Some of the best arguments against the US capping CO2 can be summed in a single word.  These words are: India, China, Brazil and Indonesia.  The long winded version of these arguments go something like this:

Even if the US and Europe cut emissions by 100% there are still 3+ billion people, half the world living in the in those countries and they are increasing their CO2 at a stagering pace.  The cost of “green energy” is so much higher than carbon based energy that these and other developing countries will chose the cheaper carbon choice.

So, what can be done about this?  Should we subsidize these developing countries so they go with green power? Should we give up?  The short answer is that we (North America, Europe, Japan, Korea) need to push for deployment and development of wind, sun and hydropower solutions at home, now.  We need to help reduce the cost of these technologies, by supporting this young industry. 

Yes, the old rules of the marketplace work here, the more solar and wind generation is deployed, the faster the cost of these power sources decline.  The early affect of Germany’s efforts to encourage solar and wind power has helped to both reduce the cost of solar panels and wind turbines with increased the demand for these technologies. Much in the way that VCRs, PCs, microchips and Flat Panels have dropped in pricing as a result of increased demand and sales, economies of scale and competition, solar and wind technologies have followed that model.  When the cost of these new technologies create power for less than the cost of fossil fuels, we’ll see developing countries choose green.

So if you want to keep the developing world from building 1000s of fossil fuel power plants, tens of millions of gas powered vehicles and 100s of millions of carbon burning homes, it’s best to encourage the developed world to increase the speed of green energy deployments here.  Let’s hope the US either leads the way, or follows germany’s lead.  Fortunately with the exit of the Bush administration, the US has gotten out of the way.

Southern California Edison (SCE) announced it’s lauch of what will the the largest solar installation in the USA.  The project will install 250 Megawatts of solar panels using 65 million sq. ft. of roof space on the companies buildings.  The project should provide power to over 162,000 homes and will cost about $875 million over 5 years.  The project requires approval by the state utility regulator, which appears to be a formality. 

“The scale of this project is unprecedented,” said Mike Peevey, California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) president. “It clearly illustrates once again Edison’s leadership position in the development of new renewable technology.”

The projects will be focused on San Bernardino and Riverside counties and will add capacity at the rate of 1 Megawatt a week.  The SCE spokesperson pointed out that this new capacity will located and connected to local power stations. Generating power nearer to the customer not only reduce losses from transmission but reduces the strain on SCE’s entire network.

According to an article in The New Zealand Herald of 12/04/07, “Europe is considering plans to spend more than £5 billion ($13.5 billion) on a string of giant solar power stations along the Mediterranean desert in northern Africa and the Middle East. More than a hundred of the generators, each fitted with thousands of huge mirrors, would generate electricity to be transmitted by undersea cable to Europe and then distributed across the continent to EU member nations. Billions of watts of power could be generated, enough to provide Europe with a sixth of its electricity needs and to allow it to make significant cuts in its carbon emissions. At the same time, the stations would be used as desalination plants to provide desert countries with desperately needed supplies of fresh water.”  The technique used will be the CSP or “concentrating solar power” model which has a hollow water-filled metal tower surrounded by mirrors which focus the sun’s rays on it. Water is turned to steam and powers turbines which make electricity.

This is a similar but slightly different approach to the one being taken by Ausra Inc, which is set to begin construction on giant solar thermal power plants in the US. With backing from venture capitalists, Ray Lane of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems Inc. (JAVA ), Pacific Gas and Electric and Florida Light and Power. The utilities have committed to solar plants that will produce 1,000MW within the decade. Starting with a 10MW Florida plant, the group’s plan is to go to 300MW for FLP. For the Pacific Group, Ausra will start with a 175MW plant. The reason the investors and utilities are willing to invest in this project is because of the technology that Ausra believes will take the cost down below ten cents per KW.

Khosla is so impressed that he predicts that the technology, which uses flat mirrors instead of parabolic mirrors, will revolutionize renewable energy both in the US and developing countries like China and India. Johh O’Donnell, the man responsible for bringing the investors together became interested in the design while reading a paper by University of Sydney professor David Mills. Unlike the nine power stations built in the 1980’s by Israeli company Luz Corp, Mill’s plan uses flat not parabolic mirrors. The Israeli power plants in the Mojave Desert are still generating 354 MW of electricity but costs never fell below 16 cents a KW, which didn’t impress investors. Mill’s design uses the heat of the sun, directly, to make steam from the water instead of oil as Luz did. Mill’s mirrors are cheaper to build and rugged enough to withstand hurricane force winds,
according to an article in Business Week, in October of 2007.

For as long as i can remember (that would be the 1960’s), Israel has taken advantage of the hot, Middle Eastern sun, mainly as a source for making hot water.  Since then, Israel has moved from a developing country, focusing in labor intensive industries such as agriculture and industry, to a leading high tech center.  Today’s Israel rivals the world in technological industries and economic growth.  It receives more U.S. patents (1325 in 2006) than dozens of countries including Belgium, Finland, Spain, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Singapore, China and Hong Kong.  Yet his high tech success,  hasn’t really Israeli society to implement a solar generating industry.

Recently the CBC reported on Israeli professor David Faimen and his recent research in solar electric generation.  Dr. Faimen has found that by concentrating sunlight onto a standard photovoltiac cell, he has increased output by over 1000 times.  Think mirrors and lenses.  Currently a US based power plants uses mirrors to concentrate light on tubes that move a thermal liquid which is used to make steam to power the turbines that make electricity.

Rather than using the heat to boil water, they focused on ”… concentrating the light a thousand times, we were able to produce 1,500 watts from a cell that normally gives only one watt,” Faiman explains.  If this technology proves affordable, suddenly a home owner could generate the 5 kw needed to power a house from area much smaller than todays panels. In fact Faiman believes that his techonology could generate over 80 Megawatts, per sq kilometer, or enough to power over 16,000 homes.

From The Lab to Production

Not only is Israel involved in photovoltaic research, they’re are actively involved in large scale commercial solar procuction, thru the work of Solel Solar Systems, Ltd. of Bait Shemesh (House of Sun) Israel.  Solel is best known for having built the 9 solar fields in Californian, using mirrors to collect solar heat to boil steam for turbines. The company was recently awarded a contract to deliver a 1 million mirror collection facility covering 6000 acres and generating electricity for over 400,000 families.

Strangely enough, there are no such plants in Israel and none are planned.  So while the Israeli solar industry is building state of the art plants in the US, they aren’t selling their products at home.

If you read this blog religiously, which of course everyone should, you heard me discuss the use of a solar “chimney” designed to use a downdraft to push turbines.  The idea being: Spray water over the top opening of the chimney and the cold air generated by evaporation will drop to the bottom of the stack, creating a vacuum that will cause a downdraft.  This is a new and untested idea, but the solar chimney is not.

The “Solar Chimney” runs in reverse, a tall tower can be attached to a greenhouse like, heat sync, which would cause the heated air to rise in the stack producing an updraft thru the tall stack. Placing turbines at/near the bottom of the stack will generate electric power as the tower sucks the warmed air up the stack.  Also called a solar updraft tower, this technology has been tested.  The tower, built by Germany, in Spain was 195 meters high, with a stack with a diameter of 10 meters.  The collection greenhouse covered 11 acres and could generate a maximum of 50 kW, it ran from 1983 until 1989, when it was shutdown due to structural damage from the vortices caused by the updraft. 

Scientists today, envision a much larger tower that is capable of generating 40 MW of electricity, enough to power about 40,000 homes. Unfortunately, estimates for the cost of building such a plant, lead to estimates that range from an affordable 7 cents per Kw/hrs to an unacceptable rate of 35 cents per Kw/hrs.  Much of the cost can be attributed to the cost of land, glazing and labor needed to build a collector “greenhouse” that covers nearly 2 sq/miles.

While not a solar chimney, this updraft concept can, in theory use any heat source to cause the updraft.  This technology should be viable anywhere/anyplace/anytime that the ambient temperature is lower than the heat being sent up the chimney.  Whether this can be financially feasable, it seems quite straight forward from the standpoint of physics and civil engineering.

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.

Kyocera announced a plan to double their Solar Panel production by 2011.  The $250 Million investment will increase annual capacity from 240 megawatts of panels annually to 500 million megawatts in the next three years.  Eventhough the plant ran at 75% of capacity due to a shortage of of silicon wafers, used to manufature photovoltaices and as the bases for chips.  This shortage is expect to end in 2008.

The increase in production in the next couple of years has been widely anticipated for a couple of years as a result of expansion by silcon wafer suppliers to meet rapidly increasing demand. While it’s clear that the sales of panels will increase, it’ unclear if the increased supply will help reduce the street price. It’s my opinion, that demand will outstrip capacity until the majority of buildings worldwide are outfitted with panels.  The question isn’t whether to use solar panels, the only question is when is energy payback rate is high enough

Last week 2 german solar manufacturers opened US offices, with a goal of participating in the US market. The first to announce, SolarMarkt, of Freiburg Germany: A subsidiary based in Oakland California to help bring there solar cell products to the US.  The second German solar company to announce a new US presence, CENTROSOLAR from Munich will establish a subsidiary based in Phoenix Arizona, to mark its entry into the US market.

The market for photo electric generation is rapidly expanding and even accelerating as fear of both global warming and rising prices for hydrocarbon fuel sources, combines with expanded and improved manufacturing to spur growth in demand.

The Germans are Coming - Welcome to America, come soak in the sun.

For anyone into Photovoltaics and from the midwest, it’s not surprising to hear that there is a solar soul in Detroit.  The Solar Soul of Detroit is none other than Stan Ovshinsky, founder and leader(he recently stepped down as president) of Engery Conversion Devices, now Ovonics of Rochester Michigan. Today Ovonics and Ovshinsky are focused on battery, fuel cell and hydrogen storage technology.

Energy Conversion Devices was once, best known as the company that built a nearly $1 billion solar panel manufacturing for a consortium of oil companies, who later abandoned the project, leaving ECD as sole owner of this new breakthru for manuafacturing an “endless” ribbon of flexible solar panels, at the lowest prices yet.

 Less well know is that Ovshinsky patented the materials and process of applying the photosensitive metalic coatings used in laser printer drum to capture output, collect toner and deposit onto the paper where heat fuses the toner and paper. This technology was licensed by Canon Corp. and used to create the first cartridge based laser printer offered to consumers, in the early 1980s.

Though originally from Akron Ohio, Stan Ovshinksy, now 85, never finished school and was trained as a machinist and earned his first patent in that field.  Since then he’s become a force in materials, electricity and more.  Britain’s Economist Magazine asked if he was “The Edison of Our Age”.  He is the Solar Soul of Detroit.

Well, maybe not my weight problem or disease, or war, but it can solve pollution and green house gas emissions.  As always, i preface this next party by saying: Assuming the Manufacturing and Delivery of Solar Cells is Environmentally neutral.

Solar electricity is the cleanest, least dangerous source of electricity on the planet earth.  Solar does not, energy from weather and gravitational forces, reducing the flow and affect of that phenomenon downstream, the way, wind, wave and current schemes do. In other words, if you take energy from the gulf stream, less warm current ends up in Europe, for example, causing cooling and a new ice age.  Solar appears to have no such deleterious effect.

Rather than absorbing and transfering the energy of motion, solar cells use the Photovoltaic effect to convert the suns energy into a stream of electrons to power our world. A solar cell, which most resembles an integrated circuit (the silicon wafer inside, the hard package we think of as the chip) like those in our computers, phones and TVs, can produce electricity for decades.  Today there are a variety of solar electric panels that allow homes and businesses to be powered via solar electricity.  Due to the existence of night and cloudy days it is paramount that solar powered buildings are connected to the power grid in a two way relationship, to insure the buildings are powered 24/7 without the financial and resource costs required of storage batteries .  Additionally, solar has the potential to solve the most pressing electric problem throughout the world: surges in electric uses in response to hot weather.  Solar electric buildings reduce the draw on the grid and help provide additional power during daytime surges, reducing the need for additional fixed power plants by the grid operators.

Solar Electricity Solves All! - Well a lot.  We just solved the need for more power plants, help reduced the amount of power generated from hydrocarbons and help make homes and buildings that are more able to handle disruptions in service by the electric grid providers. 

Click here for: More on the Science of Solar Electricity

A Sun Powered Dream that is coming true today. 

Little Miss Sunshine