This week i was lucky enough to notice that WTVS, my local PBS station had scheduled a Nova, local programming and a Scientific Amerian Frontiers episode, all focused on solar energy.  There is a website on the PBS site devoted to: Nova: “Saved by the Sun”.  This special walks you thru the solar industry from it’s start in the oil crisis of the 1970’s thru today where it’s being debated as to whether it is a partial or complete solution to our global warming problems.  You see the US’s first and only powerplant using solar thermal heat (located in Kramer Junction, CA) to run electric turbines and the latest in solar technology today.

A number of experts try to rain on my solar parade by claiming that solar is a partial solution, a solution that only works during “sunny days” or a “solution for rich people”.  Most of this rhetoric is a bunch of….. compost. Sure the sun doesn’t shine at night, so we use the solar electricity during the daylight to make hydrogen gas to fuel traditional style generators at night.  Water can be pump up hill into reseviors using solar electricity and run back downhill to create hydroelectric power during dark parts of the day.  My local station went onto to discuss expansion with United Solar Ovonics, part of ECD the home of Detroit’s favorite Sun: Stan Ovshinsky, with it’s CEO.  The plan is to quintuple, production of their flexible solar electric modules to 300 megawatts by 2009.  This is good news for solar power and good news for the world.

The final program of the evening, featured Alan Alda spending time with Stan Ovshinsky and learning about Ovonics panels and it’s Solid Hydrogen storage system.  It seems that while United Solar’s panels are not the most effective cells in high sunlight conditions, they do produce electricity from the sun, even in rain and cloudy weather.  Best of all, they’re smaller, thinner, lighter and more flexible than stand panels and as Ovshinsky demoed, they can produce electricity with a dozen holes drilled through a 2 sq ft panel of the material.  With Germany being the leading solar market in the world, it’s certainly possible that places like metro Detroit, with ECD inc. leading the way, can lead solar adoption in the US.  Solar Cells that work in gray days, what a perfect solution from a company that’s headquartered in the midwest.