Solar power can only get cheaper – an opportunity for Australia

Set the controls for the heart of the sun: time for solar courage, The Conversation, Lynette Molyneaux
Researcher at University of Queensland, 21 May 2012 “…..The breathtaking opportunity that we face today is the transformation of global energy use from fossil fuels to renewables; a journey to environmental sustainability. The insoluble problem that we think we face is cost.

So what is the state of the technological transformation required to source our energy from the sun? Photovoltaic (PV) technology (which converts sunlight to electricity using semi-conductors) currently being rolled out in Germany and China originated in Australia but due to a lack of support for development and deployment, those countries
were able to acquire the Intellectual Property (IP) and build industry to deploy the technology.
The German PV industry is now well-established and has been
instrumental in the installation of 25 gigawatts of power, the
creation of 130,000 jobs, the despatch of 18.5 terawatt hours of
energy in 2011, and earning Euro 10 billion of income in 2010.
Suntech, the Chinese PV manufacturer, started by Dr Zhengrong Shi who
studied at UNSW, earned $3.13 billion and employed more than 20,000
people in 2011.

By comparison, Australia’s entire booming mining industry employs
205,000 and earned $98 billion in 2011($44 billion for coal, oil and
gas). It would seem that Australian quarry mentality is determined to
ignore the potential of its IP in favour of flogging off its mineral
wealth.
Large-scale PV deployment has reduced the cost of electricity from PV
from $0.37 in 2007 to $0.15/kilowatt hour (kWh) today, attributable to
generous Feed-in-Tariffs around the world and competition induced by
China’s investment in PV production. Efficiency of energy conversion
is around 15% with research indicating that 40% is achievable using
multiple layers of silicon (Compare that to the 24% efficiency in
converting the energy in brown coal to electricity in Australia)…..

Whilst large-scale deployment of PV is reducing its cost, it is still
more expensive than CSP. CSP (with storage) has another substantial
advantage over PV, in that it can dispatch energy as required,
avoiding the intermittency and scheduling problems associated with PV
(and wind). The current level of PV deployment is more a factor of
modularity than cost effectiveness; individuals can afford an
expensive and compact rooftop PV unit but not a large-scale thermal
power plant with acres of heliostats, despite its cost benefits over
PV. What this shows is that there is a genuine desire for solar power
by the proletariat, but a lack of vision from the central planners (be
they politicians in control of regulation or investors in control of
finance); a shortcoming exacerbated by indecision blamed on
prohibitive cost.
And yes, both solar power options currently generate electricity more
expensively than that from coal or gas whilst we fail to count the
costs of their environmental footprint. However, a study last year
found that “For any [coal] plant design, once efficiency improvements
have been exhausted, the price of coal will set a floor on total
costs.” We may have seen substantial efficiency gains in the last 100
years, but we are still prepared to accept considerable waste in the
transformation of energy. Australian energy consumption in 2009 shows
energy consumed as: 23% by industry, 2% by agriculture, 8% by
households, 5% by commerce, 30% of all energy consumed is wasted in
generating electricity; 10% is used to extract and process fuels; and
22% is used in transport (although it is estimated that of that 20% is
used to combat the inertia of vehicles). Every year, more energy is
wasted than used.

The breathtaking opportunity that we stand to gain from being able to convert energy from the sun into electricity is that solar power has no fuel price setting a floor on cost. Irrespective of geopolitical tensions and reserve depletion, the cost of solar power can only get cheaper. This view is lost when investment decisions are justified solely on current levelised costs and carbon prices.
Investing in CSP to meet increased demand is not going to decimate the
economy as alarmists would have us believe, it is simply going to pave
the way to a future where our energy needs could be sourced from
renewable sources. The largest barrier to solar power is not its level
of technological advancement, or efficiency, or the existence or size
of a carbon price, but the lack of vision from the central planners
that dictate an energy policy stuck in a previous century.
http://theconversation.edu.au/set-the-controls-for-the-heart-of-the-sun-time-for-solar-courage-7070