Solar energy for the planet, would be the tech to get the world's economy going again. As the Automobile did in the last century.

I can name several potential solar breakthroughs.

First, anyone can focus more sunlight on a PV panel, multiplying the power per panel by a factor of, say, 10. We need a PV panel that takes the extra heat. One possibility on the market is a translucent PV panel that converts 10% of the light into electricity and lets the other wavelengths through the back (where it might be used for heating water.

Everyone's focused on getting 1% more power out of sunlight. The real money is in producing panels more cheaply.

Solar panels on auto roofs don't work because of vibration problems. Damping the vibrations would really help a hybrid's mileage.

For now, the real money in large-scale solar electricity is in nonphotovoltaic power generation AND heat storage for evening and 7:00 a.m. generation.

A 'leaf shaped' solar cell? What will they think of next - a tree? But this thing would be good to put in car windows to keep the battery charged. Using bugs and bacteria to make hydrogen fuel sounds like a winner to me.

the oil boys are wetting their pants right now. GO SOLAR!!! GO CLEAN ENERGY! rip dirty energy technologies(coal, oil, nuclear)

Yeah but.....

What are solar cells made of? Where is that resource being extracted from?

Solar panels on more and more roof-tops? Isn't more rooftops part of our problem?

Are we still not looking at our way of life? Isn't this a huge part of the problem.

This all sounds like a rush to fund a technology that will allow us to keep doing what we do - consume, extract, destroy the land, the water, the air, life.....

We were destroying the planet long before industrial civilization. Long before oil.

We cannot keep expanding civilized human habitat. Humans cannot exist without a healthy thriving landbase which means "wilderness". In order to keep developing technology, one must continue to destroy the landbase.

While I will use solar, I think we need to be asking some harder questions than "Can I still drive to the grocery store, watch TV, or use a washiing machine after oil is unavailable, or because solar is "cleaner" than nuclear?"

It takes a lot more fossil fuels to go nuclear/cancer forever.

Only sort of related...

A Russian Astronomer once came up with a scale for rating how advanced a civilization is. A Type I civilization would be able to harness all of the sun energy that falls on their planet; a Type II could harness all of the sun energy in their solar system; a Type III can harness all of the solar energy in their galaxy.

We appear to have a ways to go yet.

The article did not mention Nanosolar, a company with Google investment, which prints sun sensitive cells onto sheets of material, making the manufacture of sola panels about a fifth of the cost of conventional panels. Look it up, ye who are interested.

It's a real beauty...a Japanese cutie..

*kisses her cheek* so this is ONE positive outcome of high oil prices, research/production toward fuel efficiency and alternative tech. the oil corps wont be able to control this future tech-flowering.

Well? Let's give it all a chance and quit worrying about commercial availability ! Big Oil didn't go commercial overnight. It took years to improve and back in those days, science wasn't stifled unlike today. Now let's get cracking !

punkassbeeotch,

One word. HEMP ! HEMP could definitely be used in place of fossil fuels to produce more durable and reliable solar panels. And since HEMP can easily replace fossil fuels 100%, are you ready to join us in SHUTTING DOWN THE "WAR ON DRUGS" ?

I fail to see how being entirely dependent on a limited supply of ancient stored solar energy is more logical than using it as it hits the earth every day.

I like the idea of breaking sunlight into its spectra and then focusing the different colors on panels uniquely attuned to that particular color.

As for Punkassbeotch, we already have the rooftops. No one is proposing that we build more rooftops just to put solar panels on them.

While it is true that the earth has a certain carrying capacity, that depends on the way it is used. Easter Island, for example, went to hell with a lot fewer people per area than we can sustainably support now. As long as people insist on reproducing, we will still need to find technology that will allow them to live.

Bush's program to arrest population growth by killing large numbers of people of reproducing age and prior is not a viable strategy because his method also damages a lot of the environment so the survivors are not able to be productive. His idea of using depleted uranium is somewhat better because the effects are more widespread and are not restricted to pop. growth in the country being attacked. It also reduces population growth in the country doing the attacking by affecting the reproductive abilities of their soldiers.

I also like his idea of using market manipulation to starve people because of high food prices. Not only will they die of starvation, but the survivors will also be less fertile so they will produce fewer kids. And you thought there was no method to his madness.

I love the irony of "cheap energy" derailing the Carter administration ambitions to implement solar energy by 2000. I guess you pays us now, or you pays us later. Our economic model rewards short-sightedness and punishes vision. If it doesn't make money today, they won't invest in it, even if the pay off is potentially huge -- but a decade away. The true cost of our fiddling will be so much more than if we'd started in the 1970s doing what is obvious we must do to ensure a world in which humans can survive.

BUBBASOUTH

wastin away again in 'solarpanelville'................

The idea to concentrate, or magnify the Sun's radiation onto a photovoltaic cell is not new. That has been going on for a few years. The problem they have been trying to solve come with the extreme heat associated with focussed solar radiation (remember burning paper with the magnifying lens). There is a good deal of promise for IBM's method of cooling microprocessors when applied to focussed solar radiation on photovoltaic cells - more power in small spaces.

Remember that solar to hydrogen is the ticket. Use solar energy to split the water molecule it is a more efficient means to store solar energy than lead acid batteries.

Please remember that America is a pseudo capitalist society (true capitalists don't take government subsidies and lobby for import tariffs, they just build superior products for the marketplace) when the market is there the technology will follow and visa versa. Support the solar market with a minimum investment in currently available products.

HYPERMILING

i wish you hadn't mentioned that 'only sort of related' information........i've just spent the better part of 10 minutes trying to figure out if we have the remotest possibility to make it to type 111, (barring famine/nuclear holocaust in the meantime) and i'm very despondent now.

If you want an energy industry that serves the public you have to have to shift your individual exchange/association toward those producers who intent to serve the public instead of enslave the public.

You can't have your socialist utopia until you start to carefully discriminate between the producers who serve the public and the producers who enslave the public.

Solar thermal may be better than PV and can produce electricity at night.

Cool, it's about time.

I bet the MIT research is never heard of again.

If you care to 'google' Nikola Tesla...this Czech scientist of the last century can tell you all about FREE solar energy. Powers that be saw to it that his ideas never went far. Pitty.

There was actually quite a lot of innovation and research done in the 70s, encouraged and supported by the Carter administration. It wasn't just cheap energy that derailed those efforts. It was a conscious choice by the anti-visionary Reaganites to turn away from them. Symbolically, Reagan removed the solar panels Carter had installed on the White House roof. We have fallen so far behind where we could be, by not continuing. Better late than never.

Many of our solar needs don't involve electricity production. Just gather solar heat efficiently, store it efficiently and don't lose too much.

"Now let's get cracking !"

Grumble, I like to goof off too much.

The justification for a massive effort to swap renewable energy for fossil energy is colossal:

1) Fossil fuels are finite and diminishing.
2) The supply of oil cannot meet world demand at current rates of consumption.
3) New oil will prolong the short supply only temporarily.
4) Petroleum is a vital and strategic resource and usage needs to be conserved for future generation's needs.
5) Coal converted to transportation fuel is expensive and energy inefficient.
6) Shale oil and oil sands are also expensive to produce and are energy inefficient.
7) US energy needs are 70% dependent on foreign supplies, many are unfriendly, and the region is unstable.
8) Foreign dependency requires a vast expenditure of national assets to protect our interests both in money and lives.
9) Foreign dependency requires a foreign policy that fosters anti-American sentiments and hostile retaliations.
10) Competition for oil supply is causing an upward spiraling of costs and because energy is related to virtually all commodities and services the result of increasing oil costs is increasing inflation around the world.
11) America's inordinate use of energy is causing a devaluation of our money and weakening of our global economic position.
12) The nations that seriously address these issues and find adequate solutions will gain economic strength and power to overcome global discord caused by these problems.
13) Conversion of fossil fuels to energy causes air and water pollution resulting in serious health problems.
14) Scientific evidence is strong that fossil energy is causing global warming and cannot be ignored any longer.
15) The technology is available now that offers many excellent alternative energy solutions that will minimize energy costs and contribute greatly to strengthening our economy and diminishing CO2 emissions.

Any of these fifteen justifications would be enough to spur us into action, but when they are viewed together they are overwhelming.

Americans should not wait on political or government sponsored solutions. Science, corporate America, investment capitalists, the media, universities, and the people should work aggressively toward the solutions. An example of how this has already started is wealthy oilman T. Boone Pickens who has invested ten billion dollars in building the world's largest wind farm that will generate 4000 megawatts of electricity. Mr. Pickens is also taking a leadership role in educating Americans on the perils of doing nothing and is presenting a plan for attacking the problem. There are others who are advocating switching to electric vehicles at an accelerated pace, but I am not aware of a key figure leading the way to accomplish this.

Transportation vehicles, including the family car are responsible for by far the most oil consumption and it is only logical that we should concentrate our efforts where they will do the most good in the shortest possible time. According to one report I read, if 20% of our vehicles were electrified, it would only add 1% to our electrical usage. If most of that was used at night while charging the battery, it would have nearly zero impact on electrical costs. A twenty percent reduction of gasoline powered vehicles would reduce our usage by about 24 billion gallons a year. It would be the start we need to see this revolution all the way through.

Getting started is the difficult part. There is a lot of politics and special interest that do not want any change at all in the way we drive. They want to continue pumping gas for at least another 20 years or as long as they can drag it out. They want time to find a solution that will allow them to continue pumping some kind of fuel such as hydrogen they can charge you for. The electric vehicle is not what they want for our future. They have already started an expensive propaganda campaign to convince Americans to be patient and wait for the ultimate hydrogen vehicle. They have accepted the hybrid, because it is 90% gasoline engine and 10 % electrically driven. Although hybrid cars have improved and may continue to do so, it is only an interim solution.

The special interests, primarily oil companies, have purchased patents and manufacturing rights on battery designs. They use their power to slow the process down, make available choices too expensive for the average driver, and show you ugly little electric cars you would never buy. They tell you that you can only drive 40 miles between charges and that current battery designs are dangerous and safe solutions are years away -- all untrue.
This is why we need a leader with clout, respectability, and credibility who will fearlessly take on any who get in the way. This is too important to America and the world.

P E A C E F R E A K,

Thank you, a great job putting it in perspective.

I suspect that actual nationalization ( or the threat ) of the__B I G _ O I L __ C o m p a n i e sWould either acquire directly or allow the breaking loose of a lot of those patents … "voluntarily".

It's criminal, and has been for a century or more

Namaste « Presence »
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world » — Gandhi
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed » — Gandhi
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — ML King

punkassbeeotch July 11th, 2008 2:31 pm said: "We cannot keep expanding civilized human habitat. Humans cannot exist without a healthy thriving landbase which means "wilderness". In order to keep developing technology, one must continue to destroy the landbase."

Exactly. This point is never acknowledged by the technology positivists. They repeat the lie that all technology is neutral, that it is all in how it is used. This is a fundamental and dangerous myth in our culture. And the natural world in this framework has no value whatsoever, unless and until it impinges on some sector of the economy. Those things that do not currently have a price value are considered (and treated as if they are) worthless.

Peacefreak: I think that you have just presented in a nutshell the conventional thinking about energy in this country. I don't really see in your discussion any questioning of our energy usage. It is more or less taken as a given that we will continue to use the same amount (or more) of energy, and that the only real consequences of this are financial in nature. This is a common approach, but I think technology always serves those who control it, whether it is recognized or not.

On technical matters, electricity is a form of energy. It is not a source of energy. If you convert 20% of all cars to electric, you will have to generate that power using some source, and the power required will far exceed solar capacity. So this means coal, nuclear, LNG, or some other conventional fossil fuel. Also, hybrids are 100% gasoline powered. Again, electricity is not a source, it is a form of energy.

Solar cells themselves - at least the polycrystalline variety, are very energy intensive to produce. Last time I looked into this, it reportedly took several years before a solar panel returned as much energy as it took to produce. The real issue here is not absolute energy capacity, it the energy returned on energy invested, and so it is going to take a lot of FF resources to build up that infrastructure. That is almost always ingnored in these discussions.

veracity, finally I'm in agreement with you (and of course with Peacefreak)

---------
culicomorpha "If you convert 20% of all cars to electric, you will have to generate that power using some source, and the power required will far exceed solar capacity."

Not true. The solar energy hitting earth, is about 10,000 times more than all the energy needs of all humanity.

What is needed are cheaper solar panels, and a cheap / efficient way of storing it (Better batteries).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:USEnFlow02-quads.gif

This link gives a graphical depiction of energy production and usage in the US for 2002 from Lawrence Livermore. What is notable in this diagram is that roughly 68% of electricity produced in the US is wasted in the form of resistive losses in the transmission lines and in transformers, etc. It is interesting that for every watt you consume, roughly 3 watts much be produced, and so conservation is three times more efficient than production.

The second notable item is that 80% of the energy produced by burning petroleum is wasted. The third notable item is that the contribution from solar is so small that it is lumped together with biomass, waste, wood, geothermal and wind. i.e. there is no solar infrastructure of any significance.

By my calculations, based on the amount of non-farmland in the US, and using average efficiencies and solar insolation data for the US, roughly 10% of the non-farm land in the US would need to be covered with solar cells (with 8% efficiency) to produce the 97 quads of energy that were produced in 2002. This estimate makes a number of simplifying assumptions, like the panels are never blocked by obstructions, and that the cells are always perpendicular to the sun, not very realistic assumptions in practice. From a practical standpoint, this number would probably need to be doubled or tripled, and I seriously doubt such a thing is possible.

While it is all well and good to make the claim that lots of solar energy hits the Earth, producing the infrastructure to harness even a fraction of it is a task unparalleled in our history. It will take an enormous amount of energy, which anyone who studies these matters knows. Additional concerns relate to exotic materials used in newer cell designs, and the mining and refining processes associated with those materials and the subsequent damage to the environment.

For those of you who are complaining that what is required is a cheaper source of cells and storage, there is a reason that solar cells cost so much to make, and it is largely driven by the energy required to produce them. The refining operations to purify silicon is extremely energy consumptive, particularly the Czochralski process. And as for storage, as was mentioned above, probably splitting water to produce hydrogen is the most efficient, but hydrogen is very flammable and because of that dangerous. Battery efficiencies will always be comparatively low, for the same efficiency issues mentioned above, and have limited current density capacity and fairly short useful lifetimes with a limited number of cycles.

So at the end of the day, I say sure, go ahead and try to improve the technologies, but I am not buying into what I perceive as being a bit of fairy-tale telling. We would be much better off scaling back our energy usage, and in fact, this is going to happen for purely economic reasons anyway. What I was trying to point out in my previous post is how resistant people are to self-examination. We're always looking for the next big technological fix, and I think that's a cultural problem, not a technological one.

Solar energy hitting Earth is about 10 in the power of 17 Watts.
http://space.rice.edu/IMAGE/livefrom/sunearth.html

Thats one hundred million billion Watts. About 10,000 more than what we currently use.

This is the future energy source that can meet all our needs - if we develop the appropriate technology to harvest, store and distribute it.

Solar power may help back residential electricity. But it does not have the power density required by industry. It can't help too much with personal transportation either, at least not in the foreseeable future.

In America, about half of all the energy is used for commercial and industrial purposes. Transportation consumes another 30%. The remaining 20% (actually 21.4%) is used by residential consumers. (www.eia.doe.gov)

It is interesting to consider how energy economics might promote conservation more than alternative sources of energy. Rising gasoline prices will force changes in distribution and other services. So America might change from single-point distribution with personal transportation carriers, i.e., the Wal-Mart model, to distributed sources within walking distance or at points of high public transportation access; similar to Western Europe.

Inflation and the weak economy will help industry conserve energy by lowering production. The lower profit margins needed to meet the weaker dollar will favor resource conservation. Perhaps the easiest way solar energy can be used is to close up shop in the evening; simply operate only when there is light.

So we may be reaching a tipping point where energy costs limit productivity and the structure of American towns and cities. We need to remember the service-economy model that guided Clinton's economic policies. Similar tipping points have been reached throughout history. The population and goods distribution in Europe is geared toward conservation and minimizing energy costs as a consequence. America is relatively young and perhaps there are still lessons to be learned.

StephenB, a lot of similar points are make by Kunstler (http://www.kunstler.com/) and are hard to dispute. For sure Walmarts and their kin are going away, and the rich will migrate back to the cities and the poor will be trapped in the suburbs - the new slums. Europe really was fortunate to be developed to some degree before the oil age. America instead developed primarily under the assumption of limitless energy supplies, and now has an infrastructure that is poorly adapted to declining energy supplies.

As always seems to be the case, the wealthy will do fine, will be able to afford solar panels and more expensive food and other goods, and the poor will be in an even worse situation than they are now. The financial meltdown has raised questions of drastic civil unrest, a la a new civil war, and with current levels of inequality such a thing is not outside the realm of possibility. There are a lot of wildcards in a society so utterly dependent on energy and equally ignorant about the reality of that dependence.

Your ideas about changing the business model are good, although I wonder if you are European? My experience as an American is that business (and government for that matter) rarely do things that are good for the society as a whole. They have social Darwinism down to a science. Some of the things you suggest are happening, but they are being driven by personal choices, such as buying locally-produced food and shifting to lower energy lifestyles. Some of this is deliberate on the part of the better educated, but many people are stuck in situations that make conservation difficult, if not impossible.

I definitely agree about the potential of conservation. In a lot of ways, our lives would actually improve: millions of people have hour long commutes and the air quality will only get better as people drive less. There are a whole range of benefits that are off the table for discussion, and I think if those were better articulated and disseminated, there would be less fear and less need for technological fixes.

Culicomorpha, thanks for your support. I am, or try to be, a pragmatist. Sure, the earth and people might be better off without all of this technology, but we don't know that for sure. We can hypothesize with several different models and without spending much time on it, I can see that without technological advancements that make man more comfortable and able to live easier lifestyles that man might have stayed in the barbaric stage which history shows us as not very pleasant.
But, I think we agree that we cannot keep going in the direction we are now taking and the biggest mistake man ever made was to use petroleum products for energy. We must curtail this with speed and change over to energy methods that will not cause all of these problems that I mentioned.
Yes, I believe that we will continue to use as much energy in the future as we do now and that it will grow in proportion to population (another subject). I suggest that you explore a website named www.greencarcongress. It covers every possible way of using less fossil fuels and more alternatives. If you don't like science, you may not like what they have to offer.
I would like to thank everybody for participating in this subject -- your thoughts are important. If there is an answer it will come from us, not the government.

Peacefreak,
I'm not trying to rain on your parade, but I have been a practicing electrical engineer for the last 18 years. The practical and economic difficulties are so staggering, so immense that I first encourage people to rethink their basic assumptions about technology and what it practically can and cannot do. Revising our desires and our expectations about lifestyle costs nothing and can yield enormous benefits.

Oil has such an immense energy density, and the costs (both in energy and in dollars) have historically been so low that almost the entire growth of modern civilization would have been impossible without it. If all that energy had gone into producing a sustainable energy infrastructure, then many of the things you speak of maybe, possibly could have happened. But at this late hour, hysteresis means that we cannot go back and do it over again.

The other thing is that I have a background in environmental studies (I know, it is a weird combination of education) and one of the central problems that comes up in a lot of environmental discussions is this idea that the very thing that got us into trouble: technology, is now proposed as a solution to the very problems it created. I have been studying energy, resource usage patterns, and environmental changes for the last eight years, and have concluded that it is not possible to transition to a sustainable way of life at the current population, affluence, and technology levels. Something has to give, and it will.

So again, I say go ahead and try to make some of these things happen. I certainly do not argue that we should continue in the direction we are on now. But at the same time, I think one should not be unrealistic, and not take lifestyle choices related to energy and resource usage patterns off the table.

There are other arguments that suggest that we will not be using as much energy as we are now, and they are very compelling arguments, based on science. And apart from those arguments, with energy prices soaring there will be strong economic pressures to reduce energy usage. I think working under the assumption of continually growing energy supplies is very unrealistic.

Commondreams is now ACTIVELY censoring posts apparently. Revealed by my post not showing immediately as comments used to on their propaganda articles...

Anyhow. Solar panels costing more energy than they're worth is just a part of the problem with solar energy. What's more is their water cost, which it's been a while since I've read the estimate, but it's somewhere in the range of multi thousands of gallons to produce an inch by inch silicon wafer...

What's more is I've read that it will take 40+ years to produce an infrastructure to replace the fossil fuel infrastructure which is now quite literally running out of steam... Because it's runnning out of fuel.

So, we're all going green soon. Probably glowing green by nuclear catastrophe, because of the people we've empowered with our tax contributions and ignorance, but green one way or the other.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070917131753AAQHmOu

"The environmental cost is Negative in the production of most PV panels. This is a very common misconception about solar panels. Everyone thinks that because they don't create any waste by themselves that they are this ultimate clean energy source. Noone thinks about where the materials for the panel came from. The glass, metal, and all the little connectors used in assembling a solar panel don't take much energy to build but the actual Photovoltaic material DOES!

The vast majority of PV panels are made from silicon that is created in High pressure, high temperature ( 1650 degrees C ) machines. This method is very energy intensive and unfortunately the amount of energy it takes to produce that high quality silicon is more than the solar panels made from the silicon will ever be able to recover. Add on top of that all of the other processes to "dope" the silicon so it will transfer electrons and the cost just keeps rising.

To really understand you would need to look into the production of semiconductors. Here are some links to Wikipedia entries that will give you an idea of where to research. I don't have any exact numbers because semiconductor manufacturers don't tell us how much energy they consume so you would have to get a hold of one of their bills to really find out. But my semiconductor professor in college gave us an estimate that was a magnitude larger than the life time capacity of your average solar panel."

This is the water waste and other waste numbers for computer silicon chips the manufacturing of which is not far removed from silicon wafers used in solar panels:

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=3432

Semiconductor manufacturing is complex and may require several steps to complete the process, including design, crystal processing, wafer fabrication, final layering and cleaning, and assembly.

The production of every single six-inch silicon wafer uses the following resources:

* 3,200 cubic feet of bulk gases,
* 22 cubic feet of hazardous gases,
* 2,275 gallons of deionized water,
* 20 pounds of chemicals, and
* 285 kilowatt hours of electrical power.

And for every single six-inch silicon wafer manufactured, the following wastes are produced:

* 25 pounds of sodium hydroxide,
* 2,840 gallons of waste water, and
* 7 pounds of miscellaneous hazardous wastes.

When you consider that Intel's Rio Rancho, New Mexico facility can process 5,000 eight-inch silicon wafers in a single week, the environmental costs are staggering.

CloudAir Pollutants

* acid fumes
* volatile organic compounds
* toxic gases, including arsine

LakeWaste Stream Pollutants

* deionized water
* solvents
* alkaline cleaning solutions
* acids
* photoresists
* aqueous metals
* waste etchants
* waste aqueous developing solutions
* waste acqueous metals
* chromium

rocyahsoul July 14th, 2008 1:46 am:

A good reference for energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) for solar panels is http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy05osti/37322.pdf

Figures for energy payback currently range from 3 to 3.75 years for the panel to produce as much energy as it took to produce. The panel lifetime ranges from 26 to 29 years, so it is not a negative EROEI. Undoubtedly, they will improve this figure as new technologies are in the pipeline, but your points about water and pollutants are well taken.

It is difficult to assign a economic value to the environmental costs, and that is a major part of the problem with all technology. The scientists discover it, the engineers implement it, and then the environmental health doctors discover the health impacts thirty years later. But the problem is that all those costs are externalized to the public who get cancer, birth defects, or whatever. This is insanity.

There is no magic elixir folks. Sorry.

If you want to educate yourselves about energy issues, a good starting point is for further study is: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/