Rather, Google is investing in renewable energy because they
believe that renewable energy will reap rewards, from a financial perspective.
This is a big thing.
For someone like me, who’s been involved in the renewable
energy area for well something like 20 years now, this is very welcome news
indeed. For a long time we had heard
that was just impossible to get solar to a point where it was financially viable
without financial incentives (usually from the government). However, in the near future, incentives may not be necessary.
The Forbes article (which you can find here: http://bit.ly/Y2LQOR) provides a lot of interesting
data. For instance, the article states
that "Solar panels have dropped in price by 80% over the last five
years." And that "49% of the new capacity commissioned in the in U.S.
in 2012 was renewable.”
I also happen to have some contacts in major utilities. From these contacts I have learned that there
is a tremendous expectation that solar will drop in price to the
point where it will be price competitive with fossil fuels by the end of this decade
(due to a combination of decreases in solar costs and expected increases in the
costs of traditional fuels).
When I first heard that a few months ago, that seemed to be
to be a very startling statement.
But, apparently, a combination of Clinton/Bush/Obama money,
research and time have conspired (in a good way) to result in a major shift in
the economics of the technology.
I decided to check out this data and found some interesting information. There are a number of ways you can cook the books (so to speak) and a number of ways to consider data reflecting the cost of solar (e.g., installed costs of residential and/or industrial at various energy levels, levelized cost of electricity, etc.). In checking out these facts, though, I discovered that, overall, the message appears to be right -- solar costs are dropping dramatically and the use of solar in the US is rising. Check out the charts I prepared, using data from Arizona State University and the US Department of Energy:
This is great news -- but there are still issues associated
with adopting renewables, in particular solar and wind.
Probably the biggest hurdle is the fact that the sun doesn't
always shine and the wind doesn't always blow.
During those times, electricity will need to be obtained in some other
way, probably generated by some form of fossil fuels.
That is, unless an economical method of energy storage can be
found so that excess energy created by solar and wind can be stored for use at
night and/or during calm weather.
This is where we come in.
Battery technologies are over hundred years old. While some technologies (computer data
storage for example) have improved hundreds of times just in the past couple of
decades, energy storage in batteries has improved only 8 to 10 times in nearly
a century.
And, an often quoted benchmark of $250/kWh still seems
unattainable considering what’s currently available, even with the tremendous
advances in lithium ion and other battery technologies.
We are gaining on it, though.
The advances we've (i.e., Enable IPC and our subsidiary,
SolRayo) seen in our research have been both encouraging and tremendously
exciting. The use of inexpensive nanoparticles, combined with some very
innovative ways to access and combine the best features of ultracapacitors and
advanced batteries are showing that they could very well be a large part of the
answer we've all been looking for.
We've been at this for over 8 years, and things seem to be
coming together in an exciting way.
Stay tuned -- we are very excited about what the next few
months will bring.
