It's indisputable that solar energy is positioned for unprecedented growth in the years ahead, but does repeated emphasis on that promising future actually hold the industry back?

That question buzzed through my mind last week as I listened to NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten conclude a segment on natural gas by emphasizing that “renewable energy sources are still in the future.” What we really need, he contended, is a transition fuel.

Renewable energy sources are still in the future?

Solar energy is already a multi-billion dollar global industry that’s been growing at a clip of about 30% to 40% per year — some years even faster — for nearly a decade. According to a recent study conducted by the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) and Management Information Services Inc. (MISI), renewable energy and energy efficiency represent more than $1 trillion in annual revenue in the U.S. alone. That’s not the future, that’s in the here and now.

Rather than discard that “geothermal” resource created by the process of oil extraction, the DOE is going to show the traditional energy industry how to tap into those waste fluids to power equipment at the site.

The renewable energy division (EERE) of Steven Chu’s energetic new Department of Energy is buying the waste heat geothermal unit from Ormat Technologies to do the demo. Ormat makes both geothermal and combined heat and power units.

The DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Program at the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) will collaborate with Office of Fossil Energy to make low temperature geothermal power from waste drilling fluids using a waste heat geothermal unit.

The electricity produced would be used to power field production equipment, which would offset purchased electricity. Because this would reduce the fossil energy needed to extract each barrel of oil, this would reduce the pollution costs the traditional oil industry would be liable for under new legislation pending.

A big factor limiting solar and wind power growth across the US is the current transmission network. It is disconnected. A new project proposed by Tres Amigas LLC in New Mexico would link the nation’s main power grids and, therefore, give hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of households links to already existing renewable energy sources.

New Mexico Public Lands Commissioner Patrick Lyons states: “One of the biggest constraints on wind and solar power growth is the reduced capacity of the transmission grid to deliver energy to customers. This new transmission infrastructure will allow half of the United States to access vast wind and solar energy resources.”

The power grid of the future is one of humanity's boldest visions. Gigantic wind farms in the sea and enormous solar fields in the desert are to generate the bulk of our power in the years to come. But consumers and companies are also producing energy with mini-power plants in their own basements and solar panels on the roof. And intelligent appliances are saving energy in our homes: washers, dryers and refrigerators that communicate with each other wash, dry or cool when electricity is cheapest. The information age is arriving at a new level: It's becoming the electricity age.

The electricity age is imminent in six German regions: The technology of the future for smart energy management is going to be developed and tested, under the label E-Energy, in several cities. A number of projects will kick into high gear this month. Tens of thousands of homes and hundreds of companies are expected to participate in the field tests. Research will be conducted into the possibility, for example, of homes that can largely produce all the electricity required by a household, as well as energy exchanges that enable consumers to sell any excess, self-produced and environmentally friendly electricity at a profit back to the energy grid.

October is Energy Awareness Month, and this year's theme — A Sustainable Energy Future: Putting All the Pieces Together — is especially timely. Here is my perspective on one significant piece, which has been worked on since 1967 and was presented to Congress in 1999, that could build on the space agency's considerable technical prowess.

One of our greatest resources is all around us — sunlight. Each hour, the Earth receives more energy from the sun than the world's population consumes in one year. And our star promises to shine brightly for billions of years to come.

With presidential direction and congressional support, NASA's wellspring of talent could help foster the creation of solar power satellites — spacecraft that circle the Earth and beam the energy they generate down to the ground for distribution as electricity.

Toyota is developing a solar charging station for electric cars and plug-in hybrids, making a green technology even greener. It has also designed a battery charger for mounting inside an electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid to recharge the storage batteries.

Wouldn't it be ironic if hydrogen's role in future transportation is not derived from its use in a fuel cell but rather, in a battery. If a recent press release is to be believed then the forthcoming YESS battery (that's "Your Energy Storage Solution") from an outfit called ERRA Incorporated may provide that humorous twist of H2 fate.

It appears the company is planning on launching its own electric car and has decided to re-invent the battery, specifically the nickel hydrogen (NiH2) cell similar to those used in satellites for the past 40 years. They say they have "acquired all rights and patents to a breakthrough battery technology" whose properties are said to include the ability to charge in 15 minutes, be cycled thousands of times and require no maintenance. With a cost said to be similar to lead acid and an energy density equivalent to lithium ion, ERRA believes it has a battery that will "largely displace" other chemistries.

During the next decade, millions of vehicles that primarily run on electric power and are plugged in to be recharged will enter roadways as the automotive industry slowly begins to wean itself from fossil fuels. While the transition will be slower than many individuals with concerns about climate change would like, the impact on auto manufacturers, battery makers, utilities, and smart grid companies will be profound.

Despite rapid growth in the sales of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and pure battery electric vehicles (EVs), the hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) market will continue to be the largest market for the foreseeable future. This combined market for electrified vehicles will represent just a small (2.5%) portion of the total vehicle market. Yet, it will require billions of dollars in investment in charging equipment and upgrades to the power grid to manage the additional load. In 2015, Pike Research forecasts that charging stations where drivers can plug in and recharge their vehicles will be available at more than 5.3 million locations around the globe.

Here we are in the dead of winter, but the most interesting snowflake around is actually all about the sun. A new technology, called the snowflake solar cell, has just debuted and is said to be 100 times more efficient than traditional solar modules. If this is true, it could mean a major about-face for the entire solar industry.

The secret behind the snowflakes? They’re smaller — a lot smaller. A standard solar cell measures about 6 square inches. The average snowflake cell is about 0.25 to 1 millimeter across and 14 to 20 micrometers thick, like a glitter or sequin particle.

Just think about how many more you could fit on the surface of a solar panel. According to the snowflake’s developer, Sandia National Laboratories, the crystalline silicon cells generate just as much energy while using 100 times less material — by far the most expensive part of any solar system.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists theorize that quantum phenomena could provide a major boost to batteries, with the potential to increase energy density up to 10 times that of lithium ion batteries. According to a new proposal, billions of nanoscale capacitors could take advantage of quantum effects to overcome electric arcing, an electrical breakdown phenomenon which limits the amount of charge that conventional capacitors can store.

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The physicists calculated that the large electric field exhibited under these conditions could lead to an energy density anywhere between two and 10 times greater than that of today's best battery technologies. The scientists also estimated that the power density (i.e., the charge-discharge rates) could be orders of magnitude greater than that of today's batteries. In addition, the nature of the charging and discharging avoids the leakage faced by conventional batteries, so that the nano vacuum batteries waste very little energy and have a virtually unlimited lifetime.

The scientists say that it may be possible to build a prototype of the battery in the next year. Since the energy density is independent from the materials used, the nano vacuum tubes could be built from inexpensive, non-toxic materials. The nano vacuum tubes could also be fabricated using existing photolithographic techniques, and could be easily combined with integrated circuits.


"If you look at it from a digital electronics perspective, it's just a flash drive," Hubler said. "If you look at it from an electrical engineering perspective, you would say these are miniaturized vacuum tubes like in plasma TVs. If you talk to a physicist, this is a network of capacitors."

Hubler has applied for DARPA funding to develop a prototype of the digital quantum battery, and find out what will actually happen when loading the nano vacuum tubes with large amounts of energy.

The concept calls for billions of nanoscale capacitors and would rely on quantum effects--the weird phenomena that occur at atomic size scales--to boost energy storage. Conventional capacitors consist of one pair of macroscale conducting plates, or electrodes, separated by an insulating material. Applying a voltage creates an electric field in the insulating material, storing energy. But all such devices can only hold so much charge, beyond which arcing occurs between the electrodes, wasting the stored power.

If capacitors were instead built as nanoscale arrays--crucially, with electrodes spaced at about 10 nanometers (or 100 atoms) apart--quantum effects ought to suppress such arcing. For years researchers have recognized that nanoscale capacitors exhibit unusually large electric fields, suggesting that the tiny scale of the devices was responsible for preventing energy loss. But "people didn't realize that a large electric field means a large energy density, and could be used for energy storage that would far surpass anything we have today," says Alfred Hubler, the Illinois physicist and lead author of a paper outlining the concept, to be published in the journal Complexity.

Hubler claims the resulting power density (the speed at which energy can be stored or released) could be orders of magnitude greater, and the energy density (the amount of energy that can be stored) two to 10 times greater than possible with today's best lithium-ion and other battery technologies.

The energy of the future will come from the desert, say experts. Huge mirrors plants are expected to turn sunlight into electricity. The problem: The technology is still too expensive. German engineers are now working under high pressure in cheaper solutions - with success.

For years, the idea was dismissed as spinning, but then everything happened very quickly: Desertec dominated world headlines. Twelve industry heavyweights have joined forces to announce Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) and to try to build thousands of square kilometers Hohlspiegelkraftwerke in the Sahara. With electricity from the desert sun of the ever-growing thirst for energy in the world is to be quenched, whose oil reserves dwindle and by the burning of oil, coal and gas is getting warmer.

The amount of energy that makes the sun raining down daily on the faces of the North African Sahara, are so immense that the mirror could supply power stations with a total area of 90,000 square kilometers, the entire world with clean, emission-free energy. Nevertheless, this area would be little more than a shiny spot in the nine million square kilometers of desert.

Researchers have demonstrated a simple, cheap way to create self-assembling electronic devices using a property crucial to salad dressings.

It uses the fact that oil- and water-based liquids do not mix, forming devices from components that align along the boundary between the two.

The idea joins a raft of approaches toward self-assembly, but lends itself particularly well to small components.

The work is reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Crucially, it could allow the large-scale assembly of high-quality electronic components on materials of just about any type, in contrast to "inkjet printed" electronics or some previous self-assembly techniques.

New renewable energy laws, incentives and economic stimulus funding will result in rapid growth for the renewable energy (RE) sector in the Asia-Pacific region over the next year, according to research firm Frost & Sullivan.
Suchitra Sriram, Asia-Pacific industry analyst for the company's energy and power systems practice, predicted this week that the sector would enjoy rapid growth as a result of growing investor confidence and the increasingly favourable regulatory regime across the region.

'As a result of funding received through the stimulus packages, several projects across the RE spectrum like wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass, are expected to be commissioned in 2010,' she said. 'Besides expanding investments from the private sector, major utility companies in the region are keen to diversify from their conventional fuels so as to include RE in their energy portfolio.'

Frost & Sullivan said that the next few months are likely to see a glut of renewable energy initiatives in the region, including the introduction of a feed-in tariff in Malaysia, the award of renewable energy tax credits in South Korea, the rollout of the government's geothermal energy plan in Indonesia, and the passage of Taiwan's Renewable Energy Development Act.

Europe's biggest space company is seeking partners to fly a demonstration solar power mission in orbit.

EADS Astrium says the satellite system would collect the Sun's energy and transmit it to Earth via an infrared laser, to provide electricity.

Space solar power has been talked about for more than 30 years. However, there have always been question marks over its cost, efficiency and safety.

But Astrium believes the technology is close to proving its maturity.

Physicists have long wondered whether hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, could be transformed into a metal and possibly even a superconductor -- the elusive state in which electrons can flow without resistance.

They have speculated that under certain pressure and temperature conditions hydrogen could be squeezed into a metal and possibly even a superconductor, but proving it experimentally has been difficult. High-pressure researchers, including Carnegie's Ho-kwang (Dave) Mao, have now modeled three hydrogen-dense metal alloys and found there are pressure and temperature trends associated with the superconducting state -- a huge boost in the understanding of how this abundant material could be harnessed.

The study is published in the January 25, 2010, early, on-line edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A new experiment to reproduce planetary magnetic fields could be an important step towards nuclear fusion.

The Levitated Dipole Experiment, or LDX, a joint project of MIT and Columbia University, uses a half-ton donut-shaped magnet made of superconducting wire coiled inside a stainless steel vessel.

The magnet is suspended by a powerful electromagnetic field, and is used to control the motion of the 10-million-degree-hot plasma contained within its outer chamber.

The results confirm that inside the device's magnetic chamber, random turbulence causes the plasma to become more densely concentrated — a crucial step in achieving fusion — instead of dissipating.

An interesting report from CNN over the weekend: a tabletop hydrogen fuel cell recharging station could bring hydrogen power to the individual home, allowing portable devices and eventually automobiles to charge up on the universe's most abundant element cleanly from the comfort of home.

Horizon Fuel Cell Technology's HydroFILL device -- which admittedly has an ultra-futuristic look about it -- runs on regular old H2O, stripping the oxygen from the hydrogen and packing the latter into removable cartridges at high pressure. However, though the hydrogen is packed in at high pressure, the individual cartridges store it in solid state at lower pressures, making it much safer to carry around and sidestepping a major concern with fuel cell technologies.

CTZSS. It doesn't really roll off the tongue as easily as CIGS, but IBM says that its new solar cell could potentially lower the price of solar power in the future.

The solar cell is made from copper, tin, zinc, sulfur and selenium, all of which are somewhat earth-abundant, according to IBM. The test cell achieves a 9.6 percent efficiency, or around 40 percent higher than the 6.7 percent ceiling achieved by other, earlier cells made from the same materials. (That's a cross-section of IBM's Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4 compound and not a dental X-ray.)

Big Blue did not use vacuum chamber processes (the sort of equipment used for chip-making) to produce it. Instead, it deployed a solution-based approach. In mass production, that could mean producing cells through printing or dip and spray coating.

New energy technologies are coming that will shrink our use of fossil fuels and cut emissions of greenhouse gases.

Just don't expect them anytime soon.

Why the delay? After all, the computer revolution has shown how rapidly new innovations can be imagined, developed, brought to market and have an impact. But new energy technologies don't work that way—they can take years to gain just a toehold in the market, and 20 to 30 years to push aside existing products or techniques.

That's partly because of the sheer size of the energy market. Global power consumption is estimated to total 150 trillion kilowatt-hours in 2010. The utility industry in the U.S., the most energy-hungry nation on the planet, produced an estimated 3.7 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2009. Nearly half of that was produced by coal, while solar power contributed less than 0.1%.

Wind power is one of the fastest-growing sources of renewable energy in the world. But by the end of 2008 there were still only 121.2 gigawatts of generated capacity—representing around 1.5% of global electricity consumption.

Of course, no single technology needs to replace all that carbon-producing power. Researchers planning for future energy supplies are working on several technologies simultaneously, including carbon capture to produce electricity, and next-generation biofuels and electric-powered cars to move us around. They talk about the need for "silver buckshot," instead of a silver bullet.

But even if you combine all the current alternatives, they aren't likely to make much of a dent for quite a few years. To better understand why, we offer a closer look at a handful of the most-promising clean-energy alternatives, and the reasons they'll be a long time coming.

New Nuclear Reactors

Carbon Capture and Storage

Algal Biofuels

Wind

Solar

Electric Vehicles

At the inaugural summit of ARPA–E, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, no less an august personage than Norman Augustine declared that we were possibly witnessing an inflection point—a turn from old thinking to new. As an aerospace business pioneer, Augustine certainly knows when trajectories change and escape velocities are attained. Indeed, a host of speakers regarded ARPA–E's effort as an Apollo project, a Manhattan project, and Mike Splinter, CEO of Applied Materials, even called for ARPA–E to be part of a potential Marshall Plan for energy—a road map to a future of clean power, complete with the Hoover Dam of solar, or the like.

For instance, the Lexington, Mass.–based 1366 Technologies received funds to develop its "monocrystalline equivalent" wafers that are formed directly from melted silicon rather than sawed from a block, which wastes as much as half of the semiconducting material. Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists David Bradwell and Donald Sadoway were funded to build a "pizza box"–size version of their liquid-metal battery—based loosely on the electricity-intensive process of making aluminum—that could enable the cheap storage of megawatts of electricity from intermittent resources such as the sun and wind. And United Technologies got money to develop a chemical analogue of the enzyme that takes CO2 out of biological tissue and dumps it in the lungs to be expelled, except that the chemical would work on extracts CO2 from power plant flue gas. "We need to develop technologies to do fossil fuels cleanly," says Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, perhaps explaining why ARPA-E bankrolled five carbon-capture projects in this initial round.

"The number of good ideas has been amazing, and we don't even have all the intellectual horsepower of the U.S. into clean energy," Majumdar says.

The potential for impact is huge. For example, the cheaper, more powerful ultracapacitors under development by FastCAP Systems, another ARPA–E awardee, are intended to "finally make hybrid vehicles cost-effective," says Riccardo Signorelli, founder and president of the fledgling company. And if hybrids become cheap enough "just replacing 1 percent of [U.S.] vehicle fleet translates into $4 billion in [consumer] savings, $80 billion in oil we don't import and 50 million tons of CO2 reduction."