

See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil - antr
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-23/see-through-solar-is-tomorrow-s-threat-to-oil

======
experiment0
We are already struggling to make low cost solar panels that have a high
efficiency using light absorbed from the visible spectrum (which accounts for
most of the sun's spectral irradiation [1]).

Furthermore, you can't just have solar cells that absorb a wide range of the
solar spectrum, there is an optimum band gap for these materials of around
1.34 eV [2].

This means that the most popular solar cells in development, namely CIGS and
CdTe are already occupying the niche for maximum efficiency. The challenge now
is finding new materials that are cheaper to make and show greater
efficiencies whilst not relying on the use of rare earth/toxic elements.

(Hint: the real development in this area at the moment is hybrid perovskites
[3])

Basically, this is irrelevant cruft.

[1]
[http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/122/images/solar_spectrum.p...](http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/122/images/solar_spectrum.png)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limit)

[3]
[http://www.nrel.gov/ncpv/images/efficiency_chart.jpg](http://www.nrel.gov/ncpv/images/efficiency_chart.jpg)

(source: currently doing a PhD in a new photovoltaic materials)

~~~
higherpurpose
As they say in the video, even if these are half as efficient as regular solar
panels, you could still see them on _other types_ of surfaces where current
solar panels can't be used right now: think windows or smartphone screens.

We could also see them on large buildings or rich people's villas whose owners
perhaps want to use energy from solar panels, but don't like the "look" of
solar panels on those buildings. So then the choice becomes using this or
using no other solar panels.

~~~
experiment0
We really don't have a shortage of space to put solar panels. The challenge is
making solar panels that are cost effective (e.g. $ per Watt).

In response to your edit: That is a possibility, that yes they may find a
niche in the fancy of the rich.

But the point I'm making is that the article is hyperbolic and misleading.

Transparent solar is not the future of utility scale power generation. It is
not going to solve any of the problems currently holding back solar power from
becoming ubiquitous.

~~~
antr
Volume is key. Volume to push price of silicon panels down to have electricity
reach grid parity levels. An intesting project (which I think has been ditched
or put on hold) is/was DESERTEC. Install thousands of PV pannels in the Sahara
dessert, and connect this to energy-hungry Europe thorugh a new HVDC grid
connection.

Source:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec)

------
diafygi
_> See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil_

 _> ...screens and windows that soak up light could power your home or your
phone_

These two things don't compute. Oil is mostly used for mobile energy, and
solar is mostly used for stationary energy. However...

I work in solar, and solar is a threat to oil. Why? Not because of transparent
photovoltaics, but because it and batteries are getting so goddamn cheap. The
Department of Energy has a goal of $0.06/kWh for solar by 2020[1], and Tesla
aims to reduce the cost of lithium ion batteries by 50% by 2020[2]. That's
only 4.7 years away.

When things get that cheap, we can just slap solar everywhere and have "gas
stations" with excess inventory of swappable batteries for cars. It baffles me
why more entrepreneurs haven't realized that 87% of the energy sources we use
are going to be switching to other sources in our lifetimes[3].

[1]:
[http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/mission](http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/mission)

[2]: [http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Teslas-Giga-
Batt...](http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Teslas-Giga-Battery-
Factory-Threatens-the-Auto-Utility-and-Building-Contr)

[3]: [http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-
internet/](http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/)

~~~
jameswilsterman
"It baffles me why more entrepreneurs haven't realized that 87% of the energy
sources we use are going to be switching to other sources in our lifetimes"

What leads you to think entrepreneurs haven't realized this? What should they
be doing once they do realize it?

~~~
diafygi
My startup is in the SfunCube solar startup accelerator program[1]. So far,
all of the entrepreneurs who have applied to the program are from within the
solar industry (i.e. they previously worked at a solar company). Additionally,
I organize the SF Cleanweb meetups[2], and we rarely see people from the
normal tech companies/startups come to events to learn more about the space.

I don't really blame anyone for not realizing the huge opportunity in solar.
It's not a very visible industry and used to be primarily a hardware space.
Software has only come to the forefront in the last few years due to soft
costs being such a huge problem[3]. If you're looking for an industry that
desperately needs software and entrepreneurial talent, I'd highly recommend
solar.

[1]: [http://www.sfuncube.com/](http://www.sfuncube.com/)

[2]: [http://www.meetup.com/cleanwebsf/](http://www.meetup.com/cleanwebsf/)

[3]:
[http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2013/5306.html](http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2013/5306.html)

~~~
fsavard2
I'm not at all knowledgeable about the solar industry, but I'm curious: how
would software reduce the "soft" costs described in that third link (NREL)? It
seems to me to be a bunch of costs related to the actors involved, and I don't
see how software would help with that. Also, do you have examples of such
software?

~~~
diafygi
Sure! My startup, UtilityAPI.com, is an example of one that is targeting
customer acquisition soft costs (10% of total installed cost). When you want
to write a proposal for someone thinking about going solar, you need their
utility usage and billing history. Collecting that data is currently a very
time consuming and painful process, so not only do you spend a lot of man-
hours on it, you also lose a huge portion of your funnel at this step.

We are building software that automates that utility data collection process,
so solar companies can just bake it into their online forms/apps/internal
tools. We estimate we can shave 5-10% off the installed price of solar due to
time savings and increased conversion. The Department of Energy agreed and
recently awarded us with $25k to build SDKs for our API (with the opportunity
for $100k more in May)[1].

[1]: [http://catalyst.energy.gov/](http://catalyst.energy.gov/)

~~~
fsavard2
Ok I see, you're saying that hidden away in the various strata in that graph
are, e.g., process inefficiencies which software can eat away. I was naively
looking for something that would solve many categories at once, and being an
outsider I think of solar as mostly hardware (like you said). Thanks for the
answer.

------
joshuaheard
Only about half of oil production goes to energy and transportation. The other
half goes to production of synthetic materials like plastic. Look around you,
oil production is not going away any time soon.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Only more reasons to stop using oil for energy and transportation - we need it
for plastics.

~~~
LeonRobrotsky
I thought refining of oil was mostly separating the different hydrocarbons- or
can gasoline be used to make plastic?

~~~
pjc50
You can "crack" or "reform" any hydrocarbon to any other at the cost of some
energy. Plastic tends to be ethane -> polyethylene, and the like. The fraction
called "naptha" which is between ethane and gasoline in refining tends to be
used as chemical feedstock.

------
jacquesm
Flagged for being totally hyped and factually incorrect (even the title is
nonsense).

I really wished that people reporting on Solar/Wind and other alternative
energy sources would at a minimum gain a basic level of understanding of the
subject matter before writing nonsense articles like these.

~~~
slm_HN
Having "Bloomberg" in the title already works as a flag for me. I don't think
I've ever been pleasantly surprised by any of their articles.

Life is just too short to click on Bloomberg links.

------
crdoconnor
The efficiency of this technology is ~1%. It's no threat to oil, but regular
solar panels (efficiency ~30%) sure as hell are.

------
Elrac
I haven't had a chance to watch the video, but I question the thinking in
various parts of this article.

The first thing that hit me was: Cell phones? Sure, they don't need a lot of
juice so a tiny patch of solar could power them. BUT there's 2 problems: These
panels work on UV and infrared. Unless your phone owner spends a lot of time
outdoors, he won't be exposing his phone to that kind of radiation, neither of
which is found (significantly) indoors. Second, where do people carry their
phones? Where the sun doesn't shine - I'm referring to their pockets, of
course.

I wonder about the efficiency of window panes on buildings too: UV and
infrared are in short supply when the sky is overcast, whereas visible doesn't
dip nearly as much. So this is low-efficiency technology capturing light
that's mostly restricted to sunshiny days? I still think it makes a heck of a
lot more sense to simply slap "normal" PV on the roof, or possibly the walls
around the windows. This looks gimmicky to me and I'm not sure the author
understands the technology.

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ogrisel
They don't speak about the angles (vertical windows vs horizontal roofs) and
how much can this impact the energy efficiency in practice.

Presumably it's good to have some vertical panels in a mix to produce energy
in the late afternoon when the sun is low but I wonder if there is any
quantified study available that would highlight whether or not this is worth
the investment.

~~~
strommen
This isn't related to the clear solar panels from the article, but there's
been significant research on this for traditional solar panels as well as
solar concentrators.

Bottom line is, the mix of panels makes sense for northern cities (e.g.
Albany) but not middle (e.g. St. Louis) or southern (e.g. San Diego).

There's a great writeup with links to the raw data at
[http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/08/solar-data-
treas...](http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/08/solar-data-treasure-
trove/) (this entire blog is amazing).

~~~
jndetlefsen
gives me a rough idea how big your world is.

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matt_morgan
Here, take this clause and make sure to put it in an important place in every
solar-revolution story (but not in the title of course!):

"The technology still has a way to go because the cells must become more
efficient to prove cost-effective, but their promise is big ..."

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yessql
Really dumb article. Photovoltaics are breaking through as we speak. 1/3 of
new electricity generation capacity in the US was solar in 2014. Building
integrated PV is not doing anything, and I suspect it never will, because
why??

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rdlecler1
I guess this means we're hitting peak houseplant.

------
copsarebastards
The only threat to oil is government subsidies going to renewables instead of
oil. I'm not saying that solar technologies aren't important, but the
technology will fall into place when the money is there. Solar is already able
to compete with oil with subsidies favoring oil, so solar technology is
already good enough. Of course better tech is better, but we don't need better
tech to kill oil, we need better distribution of funds.

------
joss82
Oil is primarily used as fuel for transportation. How can I power my kilowatt
car with these? How about flying a megawatt plane?

This seems more like a milliwatt application. Probably nice and useful for
phone, but not to replace oil. The title is misleading.

What is the efficiency of this technology compared to the usual solar panels?

We need terawatt-scale energy sources if we want to meet actual demand. How
many square kilometers of that glass do we need to install to meet that
demand?

~~~
higherpurpose
> Oil is primarily used as fuel for transportation. How can I power my
> kilowatt car with these?

Easy. You build batteries using energy from solar panels, and then you
_charge_ them with energy from solar panels.

~~~
LordKano
After you mine rare earth minerals using energy from solar panels?

Simple perhaps but certainly not easy.

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ape4
I think it would be quite tricky to connect all windows of a building with
transparent solar panels. Anytime a window is repaired you'd need an
electrician. Since they are less efficient than regular panels you have more
maintenance for the same power. Its cool innovation and I hope than they can
solve the huge logistic problems. Mandated roof panels seems simpler.

------
explorigin
Good solar cells are 40ish% efficient? I'm not a photonics engineer but I
wonder how much of the total energy is in the visible range.

Current solar cells are only cost-effective in limited scenarios, it's nice
that these could go in more places but even if they reach cost parity with
what we have today, the would be less power. We're going to need to see huge
reductions in production cost or energy capture before this becomes viable.

~~~
yessql
Good research lab solar cells are 40% when actively cooled and concentrating
light at 1000x.

Good solar panels for homes and solar farms are 15 to 22% efficient.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It's interesting that efficiency is the key figure that we use. The more
pertinent numbers are surely break even point - how many years in a standard
installation to return the energy needed to make the panels. The next key
figure is probably (in a domestic install) how much of a households energy can
be produced with a standard install.

In many ways efficiency is irrelevant. If a panel were only 5% efficient but
that produced 200% of a families power requirements in a normal install and
broke even after 1 year that would be awesome. On the other hand if a panel
were 95% efficient and returned 5% of families power requirements and broke
even in several decades that would be terrible.

It seems a rating that shows how long it takes a panel under [a properly
defined] "average" solar illumination to pay for it's own construction (both
in money and power) would perhaps be useful and not too difficult to test and
verify.

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TeMPOraL
Does this tech, or even regular PVs, break-even energy-wise? I.e. do they
produce more energy during their life-time than it takes to create them?
Because if not, then a widespread deployment will only make our problems
worse.

EDIT: thanks for replies!

~~~
dangravell
Regular PV breaks even with ease, assuming sensible use of the panels (e.g.
don't mount them in the shade, mount them the right way around, don't smash
them up etc).

Look up "embodied energy".

~~~
TeMPOraL
Thanks very much for the term "embodied energy" \- now I know how what to
google for!

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pbhjpbhj
If panels hang vertically can't you facet them to give a better angle? You'd
also make a larger area of light incidence that way.

    
    
        /        |
        /   vs   |
        /        |
        /        |
    
    ?

------
S_A_P
Again, this is _tomorrows_ revolutionary technology. Im all for solar, I am
excited by the prospect of solar! I work in an area that partially depends on
the oil industry for a large portion of the work I do. As has been said in
this thread, Oil is never going away until its gone, there is just too much
utility to be had from the stuff. However, being able to generate electricity
from our sun would be a great boon to our society and emerging nations. I
think its great that research is being put into this, but what we _really_
need for solar to take off is something akin to Moore's law for solar. It
needs to get cheaper every generation by half for the same kwh. When we figure
that out, solar will take off. If I can get mostly off the grid for a couple
grand(not 10s of thousands) I will jump on board immediately.

~~~
copsarebastards
It's true that petroleum is used in a lot of different industries, but the
primary uses of petroleum are still energy production and transportation.
Everything else happens because it's cheaper to use the byproducts of
petroleum refinement than to dispose of them. If we weren't using petroleum
for energy and transport, we wouldn't dig up oil just to make plastics--there
are plenty of renewable starter materials that provide equally malleable
organic compounds (soybeans, rubber, agricultural waste).

~~~
S_A_P
I disagree on that plant based plastics, and you are missing my point. My
point on petroleum was just to say I derive some of my lively hood from
commodity markets based on trading Crude, NGLS, Ethanol, and some other things
like metals, coal, etc. Even though this is the case, I still am a huge
proponent for solar! However, we need to focus on a systematic cheapening of
solar output per dollar for mainstream use, not clear solar panels that don't
even make use of the most powerful spectrum of light.(even so I am still
mostly in favor of this research)

Which brings me to my second point and why I disagree on plant based plastics.
Oil is way cheaper to make plastics with than any other organic element.
Further when you devote arable land to something other than food there is
always going to be market pressure that will drive up food prices. I have
enough experience in commodity markets to know that ethanol is a losing
proposition right now. If we stop making oil based plastics we are going to
run into the same issues with unnatural subsidies propping up the market. I do
wish that we could just stop pulling oil out of the ground and use our plant
waste to make all the plastic we currently use, but it just isn't the case.
Attitudes and consumption per capita would need to go WAY down for this to
work out.

~~~
copsarebastards
> However, we need to focus on a systematic cheapening of solar output per
> dollar for mainstream use, not clear solar panels that don't even make use
> of the most powerful spectrum of light.(even so I am still mostly in favor
> of this research)

Solar already competes with oil despite comparatively massive subsidies for
the oil industry. The problem at this point isn't the technology: the tech is
good enough (although better would obviously be better--I'm not saying more
research isn't warranted). The problem is government misdirecting funds into
non-renewables.

> Oil is way cheaper to make plastics with than any other organic element.

 _Petroleum_ is cheaper to make plastics with, and only because oil companies
have already footed the bill of locating and drilling the petroleum. If
petroleum-based plastics ceased to be the byproduct of a much more lucrative
industry they would cease to be as cheap.

> Further when you devote arable land to something other than food there is
> always going to be market pressure that will drive up food prices.

I don't think you have enough data to say that. Corn and soybeans are very
different markets, and that's not even looking at other potential plant
sources of plastics. Not all plant sources of plastic would be detracting from
food production.

------
meggar
so what would happen if you put the transparent panel on top of a normal
panel?

~~~
misthop
It would lower to energy input to the lower, opaque panel. The transparent
panel would "soak up" the infrared and ultraviolet energy first. The lower
would only have access to visible light energy.

------
cozzyd
So this means we should destroy the ozone layer to increase the amount of UV,
right? /s

------
ncamm
"There not as efficient as traditional solar panels -
[http://i.imgur.com/kv6dAEw.gif](http://i.imgur.com/kv6dAEw.gif) "

