Re: ENERGY: State of the Art in Photovoltaics?

From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Mon Sep 11 2000 - 12:27:32 MDT


"Robert J. Bradbury" wrote:
>
> Well, since Greg asked the question and Mike and Eugene
> offered a couple of responses (very informative responses,
> but IMO wrong), I'll throw my 2 cents worth into the pot.
>
> The Dark Horse will win the race...
>
> Mike offered up a list of current technologies but missed
> several such a Cadmium Telluride, see:
> http://www.nrel.gov/ncpv/documents/thinfilm.html
> and the bibliography at
> http://www.nrel.gov/ncpv/eshbib.html
>
> Also missing is CuInSe2, being manufactured by Siemens
> apparently. See
> http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/solar/comparing_pv_arrays.htm
>
> While the efficiency on the thin film arrays is poor, the
> manufacturing cost advantages may win out. The area
> of most American roofs is large and if you can roll out
> electricity collectors as thin as plastic sheets on them
> you have a big win. Europe and Japan might have to go
> an alternate route.

Which is much as I said in my post. However, the average American roof (only
half of which is useful as a collector, the other half facing away from the sun
(and only if the home is lucky enough to have one side facing south. Facing east
and west is useless)) is around 12 x 5 meters, or 60 square meters. A 10%
efficient system that covers the entire roof, with no skylights, will generate 6
kilowatts ONLY at the peak period at noon. Power generation will begin at a very
low level around 7 am and end at about 7 pm, and increase along a bell curve up
and down through the day. Such a system will generate around 20-24 kilowatt
hours per day, assuming no cloudy weather. This is less than 10% of the power
needs of the average home.

>
> Now, then Mike in a burst of "go Space" enthusiasm, chimes
> in with:
>
> > How things will fall out is that by 2030 solar power sats will start
> > getting built, and an orbital network of MASER power transmission
> > systems will transport energy to key sites on each continent. Prime
> > location for the power sats will be at the Sun-earth L2 point, where
> > the sats will also act to reduce total flux reaching earth, thus helping
> > to offset any global warming effects whether they
> > be a result of pollution or Malenkovich Cycles.
> >
> > Fossil fuels will continue to be used for transportation beyond this point,
> > but not for static uses, although work will be done on using reverse fuel
> > cells to produce natural gas from electricity. Hydrogen will NOT be the
> > fuel of choice, due to its corrosive properties and low density.
>
> Rasberries...
>
> First of all if we don't have diamondoid nanotech by 2030, I will
> publically eat a hat (cotton please) at Extro 19 (assuming it is after
> 2030). If we have diamondoid nanotech, then space power satellites become
> irrelevant. (We will have the entire power output of the sun
> at our or "someones" disposal.)

You are assuming that people will *WANT* to do what you suggest. The arrival of
the nano-santa will result in people becoming more environmentally conservative
than ever, because they can *AFFORD* to be when the nano-santa is making
everything for them. Instead of what you suggest, there will be environmental
groups protesting to protect the sanctity of asteroids, Mars, Mercury, and
Venus, making arguments about the intrinsic rights of natural rock and other
such nonsense, and the sheeple will buy it because they can afford to not care
about exploration, expansion, and development when everyone's belly is full and
minds are numbed with VR delights of every kind. Doing ANY kind of non-natural
development on earth will eventually reach mortal sin levels of blasphemy
against the enviro-dogma.

>
> Eugene had a closer hit with his comments related to home based fuel cells.
> There are lots of sources of methane and ways to produce it from biomass
> or the sun. Fuel cell developers are pushing hard to get the sizes
> and costs down to something home owners would install (ala heat pumps).
> If the costs come down enough home owners will install these
> as an alternate energy source (avoiding brownouts that will
> strike the nationwide or global distribution nets because they
> don't build enough reserve capacity for extreme situations)
> then this may become Greg's solution to putting a smile on
> your face when the sun is roasting you (I may be hot but at
> least money is flowing into my bank account...).
>
> Worth noting is -- if you trust the nationwide "grid" approach then why
> are companies in California, such as Oracle, building their own power
> facilities?
>
> Homes can afford to lose power -- eBusinesses cannot!

California based companies are building their own power facilities because of a
couple factors, but mainly because California is currently a major power
importer, thus at the mercy of any outage elsewhere, and Y2K taught computer
people the wisdom that you can fix all the bugs in your own system, but if your
electricity goes out, you are still screwed.

NIMBY attitudes are causing a large amount of resistance to new power plants,
and if Sierra Club et al win out, Lake Powell will be drained, and the soutwest
will be in a significant power deficit.

Seattle went through this 8 years ago when the nuke plant in Oregon was phased
out. People bitched, whined, and complained, then bent over and proceeded to pay
30-50% more for power over a five year period. With electricity deregulation,
power costs are going up in California, as lower cost power in some regions is
instead being sold to higher price markets elsewhere in the country. Oracle, et
al are building their own power facilities to keep their own power costs down,
guarrantee delivery, and for redundancy.

>
> The *dark horse* will be based on light harvesting methods
> currently found in plants. Once these systems are cloned
> and available as easily manipulated laboratory tools, scientists
> will develop energy harvesting, storage and production systems
> based on biotechnology based self-replicating systems.
>
> Self-Replicating systems beat overcoming gravity. No contest.

You have to HAVE self replicating systems BEFORE they can beat overcoming
gravity. How much R&D do you think it will take?

>
> The market is clear -- you can have grass that you have to mow
> or you can have grass that pumps excess energy into the grid.
> Which do you prefer?

I always did hate mowing the grass.

>
> Mike, go back and do the calculations on how many sq meters of lawn
> are required to supply the electricty needs of a city like New York.
> I suspect the suburbanites win...
>
> While I would love to see the energy storage and retrieval aspects solved by
> high temperature superconductors, I suspect that they will first be
> solved by biotech (with horrible losses compensated for by the large
> collection areas enabled by self-replicating systems) and the subsequently
> improved upon by much more efficient systems based on diamondoid nanotech.
>
> Sorry if I burst any balloons.

Not at all. I'm just not kneeling at the altar of the nano-santa to solve my
problems for me. Lorrey's Law: Any technology more than 30 years is likely to
remain more than 30 years away for at least several generations beyond that.
While you do some great calculations, Robert, about the *possibilities*, you
fail to recognise that what you are calculating are in fact physical limits to
performance, and not the most likely performance. If real life followed your
calculations, the Roman Empire would have been settling Epsilon Eridani
centuries ago, and we'd be living in a Dyson Cloud of personal asteroids now.



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