For this week's episode of Cleaning Up, I sat down with BloombergNEF's Jenny Chase. She's the best solar analyst in the world, and apparently it's all my fault!
Going by rooftop solar (I love, love, love it) it doesn't seem so impossible to build enough to top out above demand. Solar factory output of 1TW per year? I'd seen that as an IEA projection for 2025. Is it already exceeded?
I think solar pricing looks a lot like Zeno's paradox - edging ever closer to zero but unable to quite reach it - and that makes it a winner already. Yet it is heading for cheaper still - eg perovskite/silicon tandem edges closer to viability.
We can't know how the clean energy end game will turn out but we can foresee market saturation, where, like a rooftop, installed capacity exceeds all demand and production is for replacing existing solar, not adding more. It doesn't look like the cost of solar panels is a big constraining factor; developing the associated abilities to make the most effective use of it - transmission and storage and EV's that can be both, mostly - seems the space to watch.
Fab episode! A question: concentrated solar power is dismissed as a viable tech in the episode but without going into the rationale for that. What's the reasoning? (Or, is there a previous podcast episode or article where you've gone into the details of this?)
I understand it might not be competitive as a RE generation source. However, is it a likely contender in the medium- to long-duration energy storage space (limited to regions where the solar conditions are right)?
The reason concentrating solar thermal struggles is that it is much more expensive than PV. And then, although it can integrate storage, that bit is going to be much more expensive than batteries. So what problem does it solve? The only situation I can see is if you need high-temperature heat, because if you need heat at 200C or below, PV + heat pump will be cheaper. But even then, you can do PV plus high temperature thermal storage (“hot rocks in a box”).
As someone who founded a solar business in the UK in 2007, I enjoyed this trip, I mean episode
Going by rooftop solar (I love, love, love it) it doesn't seem so impossible to build enough to top out above demand. Solar factory output of 1TW per year? I'd seen that as an IEA projection for 2025. Is it already exceeded?
I think solar pricing looks a lot like Zeno's paradox - edging ever closer to zero but unable to quite reach it - and that makes it a winner already. Yet it is heading for cheaper still - eg perovskite/silicon tandem edges closer to viability.
We can't know how the clean energy end game will turn out but we can foresee market saturation, where, like a rooftop, installed capacity exceeds all demand and production is for replacing existing solar, not adding more. It doesn't look like the cost of solar panels is a big constraining factor; developing the associated abilities to make the most effective use of it - transmission and storage and EV's that can be both, mostly - seems the space to watch.
Fab episode! A question: concentrated solar power is dismissed as a viable tech in the episode but without going into the rationale for that. What's the reasoning? (Or, is there a previous podcast episode or article where you've gone into the details of this?)
I understand it might not be competitive as a RE generation source. However, is it a likely contender in the medium- to long-duration energy storage space (limited to regions where the solar conditions are right)?
The reason concentrating solar thermal struggles is that it is much more expensive than PV. And then, although it can integrate storage, that bit is going to be much more expensive than batteries. So what problem does it solve? The only situation I can see is if you need high-temperature heat, because if you need heat at 200C or below, PV + heat pump will be cheaper. But even then, you can do PV plus high temperature thermal storage (“hot rocks in a box”).