So What Is the Next Big Thing?
March 29, 2010
I’m often asked when the ‘next big thing’ is coming in Solar. Mostly, I’m not sure how the ‘next big thing’ is defined. My mind keeps drifting to those 1950s/1960s movies of big things attacking from outer space, or little things being exposed to radiation and becoming big, hostile things (another potent argument against nuclear energy). At some point in the program you would see a trailer for the following week’s sci-fi movie, when you would learn about the ‘next big thing’.
It’s more likely, however, that my questioners want to know when they can expect to pay a fraction of today’s prices for solar power. Or when they can call up one of those hydroseeding trucks to spray their house with Instant Solar, enabling them to send a rude goodbye note to their electric utility.
My answer is always that improvements are incremental, that solar cell efficiency doesn’t so much bound upward as creep in that direction. And besides, the cheaper it becomes, the less generous will the state and federal incentive programs be – appropriately so.
Of all the questions I’m asked, the most persistent seems to concern the availability of ‘solar shingles’ – photovoltaic materials that resemble asphalt shingles or clay tiles, and are applied to your roof instead of regular roofing tiles, not over them like conventional PV panels.
You can find plenty of references to solar shingles in the literature; more, in fact, than you can find on the market. And in the interest of full disclosure, I should add that while the shingles may be easier to install and more aesthetically pleasing, a given area of tile won’t match the electrical output of the same area of PV panel. Nor, if your house happens not to be oriented exactly right, can you ‘fudge’ the issue by placing the tiles in a mounting that is oriented correctly, the way you can with conventional panels.
But there’s sufficient popular interest in the idea to justify a greater movement from the lab to the marketplace. Industry is beginning to scale up to produce solar shingles in large quantities, although it may still be three or four years before they reach the market in sufficient force to drive prices down significantly.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) reports in its weekly EERE Network News that Dow Chemical is dedicating a new factory in Michigan to production of its Dow Powerhouse solar shingle:
“The Dow Chemical Company announced on February 3 that it has picked Midland, Michigan, as the site for the first full-scale production facility for its Dow Powerhouse solar shingle, if the company obtains sufficient local, state, and federal funding. That became more likely on February 25, when the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) awarded $61.3 million in tax credits over 15 years to Dow for a variety of projects, including the manufacturing plant. The proposed facility will produce solar shingles that can be integrated into rooftops with standard asphalt shingles. The devices employ low-cost, thin-film solar modules made from copper indium gallium diselenide, or CIGS. The CIGS materials are deposited on a flexible stainless steel substrate by Global Solar Energy, which recently confirmed that its solar modules can convert 13.2% of the sunlight hitting them into electricity, setting a record for thin-film, flexible solar modules. Dow forms the shingles by encasing the modules in a proprietary plastic. The company is already manufacturing solar shingles in a small-scale market development plant in Midland, thanks to a DOE grant of $20 million awarded in 2007 under the Solar America Initiative Pathways Program. The full-scale plant could be operational by 2014, bringing more than 1,200 jobs to the area.”
Here’s where you can read the press release from Dow Chemical.
March 31st, 2010 at 11:50 am
I would like to be contacted by Dow to get a distributership in the Canton, MI area for their upcoming solar product.
March 31st, 2010 at 2:02 pm
The 1st world economy requires a replacement for oil as the price skyrockets. Renewable energy prices will rise more than the cost of energy to produce the infrastructure. If there is any truth to Global Warming changing the economics of Renewables is paramount if nuclear energy is ruled out.
The question needs to start at how does one change the economics of Renewable Energy. Since the full cost of the energy has to be paid up front for the said life of the infrastructure, there isn’t possibility of the masses affording it. The infrastructure has to create sell able spin-off benefits to subsidize the cost.
Most if not all don’t remember the Rural Electrification Agency. The cities where most of the energy was consumed were required to subsidize the cost of energy to be delivered in the sticks. With government subsidizes out in the sticks Renewable Energy can be economically viable just as solar is directly viable in space.
When are communication vehicles like yours going to start looking at the Big Picture? We just ask what the cost is TODAY. We are usually rewarded for a quick return on investment. The Riches’ CPA acknowledges the lack of direct return on investment. With the people that can afford to purchase your vision of the future being conscious that both environmentalist & government lies to them about the economics. The Big Picture includes size of the problem, time required for the change over, what the masses are willing to fully pay for, where is most of the energy consumed, what assets are available to be reused, how long will the change over take so that the capacity to create the infrastructure doesn’t cause the investor to go broke.
I’ve written these questions for over 10 years while most of the environmentalists still are talking as though we’re in 1973. Start thinking economics. If you wish for peace in the Middle East make oil irrelevant.
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:41 pm
People in third world countries aren’t stringing telephone wire, they’re using mobile phones. Perhaps we should think of energy in this way also.
In the summer and winter of 2006, many of us in St. Louis survived two storms that knocked out power to our homes. Our power lines are mostly still above ground. Mine was knocked out for a week each time. Some people in the area were out for much longer.
Thinking of the big picture should mean to make everyone’s home energy self sufficient thru conservation, insulating your home, energy efficient lighting and appliances etc. and generation of your own power. No need for the grid or the expense of the grid – except for industry that cannot generate enough for their own use. They can pay for whatever grid or upgrades to the grid that are needed.
Americans are supposed to be independent and self-reliant. Why do we want to be tied to a grid when technology can potentially enable us to be more independent?
Think what would happen if a major earthquake hit somewhere in the U.S. Everyone in that area would be without power even if their building survived because the grid and/or power plants would be down.
Perhaps if we achieved making many of our buildings energy self sufficient, it would lower energy demand and we wouldn’t need nuclear energy.
We also wouldn’t have to worry about sabotage or terrorism aimed at the grid.
Energy self sufficiency would mean HOMEland security.
Just sayin’