What Gore Didn't Say About Solar Cells 574
AmericanInKiev writes "Computer World posted a piece on Al Gore and his claim that solar cells will improve at the same rate as microprocessors. Vinod Khosla on the other hand has expressed disappointment that the doubling rate for price/performance of PV is 10 years rather than 18 months for transistors. Which of these two has the facts on their side?" Before anyone has him inventing the Internet again, note that Gore's claim as related in the article is much milder than that Moore's Law applies to solar cells per se -- namely, he's quoted as saying "We're now beginning to see the same kind of sharp cost reductions as the demand grows for solar cells." An optimistic statement, but not a flat-out silly one.
Oil prices should stay high (Score:4, Insightful)
...it's the best news for the development of this kind of technology imaginable.
You can't get (smart, institutional) investors on board on the promise of likely/possible breakthroughs in technology. However, if you can demonstrate that the price per kilowatt-hour will be competitive with fossil fuels in the reasonable near future then you will get the level of investment required to finally take these technologies mainstream.
I believe we are already at that point. Here in Australia we suddenly have wind farms and novel renewable energy projects appearing IRL all over the place when previously they were often announced but rarely built.
Wow, the target for more strawmen arguments... (Score:5, Insightful)
It would seem the choice of attacks against Mr Gore would be strawman arguments. Does that suggest that people are finding it hard to tackle his views directly or fairly and so have to resort to such ridiculous attacks?
(I actually know very little about Gore, this is really just a question based on him being the target of such things so often)
What he is quoted as saying ... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Think about what happened in the computer revolution," Gore said on NBC's Meet the Press program recently. "We saw cost reductions for silicon computer chips of 50% for every year and a half for the last 40 years," he said.
That's Moore's law to the inth degree. True, we didn't assert that Moore's law applies to PV, but He 's asking a nation to embrace an energy policy based on this comparison.
Re:Al Gore and the Internet (Score:1, Insightful)
10 years ain't bad. (Score:2, Insightful)
doubling rate for price/performance of PV is 10 years rather than 18 months for transistors.
Ten years isn't a bad rate. It's not like oil is going down, so PV has a fixed target. We don't expect to get out of the oil addiction in 5 or less years anyhow. We need to invest in the future. Investment may hopefully speed up progress, but if not, a 10 year rate looks fairly good right now.
Re:Yeah, turn up the sun. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the only way we can stop global warming!
It's not global warming anymore, it's climate change.
That way we have a name that describes both global warming and global cooling, so that either way we have an excuse to increase regulation.
it's not a huge stretch (Score:4, Insightful)
Granted, he never said "I invented the internet", but it's not hard to get that from "I took the initiative in creating the internet". What he presumably meant was something like "I took the initiative in starting programs that ultimately led to the creation of the internet", which is sort of what the following sentence more vaguely tries to say. But just the flat-out "I took the initiative in creating the internet" does read like a claim that he, well, created the internet.
Re:Here we Go.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Gallium is vastly superior to silicon, in much the same way as it is as a semiconductor. Cost is a problem, though If we assume that all superior semiconductors are superior in solar cells, graphene should prove interesting once it matures. At present, solar technology that converts light into heat (solar heaters, solar stoves) are much more efficient than devices that convert light into electricity. Since heating and cooking consume enormous amounts of power, there may be ways to use this type of implementation to reduce the demand for electricity in the first place, rather than to inefficiently provide for that demand. Such methods aren't terribly portable, but neither are houses, restaurants or public baths. So long as you can store the heat without too much loss, reducing demand would seem the most sensible way to solve the energy problem.
In parallel with solar methods for reducing demand, there is the question of energy wastage. I've already mentioned heating water is a big consumer of electricity. The heat required to raise water even one degree celsius is enormous. Most coal, gas and nuclear power stations have staggeringly large cooling towers in which water is converted to steam and released into the atmosphere for that very reason - turning cold water into steam requires a staggering amount of heat, which reduces the temperature of whatever they want to keep cool. Very elegant. Also very wasteful. Rig the cooling towers to a pipe system and you've the biggest, hottest hypocaust ever made. The water is still carrying the heat away, so the towers still work as intended, all you are doing is making that heat available for domestic and industrial use rather than pumping it into the atmosphere.
Spent nuclear fuel also emits significant heat, it would seem more logical to recycle the fuel rods as water heating devices than dump them somewhere and ignore them, although preventing contamination would be extremely hard. Hard is not impossible, however, and it seems better to try and solve a hard problem (and risk succeeding) than to do nothing and face impossible energy demand problems year-after-year.
Re:Here we Go.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but it could be (Score:1, Insightful)
If the amount of resources that were poured into nuclear development in the 50's were poured into solar development today, solar development would probably be double that of microprocessors. Sure, solar development is advancing today faster than ever before, but even today, the effort is miniscule compared to what was dumped into nukes.
get a job (Score:2, Insightful)
go work as a roofer for one summer...I bet ya you'll bingo to where we might be able to fit the next *billyun* solar panels... anyway, the EU is going to slap a few hundred square european big distance measuring units up of solar in the sahara desert, and pipe it to europe, in all the papers lately. While some people hem and haw and debate and keep shelling out the big bucks for energy and keep pharting around with "studies" and hoping mr backyard hydrogen fusion reactors will save them, others are doing something about it now, using the tech we have now, because it got "good enough" some years ago. I bought some solar pv 9 years ago, same as I bought earlier way more expensive computers 20 years ago. why? I want to be part of the solution, not just part of the whining about things problem. a real geek solves problems, wannabes play video games and wait for someone else to do it and crybaby around because it isn't perfect yet. And it is getting better, every day, lot of new dedicated to solar fabs going up, dye based solar is coming, solar concentrator tech is getting commercialized. Snooze ya lose, early adopters get the benefits, same as early adopters of computers got the benefits!
Re:What he is quoted as saying ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Really - Is it "possible" or pretense?
That really is the question. Is it possible that the delivered price of Solar PV could drop 50% in a period of 18 months year after year?
I don't know, and I don't think anyone can say. I think you can credit the cut-throat nature of the semi industry for the dramatic advances in transistor counts. Think about how many times Moore's Law has been declared dead and then someone invents a new type of interconnect, or a way to create transistor features smaller than the wavelength of light, or a better method of doping, or any of the other advances that have kept the trend going.
If there was as much money to be made in solar cells, I think we'd see some surprising improvements. Maybe it wouldn't match what's been done in semiconductors, but who can say?
Re:Here we Go.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm with you on nuclear.
But my Prius performs perfectly well, thankyouverymuch. Of all the criticisms I've heard, yours is among the strangest and easiest to debunk.
Not sure on the economics (Score:3, Insightful)
His idea for a 10 year Kennedy-esque-moon-mission-analog of rapidly transforming our energy base from one of fossil fuels to renewable energy is not only a great idea economically for the long term but also great for the short term.
I just had to question the assumption here so many people make that going to all renewable energy on such a short timeframe is indeed desirable and does not bring with it great costs to the society that attempts it.
Moving away from oil dependance is a great idea for so very many reasons, but to focus only on a few things like solar and wind and ignore the huge costs of transition, all while basically forming a religion around the effort that will brook no debate of directives handed down from on high - scary stuff.
To paraphrase Franklin, when passion begins to govern she never governs wisely. And there is WAY too much passion and far too little rational discussion of all the options on the table of moving away from an oil based economy on a timeframe and using technologies that make sense.
Re:Yeah, turn up the sun. (Score:3, Insightful)
You want to reduce the number of people? You go first. At the least, don't have kids.
The fact is that if you want to reduce population growth, the best way to do that is to make everyone rich. Prosperity always leads to declining fertility.
Re:Wow, the target for more strawmen arguments... (Score:3, Insightful)
Market-priced pollution/cleanup credits are the only sane way to price these activities. Currently the cost of polluting is either arbitrarily set by some government entity or foisted upon the public. Forcing companies to clean up after themselves or pay someone else to do so will allow everyone to pay the true cost of their activities, thus allowing the market to decide how best to allocate resources. Ideally such credits would be traded on an exchange not unlike the CME.
Re:a misunderstanding of Moore's Law (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, there are places we could put them that would be zero (additional) environmental impact -- roofs, walls, cars, etc. If we could make them even 50% efficient, merely putting them on the entire roof of every house could probably cover most of the energy needed by that house. If we could make them strong enough, roads and parking lots and such could be covered with them, stuff like that. (Not likely to ever be practical, of course.)
(Alas, even covering a car with 100% efficient solar cells (impossible, of course) wouldn't provide enough energy to power that car even in full sunlight. At least not at car speeds -- solar powered bicycles/tricycles are almost practical with today's technology, as long as you don't mind a big cover full of solar cells.)
I seem to recall reading somewhere that we could provide the entire human race's current energy requirement with solar panels (using today's technology) on less than 1% of the Earth's surface, and it even suggested some places -- mostly in deserts near the Equator. Aha ... Found it [chemexplore.net]. It doesn't explicitly say 1%, but it doesn't look like much ...
Re:Wow, the target for more strawmen arguments... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, it's one of those troll "debates", but I think this produces some useful artifacts - more interest and info on solar energy.
I do love the esthetic of solar energy - it's as direct as you can get, no baking in earth crust for gazillion years (fossil), no convoluted process involving atmosphere and water (hydro/wind/wave). And being electric/material tech, I get the sense we should be able to scale it up. Of course, I say this without knowing the nitty/gritty of the current solar tech.
When dealing with Gore (Score:3, Insightful)
It's important to remember what you imagined/pretended he said so you can write a response to that instead of what he actually said IRL.
Let's forget about Al Gore (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's just forget about Al Gore. He may have some good points. He may have some made some bogus claims. But what really matters is the facts. Let's look at the facts and judge technologies on their own merits, not based on what Al Gore has said about them and what we think of him.
Re:it's not a huge stretch (Score:1, Insightful)
No it doesn't.
He's a politician. When a politician says "I took the initiative in creating/stopping/starting/doing X", they obviously don't mean they personally did whatever it was. They mean they sponsored bills about it, organized funding, spoke about it, etc, etc.
To think otherwise is stupidity on the part of the person doing that thinking, not on the part of the politician.
Re:Al Gore has some good ideas (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoa there, this statement IS NOT a fact. Public works projects can help a slumping economy, but only if the public works project is needed, and absolutely helps expand the economy. There is more to it than that, but creating jobs does not necessarily expand the economy but can result in simple wealth redistribution. For example, if the government hired 10,000 people to dig a giant ditch, and than hired another 10,000 people to fill in the ditch, jobs would be created, but would it help the economy? The government doesn't magically have money, they need to obtain it somewhere. In this instance they've created 20,000 jobs, but added nothing to the economy. In fact, under such a situation, they've likely decreased the economy. Even if unemployment is really high, some of these people are likely not doing other (productive) jobs to dig a ditch and fill it in instead. This decreases the net value of the economy. Additionally, where is the money to pay these workers coming from? They either tax the people (reducing the money they have to create new jobs, and buy goods, decreasing the size of the economy) or print money, causing inflation, resulting in an inflation tax instead.
Of course, the real world is much more difficult, and I am not an economist, but I know not all economists believe that public works projects are good for the economy. The publics works projects in the great depression did not cure the depression, however government military spending did help bring us out of the depression (although, I imagine the average standard of living decreased during the war years, as the money was going into the war). One factor of public works projects that can also helps the economy (beyond the help the public works project itself does) in the long term, is the training that workers might receive working on the project, making them more productive afterward.
What I do know about pushing people into public works projects on renewable resources is that it would create jobs, and result in more renewable energy. However, if the cost of the energy is greater, than everyone is paying in higher overall costs (or taxes). It must also be noted that in a slumping economy, the costs of implementing large public works projects is cheaper, as there are often large numbers of unemployed people (who in the US are often earning money from the government already from the welfare system). This means the net cost of implementing these projects is cheaper due to being able to pay lower wages, and even cheaper still because you don't have to pay these people welfare benefits.
Maybe a real economist could plug through the numbers and predict if your proposed projects would help the economy (even than they'd be guessing). However, claiming it's a fact that public works projects help the economy is definitely not true.
Phil
Re:10 years ain't bad. (Score:3, Insightful)
Pickens is no fool - he sees the political tide turning and smells a chance to make a few billion in tax dollars sent directly to his pocket.
Re:We just need to plant more trees (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here we Go.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The nanotech thin film solar material is the cheapest. ...
In mass production they are predicting $1/watt for panels.
Ironic, how can they be the cheapest on the market if they have not even scaled up production yet? Hint: They are not the only ones with this technology, they are not the best, they are just the noisiest.
Companies like that can drag entire sectors down if they fail. It's a pity.
Re:Here we Go.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The reason the world has experts (Score:1, Insightful)
So don't bother spending cash on the sector at all, some of which would get funneled into R&D, resulting in those higher efficiency PV cells that you wanted?
Sometimes it's worth biting the bullet and going through with a project that you know won't work as well as you'd like, especially when you know that one of the side effects of the project will be better technology for future projects.
Re:Al Gore has some good ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
Military production is the el primo example of work that has little economic value ... except that it redistributes wealth and consumes resources, two things that are good for jump starting economies.
I totally agree (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm for all plausible technologies for generating electricity which don't emit CO2. I think there's hope for large wind and solar-thermal generating grids, but these will come online too slowly and still cost too much.
That's why I'm convinced that we'll be burning coal till my death unless we also supplement these with a big deployment of nuclear. I'm also a leftist-environmentalist, but I really feel betrayed by Gore.
okay that is just silly (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, but it could be (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, turn up the sun. (Score:3, Insightful)
Kidding, somewhat. The problem is not People, the problem is our cultural myth that tells us that we can take, take, take, that the Earth is here for us to Use and have 'dominion over', that we are Smart enough that we can stay ahead of the curve of declining natural resources, increasing amounts of disease, that we will survive just fine despite what we do to the overall ecosystem of our planet, this little blue ball of limited space and resources.
Get this: I am not a GW advocate. I am not an "eco freak". I think that if we aren't going to take the steps to have alternative energy like nuclear *now*, then we should be moving drills out to the Florida shelf and ANWAR. I have never liked Gore, and regard him as simply a political opportunist with his GW agenda (to wit: his lifestyle, vs what he espouses).
But I have always seen and understood that the root cause of all of these problems we have here on Earth is just *too many people*.
Recommended reading for you: "Ishmael", by Daniel Quinn. Incredible book, it'll perhaps help you to see things in a different light...
Re:Here we Go.... (Score:3, Insightful)
That might not be necessarily true. If the manufacturing technique required to produce such items does not scale well, then the demand could go through the roof, but the costs will also.
Re:it's not a huge stretch (Score:1, Insightful)
Lets face it, Gore was maligned because he was the opponent of republicans who bear false witness as their stock in trade. The controversy is as simple as that.
Ironically, he also said at about the same time that a Bush presidency would be an absolute disaster for America. Clearly, he was prescient on both counts. The biggest problem for him as a leader was that voters weren't intelligent enough to appreciate his wisdom. Instead, they had to learn via the school of hard knocks.
Re:cleaning? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Here we Go.... (Score:4, Insightful)
"The problem with nuclear is waste, which we currently have no way of disposal."
Not true.
The fuel can be recycled which really cuts down the waste stream just like they do in France and Japan. The waste can be "burned" some of the new reactor designs.
We don't use the different options for disposal that are available.
"Picture solar concentrators in orbit sending focused beams of intensified sunlight to solar stations on the planet surface which is converted and stored for use later."
Picture death beams. Think ants and a magnifying glass.
Think of frying any birds that fly into that beam.
Think of Greenpeace protests and the ASPCA screaming bloody murder.
Re:Here we Go.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here we Go.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, but it could be (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks, but obviously the Diggmob has taken over slashdot... When a +5 insightful ends up -1 troll its pretty clearly sockpuppets at work... looks like she's layed into all my posts on this story, thanks for noticing they were neither flamebait nor troll. Bring on the metamoderators!
Re:10 years ain't bad. (Score:2, Insightful)