You can get a meter that charges a lower rate for off-peak energy [wikipedia.org], which makes these reasonably economical forms of heating.

Re:On the basis of the evidence...

[johnny maxwell]

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"

It always amazes me how people stick to that line of reasoning. I hope they realize that there are _still_ RBMK reactors (Chernobyl-type) operating today in Russia. Some of them had accidents with partial core meltdown in the past (The "Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant").

Back to the future...with solar cells

[swm]

In 1974 my 8th grade class went to Washington D.C.
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)

Real solar, from Applied Materials

[Animats]

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:

• From their perspective as a semiconductor wafer fab equipment builder, this looks like a nice business. Their costs are going down, and the competition (oil, gas, etc.) has costs that are going up. The market is nowhere near saturation. They see big profits in the near future.
• Charts of costs per watt vs time show a steady decline, like most other things in semiconductors. Their costs fell below other energy sources in very sunny areas around 2006-2007.
• Half the installed cost of a solar system is installation. They need better technology at that end than "a guy with a pickup truck". They're working on panels that form roof, wall, or window sections, rather than just being bolt-ons.
• Applied Materials is ready to build a "gigawatt fab", one that makes a gigawatt worth of panels a year. (One such fab could build enough panels to power most of Southern California's air conditioning load in a decade.)
• Their solar technology is derived from their flat-panel display technology, where they make five square meters of panel at a time.
• Applied Materials has much better quality control than many solar-only companies, because their technology is derived from IC and display fab, where the allowed defect level is very low. Their whole production process is heavily automated and monitored under tight software control, using Applied Materials software and sensors from semiconductor fab control.
• It takes two years worth of energy output to pay back the energy used to make an Applied Materials solar panel. They think this can be brought down to six months worth of energy.
• They bought a "roll to roll" process company because they think that approach might eventually be cheaper, but for now, the flat-panel like fab is better. They see R&D as steady process improvement, as with semiconductors. If somebody develops a breakthrough technology, they'll buy or license it and make it work in volume. If not, they'll continue to improve their processes.
• Their business goal is to have 75% of the world's solar panels made by Applied Materials machinery.

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.