[ExI] solar is looking better all the time: was RE: Efficiency of wind power

[Kelly Anderson]

On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 12:42 PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 12:26:39PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote:
>
>> > Unlike Moore's law, making solar cells smaller doesn't double
>> > the power. The opposite, in fact.
>>
>> Just to be crystal clear... Ray K's application of the Law of
>> Accelerating Returns is to the Price of a Watt of Solar Panel, not to
>
> Yes, I know.

I hoped that was the case.

> I pointed out the reason why Moore scales that way
> and why solar doesn't. USD/Wp is subject to world demand, USD/Wp
> installed is a lot higher, since inverters don't follow the same
> price curve, installation costs are basically constant, and grid
> upgrade costs are also nothing like that.

Agreed. Nanosolar takes the position that solar installations should
not be per house, but per neighborhood or small city, thus reducing
the per household cost of the inverters. I disagree that installation
costs are constant, particularly with the Nanosolar approach of using
farming implements to install huge arrays of PV panels at the speed of
plowing. That would be MUCH cheaper than putting solar panels on each
roof. Installation costs in space are also much different set of cats
to skin than one per roof.

> Kurzweil said he expects 100% of renewable *total* power,
> world wide. This means a substitution rate of 1 TW/year, for
> the next 20 years. As the current substution rate is negligible,
> and he believes in linear semilog plots, this means most of
> substution will happen in the last 1-2 years.

Yeah, RK has trouble sometimes differentiating between PURE
information technologies, and those that are also tied to
infrastructure. His continued failure to predict when we all talk to
our computers rather than type is typical of this blind spot. Not
everyone has four walls around them, or is comfortable talking to
their machine.

>> it's size. The period of halving the price is estimated at around 3
>> years.
>
> Germany doubled PV from 1% to 2% within about a year. Will this year
> double it to 4%? Unfortunately, probably not. Will the next year see it
> to 8%? Definitely not. The year after to 16%? The next, to 32%? And then,
> to 64%, and then to 128%?

RK's halving claim is only the price of the PV, I don't think it has
anything to do with the installation rate, unless I missed that claim.
I suppose that he believes if it is cheaper, it will be installed
quickly, which has a certain logic, but we can't all become solar
installers unless the installation process becomes much easier.
Perhaps RK thinks all the solar will be installed by robots... :-)

> Singularity is sure quicker, but Singularity in 20 years? It's always
> 20, 30 years away.

Depends on which definition of Singularity you choose, I suppose. If
your definition is the year that without computers we would have
something close to an extinction event for humanity, then perhaps we
are already there... ;-)

-Kelly