Date: Tue Dec 20, 2005 3:03 am. By: Guest
Rhongh Dhongh wrote:
The remarks below were made on the Vortex list.
There is something to be said for doing what you think is right, even if it costs you more than not doing it.
That's what using solar panels and other alternative forms of energy amounts to.
People who do nothing but look at payback time for solar panels or other forms of alternative energy are missing the forest for the trees.
I suggest this is precisely the kind of woolly thinking that is holding solar technology back today. Its only when folk get a more grown up view on things (ie able to take more factors into account) that solar will shed its popular image of being technology for fools. There are cases today where solar PV makes sense, and many more cases where solar thermal makes good sense. The failure to adopt these solutions more is the direct result of the widespread belief that anything solar can not be taken seriously. We here might not see it that way, but 99% of the population does, rightly or wrongly.
When it comes to missing the forest for the trees, that is what the viewpoint proposed does imho. The whole usefulness of solar pv energy lies not in mass deployment today, but rather in ongoing R&D until something more widely applicable is developed. To fund that we have sales of solar technology today for the minority apps where it does make sense.
Solar pv is not a technology fit for widespread deployment today. All the dreaming in the world wont change that. If we all went solar pv today, the national cost would be heavy. It has to be paid for somehow: public and private purse strings would be much affected. Education funding would drop, police funding would fall, welfare would be cut, many R&D budgets would evaporate, safety initiatives would cease, medical services would see significant cuts, in short some people would die, the rest of us would live poorer, and importantly, the R&D cuts would greatly slow the speed at which we could solve our energy problems, thus making our energy problems _worse_.
R&D is the most useful thing about solar pv. It is only once solar PV has reached practical cost levels that widespread implementation will occur. Until then, widespread implementation is an unlikely dream.
If people would wean themselves from oil-based electricity, even if it is not economic to start with, it would be an incentive for researchers and entrepreneurs to come up with more efficient solar panels and other methods of generating heat and electricity.
We already have that incentive. If anyone manages to develop any cost effective solar electric technology, the amount of money waiting for them is gargantuan. Bill Gates move over. The mythical story of companies converging on an inventor's door for license rights almost never happens in real life, but in this case it would.
ChrisZell@clearchannel.com writes:
The latest EE Times ( Dec. 12) has a cover article on T.J. Rodgers and Cypress Semiconductors getting into solar power, big-time. They bought a former disk-drive plant in Manila, Phillipines to crank out wafers. "We fully anticipate the Philippines fab being capable of turning out the equivalent of 100 megawatts a year" a spokeman said.
They hope to up the efficiency and knock prices down to $1.50 a watt.
High oil prices could be the best thing that ever happened to alternative energy. I hope such prices continue for several years so as to establish alternatives firmly
The higher the cost of oil, the higher the cost of producing alt energy products, and the less non-essentials people can afford, so its not quite as simple as is often portrayed.
Heck, all we really need is a bit more electricity per year and some other way to power automoblies and we're done with terrorists, Middle East instability,
Do you really believe that stopping dead the Middle East's large and only income would promote stability?
much of the trade deficit,
what happens then when a country invests vast amounts of money into something that will never pay back?
and a host of other problems.
will be thereby caused.
NT