AltEnToday

I’ve realized, in only the last few weeks of research, that there’s a great deal of “hype” surrounding the solar industry today. In once sense, there seems to be a strong push towards solar - news articles crop up every day about new investments, new technology, new companies, and new prospects for this industry. But the flipside of this technology hustle is that many companies are introducing proposed technologies that claim dramatic improvements on today’s solar economy. Is there any truth behind the hype?

Just 2 days ago, I caught an article citing a Hewlett Packard technology that claimed “twice the efficiency for half the price“. A four-fold improvement in cost-effectiveness would make the HP / XE (Xtreme Energetics) transparent-transistor solution a strong candidate for numerous solar installations, but as of yet I can’t even find so much as a website promoting the business, let alone tangible evidence of results. Earlier today I caught another article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution claiming that a company called Suniva, Inc. will open a production facility in Georgia that uses unique technology to “wrest more energy from the sun at a lower cost [than current solar technology].” Suniva’s website claims that their technology is based on patents and technology advancements from Georgia Tech’s University Center of Excellence in Photovoltaics (UCEP). Ultimately, this technology proposes advancing PV efficiency to 20% - an “18% improvement” in the current state-of-the-art.

Meanwhile, SunPower Corporation already claims to produce PV cells that achieve 50% greater efficiency than “conventional cells“, which sort of makes you wonder what the baseline for “conventional” really is anyways? It’s even struggling to compare apples-to-apples. Some companies are obviously producing more efficient cells than others, but the cost-effectiveness of their products is hard to judge. The business-to-business nature of most of the industry makes identifying hard numbers tricky. Furthermore, I’m still not certain where the future lies for broad-based adoption of solar technology. Is it large solar farms in the American Southwest - where sunlight is as abundant as open spaces? Solar thermal - such as is appearing to be the generation method of choice in Spain? Concentrated versus radiant versus active versus passive? Grid-tied versus off-grid?

I have no doubt that most companies in the rapidly growing solar-cell industry don’t mean to oversell their technology, and of course their respective marketing departments need to ensure that their products are perceived as the most cost-effective solution on the market. I’m simply pointing out that at a time when solar may finally become broadly economically viable, it’s challenging to actually identify which technology will rule in the near future. As someone who’s interested in going to work for a company on the cutting edge, I struggle with identifying which firms are more substance than marketing machine; which producer is likely to dominate in the next 10 years or which one is likely to soak up a mountain of venture capital faster than a 1998 dot-com. I went through that before, I’m not very eager to do it again.

Oh, and before you yell at me, no, I don’t know yet which solar technology rules today or will rule in the near future. Once I do, I’ll be certain to let you know, right after my stock purchase goes through.