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Smaller, cheaper, faster: Does Moore's law apply to solar cells?

Smaller, cheaper, faster: Does Moore's law apply to solar cells?

By Ramez Naam | Mar 16, 2011 09:00 AM | 19

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The sun strikes every square meter of our planet with more than 1,360 watts of power. Half of that energy is absorbed by the atmosphere or reflected back into space. 700 watts of power, on average, reaches Earth’s surface. Summed across the half of the Earth that the sun is shining on, that is 89 petawatts of power. By comparison, all of human civilization uses around 15 terrawatts of power, or one six-thousandth as much. In 14 and a half seconds, the sun provides as much energy to Earth as humanity uses in a day.

The numbers are staggering and surprising. In 88 minutes, the sun provides 470 exajoules of energy, as much energy as humanity consumes in a year. In 112 hours – less than five days – it provides 36 zettajoules of energy – as much energy as is contained in all proven reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas on this planet.

If humanity could capture one tenth of one percent of the solar energy striking the earth – one part in one thousand - we would have access to six times as much energy as we consume in all forms today, with almost no greenhouse gas emissions. At the current rate of energy consumption increase – about 1 percent per year – we will not be using that much energy for another 180 years.

It’s small wonder, then, that scientists and entrepreneurs alike are investing in solar energy technologies to capture some of the abundant power around us. Yet solar power is still a miniscule fraction of all power generation capacity on the planet. There is at most 30 gigawatts of solar generating capacity deployed today, or about 0.2 percent of all energy production. Up until now, while solar energy has been abundant, the systems to capture it have been expensive and inefficient.

That is changing. Over the last 30 years, researchers have watched as the price of capturing solar energy has dropped exponentially. There’s now frequent talk of a "Moore's law" in solar energy. In computing,  Moore’s law dictates that the number of components that can be placed on a chip doubles every 18 months. More practically speaking, the amount of computing power you can buy for a dollar has roughly doubled every 18 months, for decades. That’s the reason that the phone in your pocket has thousands of times as much memory and ten times as much processing power as a famed Cray 1 supercomputer, while weighing ounces compared to the Cray’s 10,000 lb bulk, fitting in your pocket rather than a large room, and costing tens or hundreds of dollars rather than tens of millions.

If similar dynamics worked in solar power technology, then we would eventually have the solar equivalent of an iPhone – incredibly cheap, mass distributed energy technology that was many times more effective than the giant and centralized technologies it was born from.

So is there such a phenomenon? The National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy has watched solar photovoltaic price trends since 1980. They’ve seen the price per Watt of solar modules (not counting installation) drop from $22 dollars in 1980 down to under $3 today.

Is this really an exponential curve? And is it continuing to drop at the same rate, or is it leveling off in recent years? To know if a process is exponential, we plot it on a log scale.

And indeed, it follows a nearly straight line on a log scale. Some years the price changes more than others. Averaged over 30 years, the trend is for an annual 7 percent reduction in the dollars per watt of solar photovoltaic cells. While in the earlier part of this decade prices flattened for a few years, the sharp decline in 2009 made up for that and put the price reduction back on track. Data from 2010 (not included above) shows at least a 30 percent further price reduction, putting solar prices ahead of this trend.

If we look at this another way, in terms of the amount of power we can get for $100, we see a continual rise on a log scale.

What’s driving these changes? There are two factors. First, solar cell manufacturers are learning – much as computer chip manufacturers keep learning – how to reduce the cost to fabricate solar.

Second, the efficiency of solar cells – the fraction of the sun’s energy that strikes them that they capture – is continually improving. In the lab, researchers have achieved solar efficiencies of as high as 41 percent, an unheard of efficiency 30 years ago. Inexpensive thin-film methods have achieved laboratory efficiencies as high as 20 percent, still twice as high as most of the solar systems in deployment today.

What do these trends mean for the future? If the 7 percent decline in costs continues (and 2010 and 2011 both look likely to beat that number), then in 20 years the cost per watt of PV cells will be just over 50 cents.

Indications are that the projections above are actually too conservative. First Solar corporation has announced internal production costs (though not consumer prices) of 75 cents per watt, and expects to hit 50 cents per watt in production cost in 2016. If they hit their estimates, they’ll be beating the trend above by a considerable margin.

What does the continual reduction in solar price per watt mean for electricity prices and carbon emissions? Historically, the cost of PV modules (what we’ve been using above) is about half the total installed cost of systems. The rest of the cost is installation.  Fortunately, installation costs have also dropped at a similar pace to module costs. If we look at the price of electricity from solar systems in the U.S. and scale it for reductions in module cost, we get this:

The cost of solar, in the average location in the U.S., will cross the current average retail electricity price of 12 cents per kilowatt hour in around 2020, or 9 years from now. In fact, given that retail electricity prices are currently rising by a few percent per year, prices will probably cross earlier, around 2018 for the country as a whole, and as early as 2015 for the sunniest parts of America.

10 years later, in 2030, solar electricity is likely to cost half what coal electricity does today. Solar capacity is being built out at an exponential pace already. When the prices become so much more favorable than those of alternate energy sources, that pace will only accelerate.

We should always be careful of extrapolating trends out, of course. Natural processes have limits. Phenomena that look exponential eventually level off or become linear at a certain point. Yet physicists and engineers in the solar world are optimistic about their roadmaps for the coming decade. The cheapest solar modules, not yet on the market, have manufacturing costs under $1 per watt, making them contenders – when they reach the market – for breaking the 12 cents per Kwh mark.

The exponential trend in solar watts per dollar has been going on for at least 31 years now. If it continues for another 8-10, which looks extremely likely, we’ll have a power source which is as cheap as coal for electricity, with virtually no carbon emissions. If it continues for 20 years, which is also well within the realm of scientific and technical possibility, then we’ll have a green power source which is half the price of coal for electricity.

That’s good news for the world.

Comet, Brighter Than Full Moon, In 2013

Brilliant Comet, Brighter Than Full Moon, Making Debut In 2013

December 27, 2012

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Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gaze upon the stars will be had next year by thousands of backyard astronomers who wish to catch a glimpse of the comet of the century.

Comet Ison has yet to earn its spotlight in the media, but soon enough it will be the trending topic among all the search engines.

The comet, which was discovered by two Russian astronomers, will be “the biggest star of 2013″ and “brighter than a full moon,” according to David Whitehouse, an author and astronomer.

Ison has been traveling for millions of years from the Oort cloud to reach Earth. The comet’s surface is very dark, and it is a few tens of miles across.

Whitehouse says if you jumped into the air while on the surface of the comet, you could leap 20 miles up, and it would take you over a week to come back down.

By the end of the summer next year the comet will become visible in small telescopes and binoculars. A few months later, by October, it will be passing Mars and the surface will shift, with the surface of the rock responding to thermal shock.

As the comet passes the orbit of Earth, the gas and dust geysers will gather force, and the space around Ison will become brilliant as the ice below the surface turns into gas and erupts. Once this happens, it will be reflecting the light of the sun.

By late November next year, the comet will be visible to the unaided eye just after dark in the same direction as the setting Sun. The comet’s tail could stretch like a searchlight into the sky above the horizon.

Ison will then swing rapidly around the Sun, passing within two million miles of it, which is closer than any planet ever does. The comet will be able to be seen to an “unaided eye” for months.

When Ison gets close in its approach to the Sun, it could become intensely bright, but at this point it will be difficult and dangerous to see without special instruments.

While comets can be a rare site to the backyard astronomers, Ison will not be the only space rock that will be visible next year. According to Whitehouse, another comet, called 2014 L4, was discovered last year and will be making a significant appearance in the evening sky in March and April, acting as the opening act for Ison.

New Comet Discovery May Be Brightest Visitor In Past Hundred Years

September 26, 2012

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Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Hale-Bopp, Haley’s, McNaught. These are just a few of the more well-known modern comets that have blazed across the night sky in our lifetime. Another comet that has been recently discovered could be added to that list next year when it makes a pass by the Sun in late 2013.

The comet, named C/2012 S1 (ISON), is due to come within 1.1 million miles of the Sun on, or around, November 29, 2013. Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok from Russia, made the discovery using the International Scientific Optical Network’s (ISON) telescope, capturing the images of the comet on 21 September with CCD imagery equipment.

The comet could blaze brightly across the heavens when it does arrive, experts believe. But just how brightly is difficult to determine. And there could be a chance the Sun will just boil it away as it passes, just as happened to comet Elenin last year. If it does survive the encounter, experts speculate it could outshine any comet seen in the last hundred years–perhaps even brighter than the full moon. If so, it should be easily visible to the naked eye for about two months, and could even be visible during daylight.

If the predictions hold true, Comet C/2012 S1 will likely be one of the greatest comet encounters in human history, exceedingly outshining the memorable Hale-Bopp of 1997 and Haley’s Comet in 1986. It could even be a much bigger spectacle than the long-awaited Comet Pan-STARRS, which will make a pass in March 2013.

BRIGHTNESS

The only thing that is certain at this point, is that the large cometary body was discovered just beyond the orbit of Jupiter and it’s orbital trajectory will take it close to the sun next year. The comet is currently very faint, but as it approaches the Sun, it will steadily brighten. It will be easily picked up by experienced amateur astronomers with CCD equipment in the coming months, and will be within binocular view by late summer 2013, and eventually by the naked eye in early November. Depending on brightness, the comet should remain visible to the naked eye from early November 2013 to mid-January 2014

“In the best case, the comet is big, bright, and skirts the sun next November. It would be extremely bright — negative magnitudes maybe — and naked-eye visible for observers in the Northern Hemisphere for at least a couple of months,” Karl Battams, of the NASA-supported Sungrazer Comet Project, told Spaceweather.com.

However, this outcome is far from certain, noted Battams. “Alternately, comets can and often do fizzle out! Comet Elenin springs to mind as a recent example, but there are more famous examples of comets that got the astronomy community seriously worked up, only to fizzle,” he said.

Writing in a blog for the Planetary Society, astronomer Bill Gray pointed out that the comet’s orbit has been very well constrained, but just how bright it will be is anyone’s guess at the moment–“…estimating comet brightnesses a year ahead of time is about like asking who’s going to win the World Series next year.”

“It could be astonishingly bright, or it could fizzle. I think it was David Levy (co-discoverer of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9) who said that comets are like cats: they have tails, and do whatever they want to do,” Gray remarked.

COMET ORIGINS

Comets originate from the outer limits of the solar system and are generally composed of icy volatiles such as water, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia. These icy behemoths also contain dust, rocks and any other debris that just happen to be floating around when the Sun evolved. Researchers hypothesize that Comet C/2012 S1 originates from the Oort Cloud, a cloud of frozen comets located about one light year from the Sun possibly containing billions of cometary nuclei that formed during the early days of the solar system when the Sun formed.

“This is quite possibly a ‘new’ comet coming in from the Oort cloud, meaning this could be its first-ever encounter with the sun,” Battams pondered. “If so, with all those icy volatiles intact and never having been truly stressed (thermally and gravitationally), the comet could well disrupt and dissipate weeks or months before reaching the sun.”

As comets close in on the Sun, the increased solar energy puts stress on the celestial orbiter, causing its frozen volatiles to vaporize, bypassing the liquid phase altogether. Sublimation causes the comet’s gases to erupt, sweeping them back by the solar wind, which forms the tail, the common trait of the comet. Depending on the comet’s chemical elements, the journey past the Sun could make the tail spectacularly impressive.

Of course, this will be dependent on what the exact chemical makeup is and how it formed in deep space. And it is very likely the chemical elements may be just the right mixture that it will cause the comet to erupt, fracture and break apart long before it becomes visible to the naked eye. Or, it may whiz by and release very little material, fizzling any excitement of a spectacular showing.

SUNGRAZER

Due to the comet’s scheduled close inspection of our Sun, it will be, what experts call, a sungrazer. Sungrazersare comets that typically pass within a few million miles of the Sun, with some passing even within a few thousand miles. Famous examples of sungrazers are the Kreutz sungrazers and the Great Comets of 1843 and1882, as well as the Comet Ikeya-Seki of 1965.

Despite the likelihood of breaking up under the increased solar output of the Sun, there remains a slight chance it could become the brightest comet to scream across the skies in the last hundred years–even brighter than Ikeya-Seki, which dazzled astronomers in 1965.

If it lives up to the hype, it will be far brighter than the last bright visitor, Comet McNaught, which gave earthlings in the Southern Hemisphere a good show in January 2007. But then again, it could peter out like Elenin did in 2011, or more famously, the comet Kohoutek, which failed to live up to predictions in 1973.

“This is a very exciting discovery. The comet looks like it could become a very spectacular sight in the evening sky after sunset from the UK in late November and early December next year,” Robin Scagell, vice-president of theSociety for Popular Astronomy, told the Telegraph.

“Our members will be eagerly following it as it makes its first trip around the Sun and hoping to see it shining brilliantly and displaying a magnificent tail as it releases powerful jets of gas and dust,” he added.

DOOMSDAY

The debate over the brightness should not spill over into any concerns over the comet’s projected orbit. Doomsayers often get excited when new comets are discovered and start rumors of collision courses with the Earth, such as what happened with last year’s comet Elenin.

Comet C/2012 S1 will not even come remotely close to Earth. Even on its nearest approach in January 2014, it will be 36 million miles from Earth, according to comet hunters at Remanzacco Observatory in Italy.

Gray said the best bet is to just sit back, relax and enjoy the show. “I’d give it about a 30 percent chance of being exciting, with a 60 percent chance that I’m wrong. In other words, it’ll certainly bear keeping an eye on, but I don’t think anyone can say for sure right now.”