ER - Energy Renaissance , Solar Photovoltaic, -1a-
1. ER (Energy Renaissance)
If the last 20 years have been the age of IT (information technology), the future will be for ER. It is slow, it is infant but if China keep saying ‘American has 100 years to pollute the world, this is our time, let us be’, Anyone…. Any country, Any companies who own the technology will have the leveraged , just like How iT is so unavoidable, no-man can avoid clean energy.
There are a few candidates, and I will cross out bio-energy due to the rising cost of food:
a. Solar
The point of having a solar power is to get the panel so SO SO very cheap and higher in efficiency plus better performance under a cloudy sky! I would envision a city like singapore/dubai or HK in which the solar panels blanket 3 Dimensional space on BIPV. Clearly, installing it on the rooftop or building a solar farm is wasting a lot of space and impractical. But Imagine that Solar cell is so efficient, so SO cheap that they can afford to blanket the whole building wall (with great colour pigmentation), windows and the rooftop. Where the integrated panel can be easily removed (once it reaches an un-acceptable efficiency) to be then sold somewhere else or replaced with a new layer.
The race against $1/Wp cost barrier is achievable according to Oerlikon solar by 2010 in 1Gw production plant. But, by 2008 their total shipment is only 350 MW, and I’d be very much wanting to believe that they can triple their production and installation capacity in 2 years time. That is also not so mention if their ’stabilized cell’ does not deteriorate in the following years. and it is a manufacturing cost, not sales and installation cost.
Everyone can be excited with the amount of capital pumped in Thin film PV, but the future is still far ahead. The good news is it is THERE!, it is MOVING!, it is GROWING!
Theoretical cost of it per watt peak of module is 30c (excluding substrate). If this to go down,… I WILL NOT CARE if the efficiency is 5%, if i can get 10c/Wp module, I will blanket my whole building , roof , windows with it! All i need is cable , no fuel for the next decade..!!
‘JUST KEEP THE SUN SHINING”
b. Wind
c. Nuclear
on September 25th 2008 in Education