Why We Need “Disruptive” Solar Technologies

Tim Young, CEO, Hypersolar

The United States reached its $14 trillion debt ceiling back on May 16th. While the wrangling is still underway in Congress on a deal to raise the limit, the inescapable fact is that budgetary constraints are limiting funding for energy innovation. Faced with this challenge, the nation has no choice — given the importance of energy to our security, prosperity and well being — but to be more selective about how we spend the limited funds we have available. Obama’s “Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future” has put solar in the spotlight, which will attract additional funds for innovation. But the plan needs to identify strategies to promote the funding of what are called “disruptive technologies” — technologies that represent game-changing breakthroughs — as opposed to continuing to pour money into the accelerated deployment of “sustained technologies,” or traditional technologies that may not be economically viable over the long term without government subsidies.

The goal of federal energy policies such as the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot initiative is to make solar technologies cost-competitive with other forms of energy by reducing the cost of solar by about 75 percent before the year 2020 under the premise that reducing the cost of solar to equal that of energy from traditional sources (or 5 to 6 cents per kilowatt hour without subsidies) will result in the rapid, large-scale adoption of solar. But it is my belief this goal will not be achieved through incremental improvements in solar cell efficiency; rather, it will be achieved by the development of a disruptive technology that will change the market for solar in an unexpected way. I believe the HyperSolar technology has the ability to dramatically alter the market for solar in the same way that the introduction of the Internet or the debut of the Ford Model T, which made low-cost automobiles available to the masses, dramatically altered the technology and automobile industries.   

The solar cell is inherently inefficient. The original solar cell, which was invented in 1883, had an energy-conversion efficiency of less than 1 percent, while the efficiency of the first viable photovoltaic cell, Bell Labs’ “Solar Battery,” which was developed in 1954, was about 6 percent. After nearly 130 years of research and development, the average energy conversion efficiency of the solar cell is now only about 15 percent, meaning that only a fraction of the sun’s energy is converted into electricity. Moreover, the silicon solar cell appears to be reaching its theoretical limit of efficiency. Because of this, large numbers of expensive solar cells have to be used in order to generate substantial amounts of electricity. While other types of cell materials are more efficient, they are even more expensive.

In order to become competitive with energy generated from traditional sources, solar has to become more efficient. Rather than focusing on incremental improvements in cell efficiency, HyperSolar is developing a breakthrough technology that can be viewed as a “performance enhancer” for solar. The HyperSolar technology takes the form of an acrylic topsheet that, when applied to a solar panel, boosts performance by 300 percent. As a result, the number of cells, the most expensive element of a panel, can be reduced by 66 percent, with a corresponding reduction in cost. HyperSolar believes that it will eventually achieve concentrations of 400 percent. Moreover, although the HyperSolar technology is now being developed for use with silicon cells, it can be used with any type of cell material: whatever a cell’s efficiency, HyperSolar will boost it.

The photovoltaics subprogram of the SunShot initiative focuses on new devices and processes, prototype design and pilot production and systems development and manufacturing. This is all good, but more funding is needed for disruptive technologies. As President Obama has noted, because of the fundamentally unpredictable nature of technological progress, “None of us can predict with certainty what the next new industry will be….” When it comes to trickle-down economics, the most efficient means of stimulating economic development is through the creation of a reservoir of funding for innovative technologies with the potential to leapfrog over sustained technologies in terms of environmental benefits, easy scalability and rapid payback. In short, we need technologies that will boost performance by 500 or 1,000 percent, not 1 or 2 percent.

The Energy and Utilities Sectors: Seeing the Handwriting on the Wall

The French energy giant Total recently announced a $1.37 billion investment in the California solar photovoltaic company SunPower. Total is taking a majority stake of 60 percent in the nation’s second largest vertically integrated solar cell and panel maker. The investment represents the biggest investment in the solar sector by an international energy company thus far.

Industry analysts have speculated that Total’s action is a response to worldwide
disenchantment with nuclear in the wake of the Fukushima/Daiichi disaster, which raises more barriers for the already-economically challenged nuclear industry. And indeed, Total isn’t the only energy company to be making a solar play. Recently, the New Jersey-based power producer, NRG Energy, announced that it would substantially boost the role of solar PV in its generation mix after deciding to abandon further investment into two new nuclear power projects in Texas due to regulatory uncertainty stemming from Fukushima Daiichi. NRG President and CEO David Crane said last month that NRG is seeking “to become the largest owner and operator of solar generation in the United States in the near term.” In another example, the French nuclear giant, AREVA, bought the U.S. solar concentrated solar power (CSP) company, Ausra, last year.

Then there’s Germany, which plans to abandon its nuclear reactors by 2022 in response to Fukushima Daiichi. Germany plans to replace nuclear, which supplies approximately 23 percent of its power, with renewables, and in the process solidify its position as a worldwide leader in the clean technology sector.

The embracement of solar by big energy and utilities (to say nothing of national governments) could be a simple recognition of the value of diversification — as applicable to energy and utilities as to any other business sector. Total CEO Christophe de Margerie, is reported to have issued a mandate to diversity when he took over in 2007.

Then again, it could be that, seeing the handwriting on the wall, big energy and utilities are buying into solar as a hedge against depleting oil reserves, high oil prices and the increasing distrust of nuclear. In effect, they are taking a short position against their bread and butter — oil and nuclear.

Message to state and national policy-makers: if big energy is fleeing for the exits, why are we continuing to put our faith in them?

Anticipating the Renewable Crossover

Tim Young - CEO, HyperSolar Inc.

In a recent blog by Dana Blankenhorn in Renewable Energy World (http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2011/05/where-is-the-crossove r?cmpid=WNL-Wednesday-June1-2011), the author drew the parallel between the Rapture and the crossover, which is the equivalent of the Rapture for those in the renewable energy space.

The crossover is the point where the cost of electricity from solar is lower than the cost of electricity from fossil fuels. Renewable Energy World stated that the importance of achieving this goal can’t be can’t be overestimated because once crossover is achieved, the cost of solar will keep falling. The big question is: when is this going to occur?

Blankenhorn cited a Bloomberg interview in which Mark M. Little, the global research director for General Electric (GE), said he thinks we can reach crossover in three to five years (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-26/solar-may-be-cheaper-than-fossil-power-in-five-years-ge-says.html). He based his estimate on the price now charged for grid energy in Connecticut, where GE is based, Blankenhorn said.  The cost of grid energy in Connecticut is now 18.1 cents per kilowatt-hour, with Little estimating that homeowners will start switching to solar when the cost gets to 15 cents per kilowatt-hour or lower.

Blankenhorn noted, however, that the way to achieve crossover isn’t just through technology, but through scaling. Companies such as GE, which will manufacture thin-film solar panels with an efficiency of 12.8 percent at a plant it plans to open in 2013, can scale production. Installers such as California cell, panel and system provider SunPower will also be able to scale up as oil companies such as the French oil and gas giant Total buy into them, the blog said. Total’s successful bid for 60 percent of SunPower came at a 44 percent premium to its market price. The company is expected to complete the acquisition in 2013.

Although this was the first deal of its kind, Blankenhorn said the approach of crossover will bring more such deals as decisions are reached based on market economics rather than on subsidies that are subject to the political vagaries of the moment.   

HyperSolar believes its breakthrough technology is the fast track to crossover. Rather than focusing on incremental improvements in cell efficiency, HyperSolar is developing a technology that takes the form of an acrylic top sheet that, when applied to a solar panel, boosts performance by 300 percent. As a result, the number of cells, the most expensive element in a panel, can be reduced by 66 percent, with a corresponding reduction in cost. HyperSolar believes it will eventually achieve concentrations of 400 percent.

The Developing World: The Fork In the Road

Tim Young - CEO, HyperSolar, Inc.

Does anyone remember the Bhopal disaster? One of the world’s worst industrial catastrophes, the 1984 disaster in Bhopal, India — a leak of toxic gases and chemicals from a pesticide plant — resulted in a death toll estimated at 3,787 (although others have put it much higher) and more than half a million injuries. Although the accident was attributed to a collection of causes, conventional wisdom holds that, although such accidents can happen anywhere, developing countries such as India are particularly vulnerable because they lack the environmental, regulatory and educational safeguards and infrastructure to prevent them.

I bring up Bhopal because of the recent recommendation — in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster — that Germany close all nuclear power plants by 2021 and rely on other forms of energy. The recommendation was made by a committee appointed by Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel has vowed to end Germany’s reliance on nuclear, which provides 22.6 percent of its electricity. Germany’s rejection of nuclear is being imitated by other European countries, including Italy and Switzerland, while the United States, which has 104 operating reactors, is reevaluating its nuclear policy. While the West, however, is moving away from nuclear (if only incrementally in many nations), the developing world, especially India and China, is embracing it with wide-open arms.

While developed countries are not immune to nuclear catastrophe, as the accidents at Three Mile Island and Fukushima Daiichi have demonstrated, the rapid implementation of nuclear in the developing world points to an increased vulnerability to the populations of those countries to nuclear disaster — what might be termed the “Bhopal effect.” Indeed, if Germany’s announcement is any indication, one can picture an increasing marginalization of nuclear, in which it is widely adopted by poor, power-hungry nations, but spurned by wealthy countries with the resources to develop clean, renewable sources of energy. Indeed, Germany perceives its pursuit of clean energy as an opportunity to spur growth and position it as a leader in sustainable technologies.

If India, China and other developing nations with less-than-stellar safety records on other issues follow through with their ambitious nuclear plans (China, for instance, plans to get most of its power from nuclear by the middle of the century), the possibility exists that nuclear accidents will turn vast areas of these countries into nuclear wastelands, to say nothing of the casualties such accidents would produce. But there is another scenario: the possibility that developing countries will embrace sustainable technologies with the same fervor as their western counterparts. Both India and China have launched renewable energy initiatives; the question is which path will take precedence as they take their places at the forefront of the world’s economies. 

While renewable technologies are not yet efficient enough to take a primary role in powering of any of the world’s economies, HyperSolar believes its breakthrough technology holds the potential to make solar cost-competitive with energy from traditional sources, including nuclear. Indeed, we believe that the HyperSolar technology, which takes the form of an acrylic topsheet that boosts the output of a solar cell by 300 percent or more, can transform the world by providing power that is considerably cheaper than power from traditional sources. Moreover, unlike nuclear, solar is capable of supplying power to remote areas where no electric infrastructure exists. India, for instance, is said to have more than 69,000 villages that have no electricity.

Thought leader Malcolm Gladwell makes the point in an article in a recent issue of the New Yorker that innovators aren’t necessarily those with a new idea, but those with a new take on an old idea. The HyperSolar technology is just such an innovation: a new take on the old idea of solar, which has been around since 1883. We hope it is one that will prompt developing countries to take the renewable energy — rather than the nuclear — path on their journey to economic dominance.

Magnifying Solar Electricity’s Future

Tim Young, CEO - HyperSolar, Inc.

Many of you have been asking me about CPV (concentrated photovoltaics), a group of technologies in which HyperSolar exists.  In the article below, Mark Halper gives one of the best definitions and explanations of the space including a mention of HyperSolar.  

Magnifying solar electricity’s future

By Mark Halper | May 20, 2011, 11:47 AM PDT

We’ve all heard of the kid who zaps ants under a magnifying glass. The image strikes us for the cruelty, but also, for the undeniable power of combining the sun and optics.

Take the nastiness out of the picture, and it could also represent the future of solar electricity, as companies advance techniques for focusing and intensifying sunlight onto a solar cell. The technology goes by the name concentrated photovoltaics, and, of course, it comes with an acronym: CPV.

Not to be confused with the eponymous “concentrated solar thermal” electricity, in which the sun heats a piped liquid that ultimately drives a turbine, CPV works directly on solar cells, no turbine necessary. Unlike the solar cells in your rooftop panels, which take whatever light they can from whatever the sun casts their way, CPV intensifies that light with a lens or mirror before it hits the cell. Magnification can hit a staggering factor of 1,200 times, such as with a system under development at Tuscon, Ariz.-based REhnu, where the company’s fancy gear has melted a hole in steel.

One of CPVs great promises is that it slashes the number of solar cells in a panel, since each cell produces a lot more electricity than a solar cell that doesn’t benefit from focused light. CPV can therefore reduce the land and real estate required for utility scale projects. Leading commercial vendors include California’s Amonix Inc. and SolFocus Inc., as well as France’s Soitec Group, through its acquisition of Germany’s Concentrix Solar GmbH.

CPV is not new, but for several reasons it has failed to gain much market share. That could now be changing.

According to a report released this week by Greentech Media (GTM), “After decades of R&D, the concentrating photovoltaics (CPV) industry is finally breaking into the utility-scale solar market. GTM Research forecasts new CPV installations to grow from under 5 MW in 2010 to more than 1,000 MW globally by 2015.”

Okay, 1,000 megawatts is still miniscule. That’s a gigawatt, which is the normal size of a single nuclear power station. It’s barely an ant, if you will, on the global energy scene. Even in the world of solar power, it’s, er, a small fry. “The figures still pale in comparison to the annual installation of traditional non-concentrating PV, which was over 13,000 (megawatts, or 13 gigawatts) 2010 alone,” states GTM’s report, Concentrating Photovoltaics 2011: Technology, Costs and Markets.

What GTM likes about CPV is that, according to report co-author Brett Prior, it is low-cost compared to other forms of solar. “The key driver enabling CPV to win projects in high solar resource locations is CPV’s ability to provide developers with superior economics, as CPV has a levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) versus the non-concentrating PV alternatives,” the report notes. Prior says the LCOE is around $0.12 per kilowatt-hour.

That might surprise CPV detractors, who say CPV costs are the bubble under the carpet- push it down on one end and it pops up on the other. CPV may cut the number of solar cells, but the cost of mirrors, lenses and other contraptions that help intensify and track the sun can more than offset those savings.

On top of that, high-magnification CPV manufacturers typically deploy costly non-standard solar cells, called “triple junction” gallium arsenide cells. Triple junctions are used in space on satellite-mounted solar panels, but they can exceed earthly budgets.

GTM likes the chances that the cost of triple junction cells will decline. “The forecast is predicated upon CPV companies successfully achieving their cost reduction roadmaps, and bringing the installed cost of a CPV system down by more than 30 percent over the next four years,” the report states. “Where will that price reduction come from? One place will be from the solar cell suppliers like Solar Junction, Cyrium, Semprius, Soitec, and JDSU that have made advances in the triple-junction cell that lies at the heart of the CPV system.”

One factor holding back CPV, notes Prior, is that the technology is unproven, which in turn makes it difficult to finance and insure CPV projects.

“You need bankers and equity guys to put money in, but they don’t want to if they’re worried it’s going to break down,” Prior told me when I spoke with him earlier this year. Power providers who use CPV equipment will almost certainly insist that CPV vendors buy warranty insurance to cover against breakdown. In a possible turning point last October, German insurance giant Munich Re last October backed SolFocus.

One of the beauties of CPV, but equally, one factor that rattles financiers, is that there are no real standards. Every system is different. REhnu’s 1200-times technology uses large reflectors, fancy ball lenses and optics inspired by founder Roger Angel, a University of Arizona professor of astronomy and optical science who is now applying his prize-winning work on telescopes towards CPV. Low and medium-magnification systems, such as those from Santa Barbara, Calif.-based HyperSolar Inc., Fremont, Calif-based Solaria Corp., and Mountain View-based Skyline Solar, use conventional crystalline solar cells rather than triple junction chips – but each applies different techniques.

As positive sign, GTM notes that utility scale projects are stating to take hold. In March, Soitec won a 150-megawatt deployment from energy company Tenaska Solar Ventures, to provide electricity to San Diego Gas & Electric. Amonix is deploying a 30-megawatt plant near Alamosa Colorado, for power generation company Cogentrix Energy LLC, contracted to the Public Service Company of Colorado.

It sounds like the story of concentrated photovoltaics will mirror the technology itself, and magnify in the coming years.

Photo: REhnu

Author’s note: Watch for my upcoming blog on University of Arizona professor Roger Angel, the founder of REhnu who’s swapping his prize-winning career in astrophysics for a fresh start in renewable energy.

Why Stop At Grid Parity?

Tim Young, CEO HyperSolar

The Obama administration’s energy policy, and, in particular, the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot initiative, focuses on achieving grid parity for solar. The goal is to reduce the cost of large-scale solar to a dollar per watt, which roughly corresponds to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is the cost of electricity from traditional energy sources, by the end of the decade. The premise is that the achievement of grid parity will result in the rapid, large-scale adoption of solar.

In fact, utility-scale unsubsidized solar is already competitive with electricity generated from traditional sources in California and Nevada. Although it will take longer to achieve grid parity in markets across the country, the question I would pose is, “Why stop at grid parity?” The widespread availability of a low-cost source of electricity that is beyond the control of corporations, governments, despots, lobbyists and politicians holds the promise of transforming the world.

While the solar industry is now focused on achieving grid parity in the West, low-cost solar promises a far greater impact where there is no electricity infrastructure, just as cell phone technology helped connect rural populations with no access to land lines. And, just as the cell phone has boosted economies in the developing world by providing access to banking, education and health care, low-cost solar also holds the promise of helping to lift the world out of poverty.

Nearly half the undeveloped world has no access to electricity. The availability of low-cost solar would eliminate ecologically degrading practices, such as using kerosene for lighting and firewood and charcoal — the main source of energy for roughly half the world’s population — for cooking and heating. It would also provide access to tools, including cell phones, power tools, machinery and computers, that foster economic development.

In fact, Microsoft chairman and innovator Bill Gates, in an address entitled “Bill Gates On Energy: Innovating to Zero,” said that low-cost, clean energy is more important to developing nations than to anyone else because of the advancements that are powered by electricity, but also because the consequences of the failure to bring a halt to global warming — in the form of starvation, uncertainty and unrest — will strike poor populations the hardest.  (http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html)  

Indeed, the impact of low-cost solar on the developing world would be so profound that it is difficult to fathom. Already, populations in these areas are using solar to charge solar lanterns — as well as those ubiquitous cell phones — via stand-alone 50-watt panels. Although the access even to this limited amount of power is considered a giant step forward, imagine if these populations were able to use community solar systems to meet more extensive power needs.

The access to electric power has been a traditional route out of poverty. Most of the developing world is located in high sunshine regions that are ideally suited to solar. With low-cost solar, the populations of these areas will be able to tap into an abundant source of clean, renewable energy in order to lead more prosperous, healthy and comfortable lives, thus progressing in giant steps rather than in the increments that have characterized progress in the West. 

So far, the attention of the solar industry has been focused on the demand in western countries, rather than on the developing world. That is bound to change — a huge potential market will not be overlooked for long.

But first we have to come to consider grid parity as a milestone along the way, rather than the end-goal.

Secretary Chu Could Take A Fund Raising Lesson From the “Real Housewive’s of Wall Street”

Tim Young, CEO HyperSolar

ARPA-E is unleashing American innovation to strengthen America’s global competitiveness and win the clean energy race,” said Secretary Chu last week as he announced a $130 million from the congressional budget to save this agency from going by the wayside. 

http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/04/20/us-usa-doe-arpa-e-idINTRE73J5O320110420

ARPA-E was created by the DOE in 2007 to invest in projects considered too risky for the private sector than can solve our nation’s energy crisis.

I applaud Secretary Chu and his department’s lobbying efforts within the System to secure and save this funding, despite how little some of us might think this amount to be for such an important endeavor of reducing our nation’s dependence on foreign oil. 

Just to give the amount of $130 million for 2011 some perspective, we spend $1 billion a day on foreign oil, making up 80% of our national trade deficit. Just imagine the positive economic impact of innovating our way off of that reliance.

However, what really made this number of $133 million seem really sad to me was when I read in this months issue of Rolling Stone that Christy Mack, the wife of Wall Street Executive John Mack (CEO of Morgan Stanley) was given $223 million in un-secured funding from our government back in June 2009 to buy commercial loans from Credit Suisse.   Yes that’s right.  A woman and a girlfriend with almost no business experience were handed nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in risk-free money funded by American tax payers.  

Read the story here:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-housewives-of-wall-street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-the-bailout-20110411

We will have to leave it to free-enterprise and the private sector to drive the innovation that will lead us to a brighter environmental and economic future.