Making solar cheaper than coal
One of the most highly contentious debates about our future energy mix is the point where the wholesale price of solar intersects with that of coal. Some say it could never occur, and coal would always be cheaper. But those assumptions are being trashed by solar’s rapid cost decline and the inevitable rise in the cost of coal, particularly as some of its external costs are factored in.
Significant new technology developments promise to take solar much closer to the cost of coal than anyone would have expected, even just a few years ago, and at a quicker rate. Even suggestions that the cost of coal and solar could meet at the halfway point may prove conservative. Solar may soon become the cheapest form of energy, as well as the cleanest.
Some of these critical developments are taking place in Australia. One of the most exciting is the work being undertaken by a team led by ANU research fellow Dr Kylie Catchpole, who has been working on various aspects of solar PV for more than a decade, but for the last five years has been focused on research using nano-particles – devices so small that 50 of them could fit on the width of a human hair – and technology called plasmonics, that together could dramatically improve the efficiency of solar cells.
The significance of her work has already been recognised. In 2010, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology rated her work as one of 10 technologies – and one of only three green ones – most likely to change the world. Fortune magazine named her as a runner-up in their listing of the Smartest People in Tech. Earlier this year, she won an episode on ABC TV’s New Inventors.
Plasmons are a type of wave that moves through the electrons at the surface of a metal when they are excited by light. What Catchpole and her team have discovered is that, in a plasmonic solar cell, nanoscale metal particles on the surface of the solar cell act like tiny antennae, collecting the solar radiation and directing it into the cell.
The team's initial work suggested that efficiencies could be boosted by around 30 per cent, a massive boost in electrical conversion. “If Catchpole can integrate her nanoparticle technology with the processes used to mass-produce thin films commercially, it could shift the balance of technology used in solar cells,” the MIT wrote.
Although Catchpole has been working on solar PV for more than a decade, and was looking for different ways of making a solar cell, she came across the idea of plasmonics almost by accident. “We were looking at optical effects of solar cells, and came across an idea of a plasmon – we hadn’t realised that plasmon could do other things," she told Climate Spectator. "They hadn’t applied to solar cells.”
One way of looking at Catchpole's work is that it effectively crosses the divide between the two competing solar PV technologies of the moment – silicon-based wafers and thin-film solar – because it has the potential of combining the abundance of silicon with the low cost of thin film. Conventional solar technologies can provide gigawatts of solar, but thin-film silicon could provide terawatts – and “that is what we need,” she says.
“Solar will have to be the primary source of energy as fossils run out,” she says. “Other technologies can play a role – but when you look at the technologies that offer large fractions of our needs, the choices come from nuclear and solar – and most people prefer solar.”
The aim of Catchpole’s seven-person team, which is supported by a grant from the Australian Solar Institute, is to try and cut the cost of purifying and slicing up silicon – a major component of wafer base cells – by half. It is pursuing various avenues to try to do this and has already attracted the interest of many international groups.
“The resource is huge and we can power the world many times over with solar,” Catchpole says. “The industry is moving extremely fast at the moment and last year alone doubled in size.
“The price of solar is decreasing rapidly and in some places is the same price of retail. R&D will reduce prices further still. The industry can get it to retail prices and below but to get down to wholesale prices is the challenge for R&D.”
Catchpole's is not the only research group working on ways to achieve dramatic breakthroughs in the efficiency and cost of solar PV. At least two other universities are pursuing plasmonics, including Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, which is collaborating with Suntech Power.
And the US website Science Progress reported over the weekend that the US Department of Energy has recently completed testing on something called the Optical Cavity Furnace, which it says has the potential to reduce the cost of producing solar cells by nearly three-quarters, another big step on the path to making clean energy the cheap kind of energy.
Here’s what Science Progress wrote: “By using optics to more efficiently focus visible and infrared light, the Optical Cavity Furnace can heat silicon wafers used in solar cell production much more precisely and uniformly than previous forms of solar cell manufacture. The resulting solar cells are stronger, more efficient, and have fewer impurities.
“The National Renewable Energy Lab, or NREL, the DOE office responsible for the research, and a corporate partner AOS Inc. are now working to bring this technology to scale. The partners plan to build an industrial-scale Optical Cavity Furnace capable of producing 1,200 highly efficient solar cells per hour. NREL has cooperative research agreements with many of the country’s biggest solar cell producers.
“Even better, in addition to producing solar cells more reliably, quickly, and therefore cheaply, the Optical Cavity Furnace itself is cheaper than traditional equipment used to produce cells. As the cost of manufacturing solar cells goes down, elementary economics suggests the accessibility of solar cells will soar. Then it’s a matter of harnessing their power in a myriad of other industries in a clean energy domino effect.”
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Comments on this article
Hello,I love reading through
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Retail Peak Rates are the better benchmark
With the large scale installation of smart meters and peak retail prices during the middle of the day when air conditioners are most likely to run the most appropriate comparison is rooftop solar PV against peak retail rates.
This is the consumer benchmark for those with appropriate roofspace and will drive the conversion to rooftop solar.
Conumers with family at home during the week with air conditioning who haven't already had a summer with a smart meter will get a big surprise when they open their first bill in the New Year.
How Come The Green/Socialist Alliance Have Missed This Point
If the ultimate solution simply reflects a technological lag and solar beats all (for psychological reasons at least because it is so big in the sky most days), why are the clever ones missing this point?
Why are they subsidising coal? Why aren't they putting it all into winning the battle with coal/oil/gas by backing solar 100% and going for the next big leap in solar technology. Gee if we got this right we could be the biggest solar technology leader in the world!
If the insight is true, then are we about to tax billions and then waste billions doing anything other than betting the house on solar? We are about to spend billions shutting down coal generators and replace them with gas or horrifically expensive short term wind.
Surely we must stop this madness now and put it all into solar. It is the only way.
The current plans smell more like burning pink batts than a real solution.
Beatrice Potter lied
Sorry Andrew even at 6 years old i knew " The phrase the sun went down and all the world went too sleep " was a lie. The sun does shine all the time , but only on half the earth. Buckminster Fuller advocated a power link across the Bering Strait 50 years ago. In Australia decent East West links eg Adelaide - Melbourne would make a difference.
The real problem is going to be abundance - free power at some times of the week. Even now there are times when Coal fired operates pay for priveldge of leaving plant running.
Solar only needs to cheaper than peak retail for critical mass to be achieved. Effectively the current Electricity supply business model is dead , not resting dead. The message may take years to reach government but markets will react sooner.
Giles the answer is right in front of you
Solar energy research is making great progress, still not there yet but making great strides.
So why spend so much money implementing and subsidising current technologies that are flawed and costly? The roof top solar subsidies and feed in tariffs are a joke.
Spend the same money on pure research instead. Many so called sceptics like Bjorn Lomborg are saying the same thing. The Greenies on the other hand cannot wait, we must implement it NOW. Groups like Beyond Zero Emissions want us to spend something like $370billion (their way way too low estimate) NOW in just Australia with technology which is not ready.
If we must “make a difference“ spend the money on pure research and build large pilot plants.
Research also creates jobs, real jobs, good jobs and creates a culture on learning and technology. Win Win.
Thank you Giles - and
Thank you Giles - and naysayers be blowed!
There are many scientists like Dr Kylie Catchpole doing cutting edge work - what the ANU (and others) now need are the people and businesses to put these technologies to work, not to mention having far-sighted politicians (read: courageous!).
As we already have a national grid for conventional power generation here in Australia, if we expand that concept a bit we could have this technology across all time zones.
We already have the undersea fibre optics (the internet) linking us north to Japan and east to the US so the linking would not be expensive.
And as we already have distributed computing world-wide using these undersea cables what's there to stop us from generating and having distributed solar world-wide?
The possibilities of this technology are limitless.
Yaysayers and factsayers.
I would simply point out to you Roy that the 'tipping point' has already occurred with solar with the wind-back of State solar feed-in schemes and the Federal RECs scheme. No doubt they were mugged by the reality of the fallacy of composition, at even the more modestly problematic15% efficiency level. Care to advise PM Gillard and Co about what would happen at 100% efficiency and takeup, should Adelaide be without Playford and Hazlewood in future?
The goal is in sight
Another good article Giles. The tipping point for solar gets closer every day. It is good to see the naysayers though as it keeps us on our toes. Storage of various types will usher in a new era of energy generation on site. Domestic and then commercial. Those that have chosen to ignore solar power will no doubt revel in paying their increasingly exorbitant power bills to overseas millionaires.
The 100% efficiency dream realized.
Mediterranean Adelaide, early July at midday and it's been threatening to rain all morning when down it comes hail and all. A glance at the inverter on a 1500watt solar system and it reads 43watts. Ten minutes later the rain stops and for a brief moment a sliver of blue sky and the inverter jumps up to 1180watts then crashes back down again. Now these systems are currently 15% efficient ie they convert only 15% of the sun's rays falling on them into electricity. Simply divide 100% by 15% to get a factor of 6.67 and we can model the physics dream of 100% efficiency. Notice now we have 10000 watts of installed capacity but the previous output figures become 287watts and 7870watts and that would apply all across metro Adelaide at the time. Unfortunately zero times anything is still nothing and that's what we get at dusk. Welcome to Green Utopia but some of us can still see a wee problem, whatever the cost of the new 100% efficient solar panels.
Making solar cheaper than coal
The real worry is that any development in Australia will be sent overseas tomake it commercial our past record with the Greens,ALp and Coalition is not encouraging
remove subsidies to increase incentive
If this technology has such potential Australia should remove all subsidies in order to provide added incentive to get the technology up and running quickly.
Solar apples and oranges
@ Mark Duffet,
Yes, Mark, you're absolutely right, they are different technologies, and hopefully complimentary. One way they might compliment is that better PV technology might allow more Solar Thermal energy to be stored for the lowered night time electricity requirements.
We need all the different clean technologies and techniques we can get in order to build a robust mosaic of renewable and sustainable energy, instead of burning fossil fuels.
Learning from early versions like Gemasolar and the Archimede project in Sicily will build our knowledge and experience and drive solar costs down to where solar is demonstrably cheaper than fossil fuel (especially once fossil fuel externalities are added to its cost).
Maybe that will also leave some of the earth's resources left for our kids and grandchildren.
Solar apples and oranges
Those rushing to assert than solar technology can sail blithely through the vicissitudes of night and clouds because solar thermal recently managed to get through 24 hours in midsummer (as pretty much any technology can, if the output is set low enough) might care to reflect that the focus of this article is on PV technology, for which thermal storage helps not one jot.
@Peter Lang. Peter, you're
@Peter Lang. Peter, you're correct. Gem'sao'lar is not at all what it's cracker'ed up to be and it definitely takes the biscuit in a snap ...as far as dry old arguments go. Wisecracks, who think otherwise, should just packet in...before they're given a serve!
PV techies
These advances could one day be incorporated into building materials such as the Solar Shingle ;-
http://www.ecogeek.org/component/content/article/3624
How American. Now, could we use it to have solar colorbond please ?
Typos in transcript etc.
Giles, very interesting article, although you've s_un'fortunately got solar "techolohies" competing with solar technologies in the 8th para and a dispossessed "Catchpole" competing with "Catchpole's" in the 13th. Although she appears to be 'on her own' as far as having made a breakthrough, I'm sure she'd like to be known as a but a Teamster[Driver].
Some people would believe anything
Some people would believe anything. Without even bothering to check.
For example, Gemasolar cost $26/W (average not peak output). For comparison, new coal costs about $2/W to $2.5/W (and nuclear about the same in Korea and China). The latter gives power on demand, all year round with avialability greater than 90%. (Gemsaolar does not, despite what you might like to believe).
More on solar thermal with molten salt storage
Yes, Andrew, as John says, molten salt storage allows for electricity to be generated 24 hours a day. Gemasolar, a plant near Seville in Spain, which starting operating in July this year, is the first solar thermal plant with molten salt storage to generate electricity 24 hours a day (see http://www.torresolenergy.com/TORRESOL/gemasolar-plant/en). Its molten salt storage can generate at full power for 15 hours so combined with daylight hours covers a 24 hour period. There are other plants with molten salt storage but their storage time is lower. Beyond Zero Emissions (www.beyondzeroemissions.org) has developed a plan to power Australia with 100% renewable energy: 60% solar thermal with 17 hour molten salt storage capacity, 40% wind and a small biomass backup for a few days in winter.
Night and Day, Winter and Summer
The Solar Updraft Tower has had very significant change in the last five years. The solar catchment area has been reduced by 80% and the capacity factor almost doubled to 60%. This is close to base load generation:
The advantages of this kind of power source are clear:
- Because it works on temperature differential, not absolute temperature, it works in any weather;
http://www.gizmag.com/enviromission-solar-tower-arizona-clean-energy-ren...
LCA of coal?
Isn't solar power already cheaper when considering the full environmental, social and health costs of coal?
Day time
Also consider that electricity demand is much greater during daylight hours.
Night time
Andrew, heard of solar thermal? It can provide power when the sun doesn't shine, by storage of heat that can drive steam turbines when the power is needed.
That solves half the problem
Well, if this works, that will solve half the problem with solar energy. Unfortunately, I dont see any solution to the rest of the problem with solar any time soon. That is, the sun doesnt shine 24 hours per day. Until that situation is resolved, 12 hours of solar energy will have to cost less than 24 hours of an equal amount of coal generated energy. I suppose there are some situations where solar energy can be utilized 24 hours per day, heating water for home and commercial use comes to mind, but for those applications that need electricity, I just dont see any real alternative to fossil fuels.
Good
It's articles like this that return faith in emerging technologies and allow some sort of plan towards self reliance.