You may have a point, but the "We won't have power at night!" argument is the most infantile of many infantile arguments against alternative energy sources.

You're right about the cost - but the corollary is that if the cost of solar panels drops tenfold, it becomes economically viable even without considering questions of pollution/air quality/public health etc.

The night-time thing is a problem if you want a purely-renewable power grid (which would be nice), but the heaviest loads to the grid do come in the daylight hours. If we can turn off the coal plant until 6 PM, and only need 1/5 as many coal plants, we end up being a lot better off.

I'm an advocate of high-power consumption lifestyles, because power = fun. And I'm an unfettered free marketeer - screw the idea that the government should incent people to do things that are economically stupid. But if nanotech drops the cost on PV panels, it does open up some awesome possibilities for cleaning up our power generation and increasing our ability to give a cordial "blow me" to the Saudis.

Infantile how? That is a serious drawback to solar power. It lacks the consistency of coal or nuclear. There are ways to try and minimize that drawback, but it's still a major drawback. Battery technology still sucks. It does all right for little things, but it doesn't work well for industrial scale systems.

A major breakthrough in industrial strength batteries would have a huge effect on power generation and use.

Evidently, in these silly person's minds, solar power systems create no pollution ... which would be surprising news to those who have had to clean up the industrial pollution of ground water left by the manufacturing process.

Right, but no sane person is advocating the development of an Ohio-sized solar field. We're discussing the potential benefits and current status of Solar reasearch. In the future, Battery Technology won't "suck" (It doesn't now, btw) and panels will be more efficient, as we're seeing with wind farms and innovations surrounding the use of vertical blades. It's still a new technology, and decrying it now is like standing at an flight demonstration in 1910 and ridiculing those who want to see it replace the railroad.

Yes, powering the United States by solar *now* would take a field the size of Ohio. Alright. But we're not looking to power the entire country with solar grids. . . my impression was most people were hoping for regional solutions. . . Wave generators and Hydro-Electric along the West Coast, Wind generators along the Gulf and Midwest, Solar farms in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Pebble-Bed Nuclear Reactors in the East, Geothermal in Yellowstone and Northeren California, Biofuel on the Great Plains, Biogas near the big cities, Hell, even "Blue Energy" has potential in some parts of the U.S. In a complex Alternative-Energy grid, Solar can be limited to places where they are most efficient, like the states mentioned above. Since the population and energy need of the Southwest is considerably less, space need is considerably less and can be easily managed. So we see it can be a viable solution for much of America.

Is it expensive? Yes, certainly. Solar panels are not yet mass-produced to the same standards as the Wind-Turbine industry. But as in your example above, the private sector can, and does, often cover much of the cost. And as much as I'd love you, Dorkafork, I'll take the business sense of Generl Electric over yours anyday.

Certainly, Robin, because fossil fuel plants create no groundwater pollution whatsoever.

The original article is talking about quantum-dot electrovoltaics that can be printed (or possibly even painted) onto any surface. Once these work and can be mass-produced, they'll be two or three orders of magnitude cheaper than existing solar cells.

The article also talks about using solar energy to provide 10% of the worlds energy needs. The bit about 2% of the continental US bit is just an aside.

Right, but no sane person is advocating the development of an Ohio-sized solar field.

That's exactly my point. Bulovic's statement is in the present tense, and I'm pointing out the impracticality of it. And I'd say his talk about being "able to supply all the U.S. energy needs" doesn't jibe too well with a vision of regional solutions with a wide variety of alternative energies.

This is more like someone at that 1910 flight demonstration saying "If we invested enough money in these biplanes we could have all our transportation needs provided by biplanes." Technically true, but it would have had a horrendous cost and would have sucked.

Bottom line is right now solar sucks, and it's going to take quite a few advancements before it becomes practical.

I'll also add that GE is investing quite a bit in oil and gas.

Thank you, Foster, for demonstrating "not getting the point".

Ah, then, sorry Dork. I misunderstood. Thought you were talking absolutes.

No, Robin, thank YOu for the snark.

Alright, I went back; I still think you're beating a Straw Man. I don't think Bulovic ever advocates this course of action, it seems to me like he's just running numbers and trying to sell his particular academic field to the public.

Ah, well. This is a unimportant thing to argue about. BFFs again?

What is your energy vision for the future, Dorkafork?

I like this guy's idea to convert 12k sq miles land near waste treatment facilities into large pools to grow algae for biodeisel better. Construction $180 billion, supply all our current energy needs $44 billion.

The sad part is it must not work well because the UNH hasn't updated it in 2 years. Still, it's a cool study

I took it more as a theoretical back of the envelope calculation, as opposed to a serious policy proposal. But I think people should have some idea of scale when it comes to energy production and to be aware that it's not as easy as that sounds.

I don't know what our energy production will look like in the future. I consider most of our current efforts as, maybe not "pissing in the wind", but essentially marginal. Fossil fuels will eventually run out, hybrid autos will only delay that by so much. And demographics will dwarf any gains by CAFE standards and the like. Eventually it'll boil down to nuclear or (an eventually practical) solar.

Alternative energy is a beautiful thing right now. There is a beautiful buffet of Popular-Science-like ideas out for the picking. North America is a diverse land with room for a smorgasbord of alternative sources filling in the gaps of production, but eventually, yes, it will have to come down to photovoltaic cells, on homes and in farms, vertical wind turbines, and Pebblebed reactors. But yes, fully agree with you that time spent on Hybrid development could be better put elsewhere.

I live in Texas, and it is astonishing to see the growth of wind farms in the West and at the rates some companies are willing to lease land-my uncle is receiving two grand a month per turbine for two dozen dozen turbines with an option to build more.

I agree with your main point (i.e. "only" covering 2% of the country with solar cells is an absurd thought.) However, I thought you'd like to know that the power grid already has the equivalent of batteries on it that doesn't use what you think of as battery technology. They are called pump-storage units, and they literally pump water up hill into a lake in the off-peak hours and run it back down through a generator during peak times. Assuming you can get past the idea of covering Ohio with solar cells, you can always turn Utah into a big lake to power the grid at night.

Dave, no shit? I looked (back of the envelope calculations) at something like that for a single home - build near a cliff, put the tank on top and the generator on the bottom, use solar to pump water all day and then let it run downhill all night. It doesn't work on a single-home scale; takes too much altitude to get a good head for the hydro generator. Interesting to know it works on a macro scale though. Apparently I'm a power engineering GENIUS!

You shouldn't be so simplistic about this.

There are a number of ways we can reduce the amount of electric power from the national grid, photo voltaic cells are just one.

Photo voltaic use can reduce some requirements, as can solar hot water systems.

Re designing retail electrical systems so that computer power can reduce the drain on the grid.

A combination of AC and DC power would also help.

I do not say the government should subsidize any of this. Did the government subsidize the cell phone when it came out or the personal computer, no. I would say that although it may have taken longer to develop, the end results were far better than if the governmemnt was involved.

PS:

In the 70s we had the Club of Rome preaching doom and dammnation because oil will run out quickly. Since then more oil has been discovered and the more modern industrialized nations became more energy efficient.

Oil may run out, but not in the near future. I would suggest that more oil and gas will be discovered and users will find even more ways to be efficient.

The no more oil lobby is really being driven by cultists, the children of the Club of Rome, but slicker.

The industrialists and energy companies who get invovled are being blackmailed by slick campaigns to convince the public that they should change where their energy comes from.

Re: Coal, there are several projects underway across the country right now to develop completely clean coal burning plants. Even the CO2 will be reused or captured. While the development cost will be quite expensive, the marginal cost of generating power will still be lower than natural gas (the next cheapest fuel source after coal). Another project under way is "coal gasification" where coal is converted into a natural gas like product before being burned, resulting in emissions reduced to next to nothing.

This country has an enormous amount of coal. We should be finding environmentally responsible ways to take advantage of that rather than fantasizing about unrealistic "renewable" solutions (which includes any suggestion that all of our energy needs--or even a reasonable fraction of them--can be met with wind, hydro, and solar power).

First, the cheapest generation is nuclear. The second cheapest depends on the cost of natural gas. With gas above $4/decatherm (as his has been for awhile) then coal is cheaper and can be much cheaper.

Photo cells require....sunlight! As pointed out previously the southwest is the only place this is feasible. To move the power anywhere else and you have transmission losses to deal with. BTW the southwest DOES require alot of energy to counter the heat and is gets (relatively) cold here.

There is no such thing as a totally clean fuel. There is always a waste product and losses somewhere in processing, combustion, and generation. Todays air quality control systems for coal plants, and gas plants for that matter (NOx) remove almost all of the pollutants we can monitor. However, the pollutants are not jsut "gone" they are removed and have to be dealt with. There are methods for this removal and the subsequent but nothing is free and totally clean.

Nuclear plants produce the lowest amount of waste per KW generated. Government (politically driven) regulations drive the cost way beyond what is reasonable or necessay.

The solution? Reduce government regulations to what is realistic, be sensible concerning the environmental regulations, and build a very efficent transmission/distribution system with generation plants located in an efficient location. Supplement the rest until solar cells and batteries are efficient enough to bring the generation requirments to the local if not personal level (solar cells for cars and homes). Hydrogen fuel sounds great but we need a storage and supply system. Hydrogen can be safe but can also be very volatile. I also read where nano-tube capaciters are becoming a reality. That would make electrical storage much more efficient and subsequently reduce the cost.

So, your argument is to do nothing instead? Ok, let's assume that we can't supply ALL of the power required for the U.S. energy needs -- isn't it wise to provide some? And, you are talking about a technology that is in its comparative infancy. Time will bring about advances, and the technology will get better. Remember, it was predicted at one time that nobody would bother to have a personal computer because it would take up a whole room in ones house. Don't be a nay sayer, you will end up looking like a fool on this one.

Some? Yes, a very small amount. Solar and wind power requires another energy (sun and wind) that we cannot control. Also, for transmission/distribution purposes you need generation relatively close to the area it is used. You can send power over long distances but then line losses are such that the voltage in "high use" areas can drop too low.

What I'm saying is, let be smart about this. Someone says "it would only take 2% of the total land space to generate the power. Well you just can't build these things in out of the way places (NIMBY Syndrome). You need plants that are capable of changing load on demand and controlling the generator such that the transmission system voltage can be changed to respond to system changes/upsets. Solar and wind machines are not good at that.

There are no easy answers. It is easy to say lets do this but then someone has to make people realize the devil is in the details.

"Some? Yes, a very small amount."

It's true that solar and wind power in their current incarnations can only provide a portion (or some) of what is needed for our energy needs. But, we need to make these technologies widely available so that the demand lowers prices, and the technology can be improved.

We can't just sit around for the remainder of our existence, look up at a huge fireball in the sky, and say -- "Gee, I wonder how we could use that thing?" The U.S. has the opportunity to be a leader in renewable energy, I say let's lead. There's a ton of money in being the first to market, so it's also a potentially huge financial venture for us.

We could begin implementing solar more effectively if our homes were also built more efficiently. I assume that the math thrown out above considers the energy needs of an inefficient home, which 99% of homes are. Ford has realized the potential payoff of green building with their Dearborn plant (http://www.mcdonoughpartners.com/projects/ford-dtp/default.asp?projID=ford-dtp). They have the largest green roof in the world, which will reduce the heating and cooling requirements of the building, filter pollutants, reduce stormwater runoff (which can be used for water treatment), etc. Ford is not doing this so that they can be environmentally friendly so much as they realize that it is going to save them a TON of money.

Seems the only people that are still fighting these technologies are certain people that equate them with tree hugging liberals and the environmental movement. Give it up. This is big business for the U.S.

Your missing my point. Your talking big picture and I'm talking nuts and bolts.

Your example is of a big company (Ford) that can afford to invest the capitol then recover that money when they sell their product. Again, nothing is free. I live in an area that cries out for solar but I can't afford the capitol cost of adding it to an existing home. Build more efficient homes? Yes, but what about all the homes already in existence? Government subsidies to add solar or make my home more efficient? That is tax dollars and who pays taxes?

Existing regulations now add 50% to the cost of power.

Building natural gas burning plants has driven up the cost of a heavily used resource to the point it is no longer feasible to build gas power plants and heating bills are through the roof. Also, who is paying for all the gas power generating plants sitting idle now?

Nothing is free. You are right in that we need to be heading in that direction. I agree whole heartedly with that. BUT, it needs to be done sensibly and it needs to be phased in. More efficient homes? Work with builders so that they start incorporating these designs and offer them to buyers up front including solar power. "Add it to the mortgage" as they say.

We need to start now and it needs to be done at the front end. Coal gassifcation has been around for over 20 years and was proven to work (an MHD plant in western Montana). However, to build one now will at least double the cost of the plant and use power to run. The only way a utility will build one now is with government help and when you build the first one then how well will it operate and will it work at all? How do you recover the cost? What about the waste generated? Remember, all of the coal will not burn so what do you do with a somewhat toxic waste?

Yes, lets get going but let government work with industry, not just order it around.

Engineering.
Dollars.

So much REAL work to do.
So little REAL knowledge application.
So little REAL progress.

I glad I'm retired.
I usually put all societal problems this way:

Here is what a Mech. Engineering degree does for you.
1. You get the scientific method beat into your brain.
2. You learn to use it to solve real problems.

And, then you spend the rest of your life watching and listening to people make emotional decisions and f_ck things up.

What is infantile is NOT mentioning the limitations of a power source--such as refusing to note that it's significant that solar only works when there's sunlight handy.

What is even more infantile is to keep insisting over and over again that these technologies will get better over time--I would assume someone who said this must be infantile, because this tripe about solar as the future is now about 30 years old, that line about how it's going to get better with time is over 30 years old, and it's still nowhere near what we need.

The notion that you need 2% of the land surface to replace our current needs is a great way of illustrating that solar cannot possibly be more than a very tiny contributor and will not be more than a very tiny contributor barring massive, earh-shattering advancements.

There is one good way of using solar power: we could put up orbiting collectors that convert it to microwave and beam it down to us. That would be massively more efficient. But tell that to certain people and they shriek about how much damage the microwaves will do.

Solar's otherwise a joke, and no amount of improvement of the technology will make it ever be anything other than a joke. All you have to do is look at the solar constant: even if you build collectors that are 100% efficient (which would be impossible, by the wa), there is only so much energy to be had per square meter of collection space. Right now we've got these collectors going up to something like 30% efficient, which means that if you did something amazing and TRIPLED the efficiency solar could STILL not be more than a tiny percentage of what we need.

If there's so much money to be made on this, put your money where your mouth is and invest in solar energy stocks. In the meantime, those of us who are serious about wanting change need to stop wasting time waiting for solar to be more than something marginally useful.

Good grief... we won't "run out" of oil like it seems some poeple will believe...

What will happen is we'll start going for the "more expensive" oil that we know about (tar sands, shale?, diagonal drilling in the Gulf, etc.) that currently isn't cost effective to get.

Then, the cost of oil will be higher, and more people will look into alternatives (and some existing alternatives will then be "cost effective" when they aren't now).

This cycle (oil getting more expensive to get 'cause we got all the "cheap easy" oil); will continue until we know about X million barrels of oil under Antarctica (for example) but nobody is willing to go get it (for X hundred dollars a barrel) vs. using Nuclear power & hydrogen fuel cells (or whatever we've come up with by then).

But it is unlikely to see Solar Panels across the nation soon (as it isn't cost effective vs. fossil fuels) while oil/nat. gas/coal is at current prices. Change the equation on either (or both) sides, and solar panels will be everywhere. But the cost vs. lifetime output of a solar panel isn't currently a strong net positive over current engery bill costs (until prior stated equation changes).

Gettig the Government, legislation, and Senators who think the internet is made up of tubes involved will only end in tears.

Readers Digest had an article out not long (I trust RD) that said if every one in the US would conserve one gallon a week the US could sustain their own energy needs.
I know everyone hates that word "conserve", but fossil fuels are nonrenewable.

Hmm. Currently we consume 20 million barrels of oil a day in the US. We produce 8 million a day if you count LPGs. The difference is 12 million barrels a day. That's 84 million barrels a week. That's 3.5 billion gallons of oil a week that we import.

Assuming a magical 100% conversion of oil to gasoline (it's much less, but 96% of the oil is converted into some type of useful energy, so it's somewhat fair), we import 3.5 billion gallons of gasoline every week. If you saved a gallon a week, plus a gallon for your spouse and each of your kids, then that number would be 300 million gallons lower!

That means we would only import 3.2 billion gallons a week, instead of 3.5 billion. I'm guessing Reader's Digest didn't do the math.

Or more likely, they confused a barrel with a gallon.

The nano-revolution that solar power needs is mass-produceable carbon nanotube cables that can be used to build a space elevator to hoist massive solar panels out into space, where there are no clouds and the Sun is available 100% of the time instead of 50%.

At a space elevator cost-per-kilo, solar power from space makes a lot of economic sense.

In the 70s we had the Club of Rome preaching doom and dammnation because oil will run out quickly.

And don't forget the global cooling scare!

The United States consumes roughly 100 Quadrillion BTUs of energy annually. A quadrillion is a 1 followed by 15 zeros (the British quadrillion is a 1 followed by 24 zeros but I'm being charitable).

NanoSolar, Inc. is building a PV factory capable of churning out 430MW worth of solar cells per year. At full production and assuming they could even do it, it'd take them ~7,800 years to meet current US demand.

Not practical.

OBTW: On your relative scale thing, if we built a 3-bedroom apartment for every couple in the world (adding on extra bedrooms for more than 2.1 kids as needed) the entire world's population could comfortably live in Texas, including infrstructure for parks, swimming pools, hospitals, etc. That's not even stacking the units 2-3 stories high.

The worls is most assuredly NOT overpopulated.

Orion...why in the world would it matter how long a *single factory* would take to produce enough PV cells for the US? Isn't that kind of like looking at Univac's original computer factory, circa 1950, calculating how long it would take it to produce a computer for every individual in America (at least a million years) and conclude that home computers would never be practical?

"What is even more infantile is to keep insisting over and over again that these technologies will get better over time--I would assume someone who said this must be infantile, because this tripe about solar as the future is now about 30 years old"

Infantile? It's short-sighted and foolish to think otherwise. It's been around for thirty years with very little research and development. Why do you suppose this is the case? I would guess that the oil industry has something with it, how about you? If we put 1/10th the effort into developing alternative resources as we do finding ways to drill for oil horizontally we would be somewhere. Tripe? Again, I refer to the massive changes in computers in the past 30 years. We've gone from a personal computer that can barely fit into a room, to a more powerful computer that fits in the palm of your hand. Don't tell me that the same effort put towards renewable energy sources would have resulted in nothing.

"If there's so much money to be made on this, put your money where your mouth is and invest in solar energy stocks."

I've HAVE invested all of my money in alternative energy and environmentally responsible stocks -- so my money is where my mouth is, bud. See: WGGFX, PORTX, GAAEX, GAGEX. For the record, I've made a decent profit this year.

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