[IceFire]

Solar will be huge.

The question is, should it be?  Solar is financially and environmentally expensive - it uses large quantities of heavy metals (which are damned difficult to recycle), and it just isn't practical for a large portion of the Earth's surface under the panel paradigm due to daylight times, storage capacity, land base requirements, and maintenance costs.

If/when someone perfects a practical use of biosolar power generation (using either microbes or simple organelles on plate backings) then maybe solar will become a useful.  Until then, nuclear is a much more practical alternative for the future.  Solar is a utopian pipe dream at present.

You're right about current solar panels and "traditional" solar power generation practices. There are other ways to do solar power and there's still a lot of R&D to be done. It's like many technologies out there... there is viability but it will take time to get to a point where it may be useful to us on a large scale. Even now ubiquitous internal combustion engine weren't terribly efficient or powerful for a very long time... but those early designs have given way to some really impressive technologies.

I've heard about other types of solar power that may work well.. such as the solar tower using glass mirrors focused on a central tower and heating salt to provide a relatively stable power source even after the sun went down. Has it's issues but under development in a few places... typically in desert conditions where the land is not useful for anything else and the ecological impact of building a few towers and rows of mirrors are slight. I've heard about but don't know a lot about some other solar powered options that didn't involve using rare or dangerous materials...

Just needs R&D and time I think.

[MP-Ryan]

Did you even read my post in its entirety rather than just picking that sentence out? Because I have the feeling that you didn't.

I did, and the link you provided, and none of it is a convincing argument that solar is clearing any of the technical, environmental, and practical hurdles... just that it becomes more economically feasible as the price of other energy sources goes up and the price to build solar panels drops.

These heavy metals are already in major production for many other reasons. I don't mind them being used for a giant engineering rig, if that rig is economically viable.

Ah, so it's perfectly fine to continue to contribute to an environmental and health problem so long as it's profitable and other industry is permitted to do it.  Have you given any thought, by chance, to the proliferation of those materials if solar hardware production undergoes a massive increase?  How about what to do with the waste of leftovers?  The heavy metals you refer to are either used in small quantities or non-industrial processes, or are recyclable in their other uses.  Solar tech is all set to produce a massive amount of waste we can do nothing with.

Biosolar is a pipe dream.

Only if you know nothing about it:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-08/mu-mtl081408.php
http://www.solarfeeds.com/ecofriend/13931-chlorophyll-that-makes-solar-panels-more-efficient

Chlorophyll is everywhere, easy to produce, has simple function, and huge energy potential.  An average houseplant produces far more energy than ordinary solar panels in its functional lifespan, involves no ecologically-persistent compounds, and is extremely efficient.  As both those links point out, the potential of biosolar is being utilized now.

IceFire makes a good point that the solar of today is not necessarily the solar power of tomorrow - but it's going to take R&D to get there, and this delusional thinking that conventional solar is somehow going to become more practical is exactly that.  Even biosolar still doesn't address simple issues like weather.  It's not the be-all end-all of energy, and the sooner "greens" and dreamers get that notion out of their skulls, the sooner we can get on with building the needed next-gen nuclear plants that will be powering our society in the coming decades.

[Kosh]

Even biosolar still doesn't address simple issues like weather.  It's not the be-all end-all of energy, and the sooner "greens" and dreamers get that notion out of their skulls, the sooner we can get on with building the needed next-gen nuclear plants that will be powering our society in the coming decades.

Indeed

Nuclear Power is globally scalable if it does follow rules made up by the anti-nuclear side

Derek Abbott (Australian) wrote “Is nuclear power globally scalable?” to be published in a Future Proceedings of the IEEE. He claims that nuclear power is not scalable globally.

Abbot Claim Land and location: One nuclear reactor plant requires about 20.5 km2 (7.9 mi2) of land to accommodate the nuclear power station itself, its exclusion zone, its enrichment plant, ore processing, and supporting infrastructure.

Why this is wrong – Many nuclear reactors can be situated on the same piece of land. Most of the land can be used for other purposes. There is no reason it cannot be used for many other purposes other than housing people. If nuclear power replaced coal then the large land areas of coal plants can be repurposed for nuclear power.

And there's plenty more where that came from.

[Luis Dias]

Ah, so it's perfectly fine to continue to contribute to an environmental and health problem so long as it's profitable and other industry is permitted to do it.  Have you given any thought, by chance, to the proliferation of those materials if solar hardware production undergoes a massive increase?  How about what to do with the waste of leftovers?  The heavy metals you refer to are either used in small quantities or non-industrial processes, or are recyclable in their other uses.  Solar tech is all set to produce a massive amount of waste we can do nothing with.

If they are reciclable, what's your problem?  Waste? You talked approvingly about nuclear, and now you're dissing solar because of the waste? Are you ****ing trolling me or what?

Biosolar is a pipe dream.

Only if you know nothing about it:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-08/mu-mtl081408.php
http://www.solarfeeds.com/ecofriend/13931-chlorophyll-that-makes-solar-panels-more-efficient

On the contrary, it's because I'm pretty aware of the trends that I'm telling you that "biosolar" won't work sooner than "traditional" solar PV. Perhaps ten years of distance between themselves, probably even worse than that. It's still pretty much a myriad of different lab experiments. All amazing science, by themselves, and very rich in its variety. Still, decades until the equivalent of, say, "Nevada Solar One".

Chlorophyll is everywhere, easy to produce, has simple function, and huge energy potential.  An average houseplant produces far more energy than ordinary solar panels in its functional lifespan, involves no ecologically-persistent compounds, and is extremely efficient.  As both those links point out, the potential of biosolar is being utilized now.

Yeah, sure it produces more in "its lifespan". Do you know the percentage of light that it can transform from the sun to actual energy? At the *most*, tops, it has an efficiency of 8%. Mostly, it gives 3-6%. Which is pretty bad.

And *where* is this "potential* being used in any other thing than agriculture?

IceFire makes a good point that the solar of today is not necessarily the solar power of tomorrow - but it's going to take R&D to get there, and this delusional thinking that conventional solar is somehow going to become more practical is exactly that.

You talk up lab experiments as if they are being almost at production and you dare speak about delusions? When you say "conventional", you should watch yourself. These things evolve incrementally, and with each generation, they are using less and less materials for more and more output in power, with revolutionary means of production, etc. PV is a proven technology being used *now* in the world. Where is your biopower, I mean other than corn ethanol and other wasteful social experiments?

Even biosolar still doesn't address simple issues like weather.  It's not the be-all end-all of energy, and the sooner "greens" and dreamers get that notion out of their skulls, the sooner we can get on with building the needed next-gen nuclear plants that will be powering our society in the coming decades.

There will be ways to get around that. It will come through innovation and not by bullying the governments into "doing solar", like the greens are stupidly doing, 'coz dontcha know, we only have 5 years to SAVE THE PLANET, for like 30 years now. These people do not understand the concept of a "marathon". Fortunately, many smart people do, and despite all the green noise, progress is slowly being made.

Nuclear is great, and for the next two decades, I'd bet highly on it. Nuclear and NatGas, which is experiencing a major boom now in the industry due to the new shale gas basins.

Solar will just steamroll everything in about 2025-2035. The reason is simple. Its learning curve is way beyond nuclear and even wind. It will become cheaper than everything else, and it's perfectly scalable, without any radiation worries. Intermittency will be solved with specific types of batteries, which are still in trials.

There are other options too, sure. There are wind kytes, for instance. Very remarkable stuff, and seemingly very weak, but astonishingly cheap. http://kitegen.com/

And we have some marginal fusion breakthroughs attempts, with different approaches. We have EMC2, focus fusion and the hilariously cursed "cold fusion" which is experiencing a sort of rennaissance (which most probably turn out to be wrong).

[Bobboau]

you seem well versed on solar technology, so I would like to risk derailing this thread to ask your opinion on a solar design I thought up a while ago, and an explain why it isn't as good an idea as I think it would be.
solar cells today have a problem in that they have to be designed for a particular wavelength, if the light energy that they collect is at a wavelength below the design it gets turned into heat, if it is above then the portion above is turned into heat, and the stronger the light source the more efficient the conversion. so I considered what if a solar panel was designed with a continuously varying wavelength band (a gradient) and a highly concentrated beam of light is passed through a prism before it hits the panel? this seems like too simple of a solution so I must be missing something basic.

[headdie]

you seem well versed on solar technology, so I would like to risk derailing this thread to ask your opinion on a solar design I thought up a while ago, and an explain why it isn't as good an idea as I think it would be.
solar cells today have a problem in that they have to be designed for a particular wavelength, if the light energy that they collect is at a wavelength below the design it gets turned into heat, if it is above then the portion above is turned into heat, and the stronger the light source the more efficient the conversion. so I considered what if a solar panel was designed with a continuously varying wavelength band (a gradient) and a highly concentrated beam of light is passed through a prism before it hits the panel? this seems like too simple of a solution so I must be missing something basic.

something like using a parabolic mirror to focus the light from a given area at the prism?

also i found this interesting when they were on the tv a few years back
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6616651.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS10

[Luis Dias]

you seem well versed on solar technology, so I would like to risk derailing this thread to ask your opinion on a solar design I thought up a while ago, and an explain why it isn't as good an idea as I think it would be.
solar cells today have a problem in that they have to be designed for a particular wavelength, if the light energy that they collect is at a wavelength below the design it gets turned into heat, if it is above then the portion above is turned into heat, and the stronger the light source the more efficient the conversion. so I considered what is a solar panel was designed with a continuously varying wavelength band (a gradient) and a highly concentrated beam of light is passed through a prism before it hits the panel? this seems like too simple of a solution so I must be missing something basic.

Not at all. Research is being done in precisely trying to reach to all wavelengths, specially infrared. There have been some strides in that particular case. MIT was conducting experiments in tryiing to concentrate light with microscopic lens (and there are multiple geometrical solutions for this), so that you could, for instance, only have to have a small photoreceptor for each square meter of incident light.  About prisms and your solution, which I don't think I understood it completely, Berkeley has attempted to gather the whole spectrum (http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2011/01/24/practical-full-spectrum/), but the materials used are very expensive. Thing is, for each wavelenght, different material solutions must be found to gather its energy.

[Bobboau]

something like using a parabolic mirror to focus the light from a given area at the prism?

well, yeah, but the concentration part is easy and common place, the only tricky aspect would be in getting the light to be somewhat coherent.
alternatively, perhaps something like a Fresnel lens could do the job of splitting the light into it's colors before concentration.

About prisms and your solution, which I don't think I understood it completely

basically rather than layering different semiconductors on top of each other and having all the light matching the lower layer having to pass through, the upper layers you would have either a smooth gradient of changing band gap along the surface of a single cell or a sequence of normal cells with a different band gap in each of them to approximate a smooth changing band gap. running the light through the prism makes sure that the light hitting the cell(s) has the right wavelength in the right place.
I suppose the answer is material cost.

[MP-Ryan]

If they are reciclable, what's your problem?  Waste? You talked approvingly about nuclear, and now you're dissing solar because of the waste? Are you ****ing trolling me or what?

They are moderately recyclable in their current quantities.  A proliferation of solar based on current photovoltaic design would increase those contaminants exponentially.  As for nuclear waste, older waste can feed next-generation reactors.  Solar is fundamentally a consumer technology, and brings with it all the hazards of putting hazardous waste in the hands of the public and expecting them to know what to do with it.  This is already a massive problem with consumer electronics.

On the contrary, it's because I'm pretty aware of the trends that I'm telling you that "biosolar" won't work sooner than "traditional" solar PV. Perhaps ten years of distance between themselves, probably even worse than that. It's still pretty much a myriad of different lab experiments. All amazing science, by themselves, and very rich in its variety. Still, decades until the equivalent of, say, "Nevada Solar One".

You're missing my point.  I know it won't work sooner than traditional solar collection.  I'm arguing that traditional solar collection is bad.  It's environmentally bad, it's not capable of providing power to key northern and southern areas on an industrial scale, it's expensive, and there are much better alternatives.  Unless someone suddenly comes up with a method of solar collection that defeats cloud cover, day/night cycles, and produces the massive amounts of electricity required by industry (to which consumer use absolutely pales in comparison), it's silly technology.  As supplemental, low-scale generation, fine... but there are a lot of technological hurdles on traditional collection that have to be solved, and I don't think a time scale of 15-20 years is even remotely realistic.  Considering the number of nuclear plants that could come online in that timeframe with serious investment, it's a pointless exercise.

Yeah, sure it produces more in "its lifespan". Do you know the percentage of light that it can transform from the sun to actual energy? At the *most*, tops, it has an efficiency of 8%. Mostly, it gives 3-6%. Which is pretty bad.

And *where* is this "potential* being used in any other thing than agriculture?

Lab-scale at present.  But as biotech is an exploding industry, there's a lot more hope for sustainable small-scale biosolar than there is for a solution for all the problems I listed above.  It's still going to be supplemental to primary generation.

You talk up lab experiments as if they are being almost at production and you dare speak about delusions? When you say "conventional", you should watch yourself. These things evolve incrementally, and with each generation, they are using less and less materials for more and more output in power, with revolutionary means of production, etc. PV is a proven technology being used *now* in the world. Where is your biopower, I mean other than corn ethanol and other wasteful social experiments?

Biological solar power production has been in the works for maybe 20 years, if you're really generous (excluding bioreactors, which are operational and power large numbers of wastewater treatment plants around North America and have been in operation much longer).  Photovoltaic cells have existed since 1883.  Biosolar is a matter of solving collection issues; traditional solar relies on better materials engineering to improve itself.  Given that the mechanisms for biosolar is well-understood and it has been shown to work in the lab in such a short timeframe, my bets are on it.

There will be ways to get around that. It will come through innovation and not by bullying the governments into "doing solar", like the greens are stupidly doing, 'coz dontcha know, we only have 5 years to SAVE THE PLANET, for like 30 years now. These people do not understand the concept of a "marathon". Fortunately, many smart people do, and despite all the green noise, progress is slowly being made.

Nuclear is great, and for the next two decades, I'd bet highly on it. Nuclear and NatGas, which is experiencing a major boom now in the industry due to the new shale gas basins.

Solar will just steamroll everything in about 2025-2035. The reason is simple. Its learning curve is way beyond nuclear and even wind. It will become cheaper than everything else, and it's perfectly scalable, without any radiation worries. Intermittency will be solved with specific types of batteries, which are still in trials.

There are other options too, sure. There are wind kytes, for instance. Very remarkable stuff, and seemingly very weak, but astonishingly cheap. http://kitegen.com/

And we have some marginal fusion breakthroughs attempts, with different approaches. We have EMC2, focus fusion and the hilariously cursed "cold fusion" which is experiencing a sort of rennaissance (which most probably turn out to be wrong).

I don't know where you live, but I live in an area of the world that is covered in snow for 7 months of the year, experiences temperatures below -40°C on a regular basis, has harsh and heavy winds, and an ENORMOUS amount of industry.  15-20 years of traditional solar innovation isn't going to solve that problem.  This area is currently powered by a mixture of coal and natural gas.  The industrial areas of the world are in places that mach traditional solar unfeasible.  You talk about scalability and innovation like these are assured things.  Scalability implies more space to put it.  People already object to massive wind warms... how exactly do you think they'll feel about fields of photovoltaic panels, which degrade and require constant maintenance, lining the landscape around them?  As for innovation - again, photovoltaic technology has existed since 1883.  It hasn't come all that far.

[Luis Dias]

If they are reciclable, what's your problem?  Waste? You talked approvingly about nuclear, and now you're dissing solar because of the waste? Are you ****ing trolling me or what?

They are moderately recyclable in their current quantities.  A proliferation of solar based on current photovoltaic design would increase those contaminants exponentially.  As for nuclear waste, older waste can feed next-generation reactors.  Solar is fundamentally a consumer technology, and brings with it all the hazards of putting hazardous waste in the hands of the public and expecting them to know what to do with it.  This is already a massive problem with consumer electronics.

Yeah, I can see what you're getting at. But when I say that prices go down, that also means that the means to get electricity from PVs will improve exponentially (not Moore's law, slower, but something like it). That means that less dangerous materials will be used. e-waste is already a big problem, but it is increasingly being solved, through environmental standards that get more and more demanding.

It's not even a question of "choice". It will happen, so I do think that this issue of the environment should be addressed asap.

On the contrary, it's because I'm pretty aware of the trends that I'm telling you that "biosolar" won't work sooner than "traditional" solar PV. Perhaps ten years of distance between themselves, probably even worse than that. It's still pretty much a myriad of different lab experiments. All amazing science, by themselves, and very rich in its variety. Still, decades until the equivalent of, say, "Nevada Solar One".

You're missing my point.  I know it won't work sooner than traditional solar collection.  I'm arguing that traditional solar collection is bad. It's environmentally bad, it's not capable of providing power to key northern and southern areas on an industrial scale, it's expensive, and there are much better alternatives.

....as of 2011, I couldn't agree more. That's why you aren't seeing me hyping up current solar projects. Still, they are a necessary burden, to experiment with the concept and the technology.

Unless someone suddenly comes up with a method of solar collection that defeats cloud cover, day/night cycles, and produces the massive amounts of electricity required by industry (to which consumer use absolutely pales in comparison), it's silly technology.

It all comes down to economics. And it *is* getting there. http://entropyproduction.blogspot.com/2007/05/glittering-future-of-solar-power.html

The learning rate of solar power is 4 times greater than nuclear's, and still higher than wind. It is still pretty uneconomic, and I'm not betting for it in the next decade. So you're arguing a strawman here. The problem with intermittency is a big issue, but these things will have its solution.

As supplemental, low-scale generation, fine... but there are a lot of technological hurdles on traditional collection that have to be solved, and I don't think a time scale of 15-20 years is even remotely realistic.  Considering the number of nuclear plants that could come online in that timeframe with serious investment, it's a pointless exercise.

Ridiculous judgement. The amount of energy that it will be required to power the world in 2050 will make 2010 pale in comparison. We are talking about the whole third world getting into the range of the "middle class". We will need every single energy solution we can get. So yeah, nukes ftw. And they will win the day. Until 2025-2035.

Yeah, sure it produces more in "its lifespan". Do you know the percentage of light that it can transform from the sun to actual energy? At the *most*, tops, it has an efficiency of 8%. Mostly, it gives 3-6%. Which is pretty bad.

And *where* is this "potential* being used in any other thing than agriculture?

Lab-scale at present.  But as biotech is an exploding industry, there's a lot more hope for sustainable small-scale biosolar than there is for a solution for all the problems I listed above.  It's still going to be supplemental to primary generation.

What are you talking about? Gimme non-laughable examples. I know amazing science is being done in this field. I know Craig Venter's work, for example, and its promises to revolutionize the whole solar industry (or any other field, for that matter), but this is so in its theoretical phase that we might just wait for nuclear fusion instead (which is, contrary to widespread common knowledge, right on schedule).

You talk up lab experiments as if they are being almost at production and you dare speak about delusions? When you say "conventional", you should watch yourself. These things evolve incrementally, and with each generation, they are using less and less materials for more and more output in power, with revolutionary means of production, etc. PV is a proven technology being used *now* in the world. Where is your biopower, I mean other than corn ethanol and other wasteful social experiments?

Biological solar power production has been in the works for maybe 20 years, if you're really generous (excluding bioreactors, which are operational and power large numbers of wastewater treatment plants around North America and have been in operation much longer).  Photovoltaic cells have existed since 1883.  Biosolar is a matter of solving collection issues; traditional solar relies on better materials engineering to improve itself.  Given that the mechanisms for biosolar is well-understood and it has been shown to work in the lab in such a short timeframe, my bets are on it.

So you are betting on an incredibly young tech just because you like it? It hasn't even demoed anything remotely interesting, mathematically speaking. And I'm the delusional one?

I'm all for emotional gambling. I'm a romantic too. But when I'm in that mood, I refrain myself of calling others of being delusional.

There will be ways to get around that. It will come through innovation and not by bullying the governments into "doing solar", like the greens are stupidly doing, 'coz dontcha know, we only have 5 years to SAVE THE PLANET, for like 30 years now. These people do not understand the concept of a "marathon". Fortunately, many smart people do, and despite all the green noise, progress is slowly being made.

Nuclear is great, and for the next two decades, I'd bet highly on it. Nuclear and NatGas, which is experiencing a major boom now in the industry due to the new shale gas basins.

Solar will just steamroll everything in about 2025-2035. The reason is simple. Its learning curve is way beyond nuclear and even wind. It will become cheaper than everything else, and it's perfectly scalable, without any radiation worries. Intermittency will be solved with specific types of batteries, which are still in trials.

There are other options too, sure. There are wind kytes, for instance. Very remarkable stuff, and seemingly very weak, but astonishingly cheap. http://kitegen.com/

And we have some marginal fusion breakthroughs attempts, with different approaches. We have EMC2, focus fusion and the hilariously cursed "cold fusion" which is experiencing a sort of rennaissance (which most probably turn out to be wrong).

I don't know where you live, but I live in an area of the world that is covered in snow for 7 months of the year, experiences temperatures below -40°C on a regular basis, has harsh and heavy winds, and an ENORMOUS amount of industry.

AAAAAAHHHHHhhh. Now I get where you base your negative vibes against solar. Man, I'm not saying that solar will be the only source of energy. That would be ludicrous. What we learn from these energy crises is that the more varied our portfolio, the better prepared we are to face certain issues. BTW, I live in sunny portugal .

15-20 years of traditional solar innovation isn't going to solve that problem.

You are still talking about "traditional solar innovation", as if we are speaking of a dead slow boring thing, when it's the fastest learning tech. Solar panels that are being produced in the labs today have little to do with the panels produced ten years ago. From materials to production techniques.

This area is currently powered by a mixture of coal and natural gas.  The industrial areas of the world are in places that mach traditional solar unfeasible.  You talk about scalability and innovation like these are assured things.

My assumption rests on the pretty stable exponential factor that has been detected for the past 50 years now. Imagine that we are living in the eighties and I would say "in 2010 computers will be all over the place, they will be on the smallest things possible, and PCs will have terabytes of data". You'd call me crazy I guess, even despite the fact that Moore's constant was already pretty stable and predictable.

Scalability implies more space to put it.  People already object to massive wind warms... how exactly do you think they'll feel about fields of photovoltaic panels, which degrade and require constant maintenance, lining the landscape around them?

I'm an architect, and I can tell you that there is no comparison between the solutions of solar in NIMBYism to the non-solutions of wind. Wind is getting "better" by scaling up the blades per tower. That means bigger and bigger mills, that completely destroy the scale of landscape. They are visually terrible. Solar can be adequately placed with no nimby issues at all. They'll mostly be invisible, except for the solar "farms", which will be as troublesome to the people as any other farm that exists...

As for innovation - again, photovoltaic technology has existed since 1883.  It hasn't come all that far.

Sheer bollocks. It has the fastest growing pace of technology innovation in the energy industry. By writing that marketing sentence that was probably derived from a bull****ter in the nets you show me that you are completely oblivious to the trends that are actually writing history now.

[Luis Dias]

basically rather than layering different semiconductors on top of each other and having all the light matching the lower layer having to pass through, the upper layers you would have either a smooth gradient of changing band gap along the surface of a single cell or a sequence of normal cells with a different band gap in each of them to approximate a smooth changing band gap. running the light through the prism makes sure that the light hitting the cell(s) has the right wavelength in the right place.
I suppose the answer is material cost.

The solution you are trying to give is towards a non-existent problem. the layers are transparent to the non-interesting wavelenghts. And yeah, the problem is material cost. It costs less to have a bigger 100 w cell that only gets a certain wavelenght band, than a tinier 100w cell that absorbs it all.

[Kosh]

My assumption rests on the pretty stable exponential factor that has been detected for the past 50 years now. Imagine that we are living in the eighties and I would say "in 2010 computers will be all over the place, they will be on the smallest things possible, and PCs will have terabytes of data". You'd call me crazy I guess, even despite the fact that Moore's constant was already pretty stable and predictable.

The difference being that computers do many things more efficiently than their competitors (typewriters) so they spread quickly. The same cannot be said of solar. If you want to see why it is so fundementally unscalable, look no farther than the insane power scheme on the Internation Space Station.

[MP-Ryan]

Yeah, I can see what you're getting at. But when I say that prices go down, that also means that the means to get electricity from PVs will improve exponentially (not Moore's law, slower, but something like it). That means that less dangerous materials will be used. e-waste is already a big problem, but it is increasingly being solved, through environmental standards that get more and more demanding.

It's not even a question of "choice". It will happen, so I do think that this issue of the environment should be addressed asap.

Prices go down, means to get electricity improve... this is speculation.  This rests on the premise that the materials engineering improves; that is not an assured outcome.  As for the problem of e-waste increasingly being solved - I do environmental enforcement for a living.  It's not being solved - it's getting worse, not better.

It all comes down to economics. And it *is* getting there. http://entropyproduction.blogspot.com/2007/05/glittering-future-of-solar-power.html

The learning rate of solar power is 4 times greater than nuclear's, and still higher than wind. It is still pretty uneconomic, and I'm not betting for it in the next decade. So you're arguing a strawman here. The problem with intermittency is a big issue, but these things will have its solution.

Shall I start linking back to Ballard and their promises of vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells that were a sure thing?  Saying it will have a solution in the next 15-20 years is speculation, not fact.  Rates of growth and innovation are neither assured nor predictable beyond the short term.

Ridiculous judgement. The amount of energy that it will be required to power the world in 2050 will make 2010 pale in comparison. We are talking about the whole third world getting into the range of the "middle class". We will need every single energy solution we can get. So yeah, nukes ftw. And they will win the day. Until 2025-2035.

Your unfounded demographic predictions aside (the middle class is being destroyed the world over, third world advancement to higher standards of living is most definitely not a sure thing), saying that 15-20 years of solar in innovation is going to fix everything does not make it so.  The pace of energy innovation on this planet is stacked directly against it.  And again, predicting technological gains decades in advance almost never works out for the person doing the predicting.

What are you talking about? Gimme non-laughable examples. I know amazing science is being done in this field. I know Craig Venter's work, for example, and its promises to revolutionize the whole solar industry (or any other field, for that matter), but this is so in its theoretical phase that we might just wait for nuclear fusion instead (which is, contrary to widespread common knowledge, right on schedule).

Read the first link I posted on the subject.  That's not theoretical work, that functions.  So again, it's in development, but there's a lot more potential for biotechnology to address the current problems in solar at its present scale in 15-20 years than there is for engineered photovoltaic to suddenly become a huge industry player in the same period.

So you are betting on an incredibly young tech just because you like it? It hasn't even demoed anything remotely interesting, mathematically speaking. And I'm the delusional one?

I'm saying that the potential of biosolar to usurp engineered photovoltaic (since you don't like the term traditional) is much greater than the potential of photovoltaic to suddenly dominate the energy market.  Considering investment in natural gas deposits far outstrips solar even today, and those plants are forecast to have operating lives of 45-50 years, I don't see traditional solar as having anywhere near the role that you say.  Your argument for the proliferation of solar seems to be that it will become cheaper (debatable; although it may become more economical as hydrocarbon prices increase, it's price point in all the articles you've linked depends on economic forecasts, not absolute cost of solar infrastructure per unit of energy decreasing) and easier to make (which depends wholly on new developments in the materials engineering, which are not a sure thing beyond the immediately forseeable future).  I can see biolsolar replacing photovoltaic technologies; in neither case can I see them as dominant players in the energy market.  For sustainable personal use, yes, but these are not technologies to power the industries on which we are all dependent.

You are still talking about "traditional solar innovation", as if we are speaking of a dead slow boring thing, when it's the fastest learning tech. Solar panels that are being produced in the labs today have little to do with the panels produced ten years ago. From materials to production techniques.

And yet they still function the same way, with the same downfalls.  The materials are still toxic, they still require huge tracts of land, and they are still defeated by climate and environmental conditions (you linked an article that's getting lost in this mess of a reply, but it talks about deterioration due to the sun as if it's the only maintenance cost for solar; sand and dust is enormously destructive, and the world's industrial areas are located where you deal with sand, dust, wind, and snow).

My assumption rests on the pretty stable exponential factor that has been detected for the past 50 years now. Imagine that we are living in the eighties and I would say "in 2010 computers will be all over the place, they will be on the smallest things possible, and PCs will have terabytes of data". You'd call me crazy I guess, even despite the fact that Moore's constant was already pretty stable and predictable.

Kosh answered this post appropriately.

I'm an architect, and I can tell you that there is no comparison between the solutions of solar in NIMBYism to the non-solutions of wind. Wind is getting "better" by scaling up the blades per tower. That means bigger and bigger mills, that completely destroy the scale of landscape. They are visually terrible. Solar can be adequately placed with no nimby issues at all. They'll mostly be invisible, except for the solar "farms", which will be as troublesome to the people as any other farm that exists...

Land space is already at a premium in many locations.  This also ignores the reality of finding appropriate placement in areas which have low or difficult lighting conditions.  Wind faces the same problem.  It's not the size of the mills that is problematic in North America, it's the sheer number and density of the tower placement.  Solar is going to be much the same.  Most of the northern hemisphere doesn't have a whole lot of optimal solar placement just lying around where no one is going to care.

Sheer bollocks. It has the fastest growing pace of technology innovation in the energy industry. By writing that marketing sentence that was probably derived from a bull****ter in the nets you show me that you are completely oblivious to the trends that are actually writing history now.

Technological innovation is a means to an end, not a solution unto itself.  Until that technology becomes practically feasible - and it's not on the foreseeable horizon - I'm going to leave my skeptic's hat firmly in place.

But tell you what, if I'm mounting solar panels on my roof in 15-20 years, I'll arrange them to spell the words "Luis was right" if I have the room

EDIT:  And these point-by-point replies are getting painful.

[Luis Dias]

Prices go down, means to get electricity improve... this is speculation.  This rests on the premise that the materials engineering improves; that is not an assured outcome.  As for the problem of e-waste increasingly being solved - I do environmental enforcement for a living.  It's not being solved - it's getting worse, not better.

But computers are not half as bad as they were. Problem has more to do with the scale of things going up. I'd make a wild unsupported guess that the recent miniaturization of pcs (now people buy laptops instead of big towers, slim TFTs instead of CRTs, iPads instead of laptops, etc.) has got to have some effect on e-waste.

Shall I start linking back to Ballard and their promises of vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells that were a sure thing?  Saying it will have a solution in the next 15-20 years is speculation, not fact.  Rates of growth and innovation are neither assured nor predictable beyond the short term.

Now you're just bull****ting me. What does solar have to do with Ballard's shenanigans? The trend of solar has been remarkably stable for the past 30 years now, and there's no reason why it should stop. All the fundamentals seem pointed to more and more efficiency. I provide you data and you provide me sneers. There is simply no comparison in the quality of our analysis.

I have always had good judgement on these things, and I dissed out hydrogen long long ago.

Your unfounded demographic predictions aside (the middle class is being destroyed the world over, third world advancement to higher standards of living is most definitely not a sure thing), saying that 15-20 years of solar in innovation is going to fix everything does not make it so.  The pace of energy innovation on this planet is stacked directly against it.  And again, predicting technological gains decades in advance almost never works out for the person doing the predicting.

The differences between our visions of the future couldn't possibly be more different. Current "middle class" of developed countries are being pressed by the surge of this giant mass of people trying hard to get into "middle class". Should I present you data about the economic surge of the last decade by the entire globe? Remarkably, this was the decade where the world grew faster than ever before, even with the 2008 shock. The world is now climbing at an astonishing pace, and I should be in the least favorable point of view to be able to see this, since I live in ****ing Portugal.

There is no deceleration. And this means that the third world is demanding an exponentially bigger slice of the energy cake. If you do not know this, what on earth are you even doing in this thread?

What are you talking about? Gimme non-laughable examples. I know amazing science is being done in this field. I know Craig Venter's work, for example, and its promises to revolutionize the whole solar industry (or any other field, for that matter), but this is so in its theoretical phase that we might just wait for nuclear fusion instead (which is, contrary to widespread common knowledge, right on schedule).

Read the first link I posted on the subject.  That's not theoretical work, that functions.

ROFL. What? The first one is about how a technical hurdle was overcome and efficiency improved, another was about how a technique employed by plants was replicated by mechanical analogues. This type of thing happens every day. Things which I am fairly educated about, I do have competent feeds on my browser about the best of the best of this stuff. They do not show anything remotely working right now. Only lab tests. Try again.

...So again, it's in development, but there's a lot more potential for biotechnology to address the current problems in solar at its present scale in 15-20 years than there is for engineered photovoltaic to suddenly become a huge industry player in the same period.

A sentence based on an emotion, since there is nothing rational residing in it. You are basically saying that a thing that is still theoretical and some parts of it are being tested in a lab is in a better position than proven, working technology to conquer the world in 15 years. Sorry, that isn't rational.

So you are betting on an incredibly young tech just because you like it? It hasn't even demoed anything remotely interesting, mathematically speaking. And I'm the delusional one?

I'm saying that the potential of biosolar to usurp engineered photovoltaic (since you don't like the term traditional) is much greater than the potential of photovoltaic to suddenly dominate the energy market.

I know what you are saying, but you give zero evidence for this hypothesis.

Considering investment in natural gas deposits far outstrips solar even today, and those plants are forecast to have operating lives of 45-50 years, I don't see traditional solar as having anywhere near the role that you say.  Your argument for the proliferation of solar seems to be that it will become cheaper (debatable; although it may become more economical as hydrocarbon prices increase, it's price point in all the articles you've linked depends on economic forecasts, not absolute cost of solar infrastructure per unit of energy decreasing)

The articles I linked are far more optimistic than myself, predicting that solar will outstrip the rest of the energy industry in the last part of this decade. I'm really being conservative here.

...and easier to make (which depends wholly on new developments in the materials engineering, which are not a sure thing beyond the immediately forseeable future).

It has always happened, and there is an immense pool of technological improvements in the pipeline of research right now, waiting for replication, viabilization, industrialization, marketization. These things take time, like ten years, so if you do see news about breakthroughs in solar power today (almost every day really), then you do know that evolution in the product per se is guaranteed for the next ten years, at least.

Batteries will, for example, improve astonishingly in the next ten years, given the current research pipelines.

I can see biolsolar replacing photovoltaic technologies; in neither case can I see them as dominant players in the energy market.  For sustainable personal use, yes, but these are not technologies to power the industries on which we are all dependent.

That I cannot say or unsay. It really depends upon the systems in use. If information technologies get to a point where they are ultra smart about how, where and when power is allocated, the problems of solar will be managed by very clever AIs on the go. I do not know the potential of this. Having said this, of course that base line power like coal, nuclear, gas or even oil are much more stable than wind or solar.

And yet they still function the same way, with the same downfalls.  The materials are still toxic, they still require huge tracts of land, and they are still defeated by climate and environmental conditions (you linked an article that's getting lost in this mess of a reply, but it talks about deterioration due to the sun as if it's the only maintenance cost for solar; sand and dust is enormously destructive, and the world's industrial areas are located where you deal with sand, dust, wind, and snow).

So what? Every energy production has its flaws and problems. Look at Japan, it's a train wreck, and yet I'm very for nuclear. We should always make an economic analysis that takes in consideration all its vectors, and sure, maintenance is costly.

Kosh answered this post appropriately.

No, no he didn't. And there's an evidence against his point. If his point had any validity whatsoever, we wouldn't have seen the evolution we saw in solar. Specially when it was so damned expensive. But we did. So his point is moot, and even increasingly so, as solar gets more and more closer to being competitive.

Land space is already at a premium in many locations.

Urban speculation has nothing to do with energy supply.

This also ignores the reality of finding appropriate placement in areas which have low or difficult lighting conditions.  Wind faces the same problem.  It's not the size of the mills that is problematic in North America, it's the sheer number and density of the tower placement.  Solar is going to be much the same.  Most of the northern hemisphere doesn't have a whole lot of optimal solar placement just lying around where no one is going to care.

You live in a bad example, so I'll forgive you for making such a big mistake. Most cities live in favorable conditions. You don't need that all of them are favorable.

Technological innovation is a means to an end, not a solution unto itself.  Until that technology becomes practically feasible - and it's not on the foreseeable horizon - I'm going to leave my skeptic's hat firmly in place.

But tell you what, if I'm mounting solar panels on my roof in 15-20 years, I'll arrange them to spell the words "Luis was right" if I have the room

Take a picture of that and send it to me then!

And sorry for the format of the replies. I'm a bit tired right now .

[MP-Ryan]

OK, I'm going to start point-forming this because this format is rapidly becoming tiresome.  First, all your points:

But computers are not half as bad as they were. Problem has more to do with the scale of things going up. I'd make a wild unsupported guess that the recent miniaturization of pcs (now people buy laptops instead of big towers, slim TFTs instead of CRTs, iPads instead of laptops, etc.) has got to have some effect on e-waste.

Now you're just bull****ting me. What does solar have to do with Ballard's shenanigans? The trend of solar has been remarkably stable for the past 30 years now, and there's no reason why it should stop. All the fundamentals seem pointed to more and more efficiency. I provide you data and you provide me sneers. There is simply no comparison in the quality of our analysis.

I have always had good judgement on these things, and I dissed out hydrogen long long ago.

The differences between our visions of the future couldn't possibly be more different. Current "middle class" of developed countries are being pressed by the surge of this giant mass of people trying hard to get into "middle class". Should I present you data about the economic surge of the last decade by the entire globe? Remarkably, this was the decade where the world grew faster than ever before, even with the 2008 shock. The world is now climbing at an astonishing pace, and I should be in the least favorable point of view to be able to see this, since I live in ****ing Portugal.

There is no deceleration. And this means that the third world is demanding an exponentially bigger slice of the energy cake. If you do not know this, what on earth are you even doing in this thread?

ROFL. What? The first one is about how a technical hurdle was overcome and efficiency improved, another was about how a technique employed by plants was replicated by mechanical analogues. This type of thing happens every day. Things which I am fairly educated about, I do have competent feeds on my browser about the best of the best of this stuff. They do not show anything remotely working right now. Only lab tests. Try again.

A sentence based on an emotion, since there is nothing rational residing in it. You are basically saying that a thing that is still theoretical and some parts of it are being tested in a lab is in a better position than proven, working technology to conquer the world in 15 years. Sorry, that isn't rational.

I know what you are saying, but you give zero evidence for this hypothesis.

The articles I linked are far more optimistic than myself, predicting that solar will outstrip the rest of the energy industry in the last part of this decade. I'm really being conservative here.

It has always happened, and there is an immense pool of technological improvements in the pipeline of research right now, waiting for replication, viabilization, industrialization, marketization. These things take time, like ten years, so if you do see news about breakthroughs in solar power today (almost every day really), then you do know that evolution in the product per se is guaranteed for the next ten years, at least.

Batteries will, for example, improve astonishingly in the next ten years, given the current research pipelines.

That I cannot say or unsay. It really depends upon the systems in use. If information technologies get to a point where they are ultra smart about how, where and when power is allocated, the problems of solar will be managed by very clever AIs on the go. I do not know the potential of this. Having said this, of course that base line power like coal, nuclear, gas or even oil are much more stable than wind or solar.

So what? Every energy production has its flaws and problems. Look at Japan, it's a train wreck, and yet I'm very for nuclear. We should always make an economic analysis that takes in consideration all its vectors, and sure, maintenance is costly.

No, no he didn't. And there's an evidence against his point. If his point had any validity whatsoever, we wouldn't have seen the evolution we saw in solar. Specially when it was so damned expensive. But we did. So his point is moot, and even increasingly so, as solar gets more and more closer to being competitive.

Urban speculation has nothing to do with energy supply.

You live in a bad example, so I'll forgive you for making such a big mistake. Most cities live in favorable conditions. You don't need that all of them are favorable.

-The e-waste problem is due to proliferation of consumer technology and lack of adequate infrastructure in the disposal/recycling industry to presently deal with it.  It's expensive, and involves shipping waste all over the world.

-The point with Ballard's tech is comparative; speculation abounded from the early 90s onward that technological breakthrough is just around the corner.  People, yourself included, are saying the same about solar.  The point is that one cannot accurately predict the advancement of technology decades in advance... which is what you (and the people you've linked to) are doing based primarily on economic trend analysis.

-Given that I have a degree in sociology and a number of my classes included demography, I'm sticking with my vision of future class structure.  The demographic pyramids for Africa, in particular, bear me out.  Energy needs will increase, but we aren't going to see wealth increases in the third world, and indeed the wealth of the middle class in the first world is rapidly being eroded.  You referred to a middle class increasing in size; it isn't.  Energy demand is going up, but its not related to middle class expansion.

-The first link explains how the process by which chlorophyll converts sunlight to useable energy has been co-opted to power hydrolysis.  That simple demonstration is fully capable of burying traditional solar power provided it can be scaled beyond the lab.  Given the experiment was performed in 2008, I'd say time is on their side.  That's an inorganic technique, incidentally, and doesn't take into account efforts to utilize chlorophyll molecules or their analogues directly.  For someone who is arguing that future innovation is finally going to make solar practical, it seems awful strange you're deriding a technique only a few years old for being in the lab stages.

-Your proven technology isn't  Your whole premise is that the state of solar in 15-20 years will make it feasible.  At present, solar is not sustainable.  Again, derision for biosolar research seems misplaced in this context.

-The statement about potential of biosolar is speculation, as is your entire premise that solar will suddenly be a viable wide-scale technology in 15-20 years.  Economic forcasts are not proof-positive of a certain outcome, nor is the evidence that biosolar works.  We're both guessing.

-The articles that you linked are predicated on economic forecasts and are contigent on advancements in materials engineering and efficiency (and none of them address the environmental concerns of metals composition, I might add).  That's nothing more than educated guesswork; and given how well economic forecasting works long term (that is, it doesn't), I'm skeptical.

-Whenever anyone anyone says technological innovation and advancement in anything is guaranteed for 10 years, that's usually a good indication to start selling stock.  Nothing contigent on innovative breakthroughs is a guarantee.

-The second you mentioned clever AIs managing power distribution, this conversation became pointless.  Let me stop the back and forth right here.

You're arguing that solar is the future because of the state it will be in 15-20 years from now.  I'm arguing that predictions of the future advancements in solar are vastly overblown, and that the only way solar power will ever be feasible on a sustainable scale (for all purposes other than industrial) is with significant advances in biosolar technology, the preliminary technical hurdles for which have been solved.

Neither of us can be proven right nor wrong on these points because we're talking about forecasting the future.  And as I mentioned a while back, predictions for the future beyond the immediate short term usually make the people doing the predictions look foolish.  So, by all means feel free to carry on thinking that solar is the wave of the future, and I'll just leave my skeptics hat firmly in place.

[Kosh]

No, no he didn't. And there's an evidence against his point. If his point had any validity whatsoever, we wouldn't have seen the evolution we saw in solar. Specially when it was so damned expensive. But we did. So his point is moot, and even increasingly so, as solar gets more and more closer to being competitive.

So enormous government subsidies has nothing to do with its development? I don't recall that happening with computers in the 80's.

Since you haven't taken my point about the ISS, I'll tell you about it, quoting from wikipedia.

The ISS now has the full complement of eight solar array wings.

Each of the Solar Array Wings are 34 m (112 ft) long by 12 m (39 ft) wide, and are capable of generating nearly 32.8 kW of DC power.

And now for it's batteries

The power storage system consists of a Battery Charge/Discharge Unit (BCDU) and two nickel hydrogen battery assemblies.

Each battery measures 40” by 36” by 18” and weighs 375 pounds.[6]

And that is to just give it power for 35 minutes. Now imagine what it would take to give a city on Earth enough power to keep it going for 8 hours at night.

[bobbtmann]

And that is to just give it power for 35 minutes. Now imagine what it would take to give a city on Earth enough power to keep it going for 8 hours at night.

Somehow I don't feel like coming across a hurdle is a reason to stop with solar. The sun's energy hits the earth whether or not we feel like gathering it. It outputs a lot of energy in a small amount of time. It's also VERY sustainable, for a few billion years anyway.

It just seems inevitable that solar energy is the way to go. Very inevitable.

[Flipside]

Not really been following the conversation (since my computer is out of action), but when it comes to Solar Power, there's an interesting application of it here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13392408

This sort of thing on a single seater basis I can understand, but I'm not certain how well the technology would scale up.

[headdie]

It seems to be the new fad in round the world racing, now that we have balloons out of the way.  I remember reading about it somewhere a couple of years back i think it was that one of the British players in the balloon race was building a solar plane to make a round the world attempt.

[Mustang19]

Energy needs will increase, but we aren't going to see wealth increases in the third world, and indeed the wealth of the middle class in the first world is rapidly being eroded.  You referred to a middle class increasing in size; it isn't.

Only in the US, and it's stagnation not erosion. In the rest of the civilized world, income inequality has been stable for decades.