Rusted Sky

One of the things our civilization needs desperately is electricity. There's a massive, MASSIVE electrical infrastructure in the US making sure the lights stay on 24/7/365, barring catastrophic storms... and even then, unless all lines into an area are down, the the chances are the lights will stay on anyway. In other countries, things are much the same... until you get to a technological level where the infrastructure for electricity is more valuable than the perceived good of a steady electricial supply, or there's simply not enough money to build the infrastructure needed to get power to the people.

One thing that's apparent, though - in this day and age, more and more power is needed. You don't get it from simply flipping a switch or sticking a plug in a socket. Electricity (at anything above the household level) isn't something that can be stored like hydropower. It's generated as it's needed - and you HAVE to have sufficient generating capacity to meet the need or you get brownouts or blackouts. (See California for an example of need and capacity not even coming close.)

So guess what has been fought tooth and nail by the environuts for the last few decades? Yep - you guessed it - power plants. (Remarkable what you can find on Google when you put in "fighting new power plants", isn't it?)

We haven't been adding capacity worldwide, or here in the US. The reasons are numerous - too expensive, too polluting, too 'long term'. I must confess the 'long term' argument makes no sense whatever to me - if you need power now, you should have started building five years ago. That applies across all spectrums of the energy field. New, additional capacity requires planning for the future. Planning beyond the current election cycle, beyond the next, beyond the next... yet all too often it would seem that the attempt to create new energy capacity gets mired down in political infighting. The other reasons? Oh, they're valid - but we've come a hell of a long way from the pollution sources of the 40's-70's - so ecological reasons aside, the only other real reason is financial. It'll take years, decades even before the plant pays for itself... but most companies looking to build a power plant have the pockets deep enough so that's not a problem. They plan for the long-term, after all.

But when there's not enough electricity - what's the option?

You saw it in California. Decades of letting everyone ELSE build power plants left them woefully unprepared when high demand hit the last few summers. Pleas were issued for reduced usage, there were rolling black and brownouts - and sky-high electricity prices. (And yes, there was a lot of 'let's charge what the market will bear' going on... that didn't help one bit.)

And you'd think that California would fast-track construction of additional capacity so it wouldn't happen again, right?

Um, not so much. Go down to "approved - under construction" - and there's 4 projects that should be on-line in the next year or two - and one approved but not started.

If you go down a bit further, to projects "Approved / Not Under Construction" - you'll see 15 projects, one that's being relocated and 14 on hold.

It's clear they're worried about power - but the process is much more important than actual results. In this case - power generation.

It's a funny thing about a commodity - when it's something essential, people are willing to pay more for it when there are shortages.

You'll hear all sorts of calls for conservation - but don't you actually have to have something to conserve in the first place?

So, after all this meandering, I get to the point.

I think we're about to see a real, realistic breakthrough in solar power generation in the next year or so, that'll really help out during peak summer electrical loading.

First, there's the SunRgi system. I'll admit to being a trifle skeptical of this effort - because it looks like what they're doing (based on the website) is taking a fresnel lens and using it to concentrate light on the solar cell. Apparently they've got a process which produces 37% efficient conversion of light to electricity - which is pretty darn impressive. The drawback is, it would seem like each solar cell gets about a kilowatt of energy poured into it to do this. So they're having to do some SERIOUS cooling on the back end to keep it from melting...

Here's an article from USAToday on it, with the rather amusing line:

"Moving from the lab to the market in two years is typically not what happens," says Stow Walker of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. Yet, he adds, the semiconductor market "moves much more quickly than power technologies."

So - what's not to like about this? Well, I'm sure the environmentalists will find something.

Next up is an article from the EE Times -

NETANYA, Israel — Scientists at the University of Tel Aviv in Israel claim they have found a way to construct efficient photovoltaic cells costing at least a hundred times less than conventional silicon based devices, and with similar or better energy conversion efficiency.

The reactive element in the researchers' patent pending device is genetically engineered proteins using photosynthesis for production of electrical energy.

The scientists applied genetic engineering and nanotechnology for the construction of a hybrid nano -- bio, solid state device. According to the researchers, although using photosynthesis for photovoltaic application is not new, their specific technique is the first to enable the production of useful photosynthesis-based photovoltaic cells.

The Israeli team is set to challenge others who are using photosynthesis for photovoltaic cells, including universities such as Cambridge in the U.K., and Stanford, M.I.T, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and the Universities of Tennessee and Arizona in the U.S, and several others.

The researchers suggest existing silicon based photovoltaic cells offer low average energy conversion efficiency of 12-14 percent, while their system is capable of efficiencies of about 25 percent.

Anyhow, this one's a bit further off - they're looking at "cost effective" production in two to three years.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Nanosolar - who's apparently completed work on a 1 gigawatt/year coating facility.

Of course - you'll need something to STORE all that energy in, right?

How about a nanotech Super-Battery, which would seem to be more of an ultra-capacitor than a battery - but it looks like it'd do the job at a fraction of the size and weight of equivalent rechargeables....

Lots of good stuff coming down - it's going to be interesting to see what makes it to market first!

Gimme more power!

J.