Tag Archives: solar energy

printed solar panels and batteries

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According to Inhabitat, a company in Australia is working on thin, flexible, cheap “printed” batteries and solar panels, which could be attached to each other.

Solar energy appeals to a lot of people concerned about the environment and reducing electricity costs, but the cost of installing the energy-generating panels remains prohibitively high for a lot of people – even though prices are gradually falling. Printed Energy has proposed a solution. The Australian company is on a mission to print out ultra-thin, flexible screen-printed batteries, which can then be applied on top of super-thin flexible screen-printed solar panels, considerably cutting installation costs.

Earlier this week, the company signed a deal with UNSW and the University of Queensland — and received backing from the federal government —  to produce the printed batteries and offer them on the market. The $12 million project also received a $2 million grant from the Cooperate Research Centres Projects scheme. Having obtained funding, Printed Energy now seeks to produce “solid state” batteries that are thin and can be printed in a “roll-to-roll” process — similar to a newspaper. The printed batteries will also be adaptable to any shape.

The idea isn’t to pair the printed batteries with existing solar technology but to match it with printed solar panels, and other devices the batteries could power. According to Rodger Whitby, CEO of Printed Energy and of the St Baker Energy Innovation Fund, the printed battery technology is ideal for powering sensors, devices for the internet, disposable healthcare devices and, of course, renewable energy. While the invention could revolutionize the renewable energy industry, the company’s main priority is developing the batteries for “disposable devices.” Battery storage for solar will follow. Said Whitby, “We are really thinking of this type of battery in a different paradigm. We have also got IP for printed PV – so the idea is to have a sub-strata plastic sheet, and print solar on one side and battery on the other.”

 

solar panel roads

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According to Bloomberg, the technology to build roads and parking lots out of solar panels is coming along fast. This could be a big breakthrough considering the sheer amount of area that would be available. As solar panels get closer to being cost-competitive with fossil fuels, the time will come when space to install them is the limiting factor. This could open up enormous new areas compared to only having rooftops available. I can also imagine the possibilities for roads and parking lots being able to fund their own maintenance and repairs, then generate additional revenues for cities, states, and private entities on top of that. This could really be a game-changing technology.

Low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem

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I have heard from know-it-alls that the problem with renewable energy is that it is intermittent and hard to store. I have always thought there are many ways to deal with that – charge a battery, pump water uphill, heat something, wind a spring, compress air, electrolyze water into hydrogen and charge a fuel cell. Those are my thoughts with absolutely no expertise at all, but luckily the experts are thinking about this too:

Mark Z. Jacobson, Mark A. Delucchi, Mary A. Cameron, and Bethany A. Frew. A low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of intermittent wind, water, and solar for all purposes. PNAS 2015; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1510028112, 2015

This study addresses the greatest concern facing the large-scale integration of wind, water, and solar (WWS) into a power grid: the high cost of avoiding load loss caused by WWS variability and uncertainty. It uses a new grid integration model and finds low-cost, no-load-loss, nonunique solutions to this problem on electrification of all US energy sectors (electricity, transportation, heating/cooling, and industry) while accounting for wind and solar time series data from a 3D global weather model that simulates extreme events and competition among wind turbines for available kinetic energy. Solutions are obtained by prioritizing storage for heat (in soil and water); cold (in ice and water); and electricity (in phase-change materials, pumped hydro, hydropower, and hydrogen), and using demand response. No natural gas, biofuels, nuclear power, or stationary batteries are needed. The resulting 2050–2055 US electricity social cost for a full system is much less than for fossil fuels. These results hold for many conditions, suggesting that low-cost, reliable 100% WWS systems should work many places worldwide.

solar will be dominant

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Deutsche Bank is the latest financial corporation to conclude that solar power is ascendant and fossil fuels are doomed. The research doesn’t seem to be free so we have to rely on press articles like this one. Perversely, it can be exciting when an amoral profit-seeking corporation tells you something you want to hear about the environment, because you know there is no agenda behind it.

 

new vs. old economy in Pennsylvania

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Pennsylvania – we’re not always known as the most progressive of states, at the forefront of the major trends – but even here, the old business as usual economy is fighting against the new, more sustainable one. At the moment, traditional electric utilities seem to be winning their battle to limit the amount of solar energy homeowners can sell back to the grid. But at the same time, Uber and Lyft seem to be making progress in their battle against the filthy sleazy old taxi companies. One thing Uber has now that taxis never have even considered – car seats! I would support it for that reason alone.

grid parity

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If a good indicator of grid parity is articles about grid parity, then grid parity seems to be here. This article from Renewable Energy World has a good roundup of recent articles on grid parity and the possibly dire consequences for traditional utilities.

And yet the thesis of the Renewable Energy World article seems to be that all this is overblown. Their main argument is just that people won’t switch because they are stubborn. I don’t buy that. I agree that people are not just economic robots who will do cost-benefit analysis and switch instantly, but if the economics is pushing them off the grid then resistance will gradually fade, until one day it will be a landslide. The one thing I think could slow it down would be reliability. It might be annoying and even dangerous if your entire house is giving you a “low battery” signal. Sure, you could keep a diesel generator around. But that involves storing diesel fuel. It would make more sense to just keep a backup battery. But every once in a while, that backup battery might not be enough, so you might need a second backup battery, and so on. Neighbors or whole towns could share a backup system, but then you would be starting to build a grid again. You could have a natural gas generator, but then you need to be on a natural gas grid, and if I had to choose between the electric grid and the latter I would rather go electric.

We can take it as a good sign or a bad sign that traditional utilities are starting to fight back through lobbying and through the courts. They are trying to get states (examples: Florida, Virginia, South Carolina, even Pennsylvania, ) to outlaw or limit selling energy back to the grid, on the grounds that the customers who don’t do it will then have to pay more. This is true as far as it goes – if all but a few people go off the grid, the ones who are left will be stuck paying for the entire traditional system, which doesn’t work. So as a society we can probably afford to support some early adopters, but once it really starts to catch on it’s all or nothing. Lobbying and buying off politicians might slow the tide for awhile but not forever if the forces pushing us in this direction are strong enough. The traditional utilities can either find a way to get in on the game or die.