Is 100% Photovoltaic possible?

The World powered by the Sun

Today, photovoltaic electricity is only a small fraction of the global electricity production. The volume seems to be one percent in the year 2015. If we do a very simple extrapolation and imagine, that all these PV modules were installed in 2014 and we continue this installation speed, then we need another 99 years, to have a 100% emission free PV world. But this is simply not the way the world goes round.

I will try to extrapolate the situation, based on data from the MIT report "The Future of Solar Energy" [1]

Analyse the past of Photovoltaic

If we wont to understand the future, it is very useful, to look into the past, not only to understand the development but also to understand the error which occurred by predicting the future. 

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) predict since 10 years the global PV installations in a published outlook. The first outlook from 2006 predicted for the year 2030 a global installation of 100 GW. This volume was already matched in the year 2011, only five years after the report was published! Ok, one wrong shot can be excused.

In the year 2011, the EIA predicted 150 GW until 2020. Again a failure, already in 2014 we have reached 180 GW of solar. 

The MIT analyzed all predictions and compiled them to a very nice picture:

Figure 1: Different predictions and the reality, source MIT [1] page 137

In the early time, the predictions of the IEA had an exponential growth, that is a good guess, because most of the time, new products grow in that type. The only problem was at that time, the growth factor was too small, for example, see IEA 2008 prediction in figure 1. Today things have gone worse with the prediction from the IEA. Not only is the factor to small, the prediction includes a reduction of the production of PV itself. This seems hard to understand. (An in-depth analysis was done by Christian Breyer, paper PDF)

Things got even more strange when we look at the price predictions of PV. The EIA predicted the development of the PV price till the year 2030. It should be mentioned, that it is a very difficult task to predict a price of any product for more than 20 years. But this failure is very illuminating.

Figure 2: Price prediction by EIA IEO 2009 of PV and observed results. [1] page 137

The EIA IEO 2009 outlook predicted, that the capital cost of PV in the year 2030 will drop to 4$/W.

Actually, the price even for residential systems dropped to this value already in the year 2014. It should be noted, that the price for residential PV systems in Germany was at the same time at 2$/W.

The price for utility PV systems reached only two years after the report was published the predicted value for 2030, 4$/W. 

All this information should be available to the EIA today. It irritates me, why the EIA does not change the prediction about the deployment of PV although they can observe the rapid price drop obviously. (I am thankful for any helpful hint)

Is there enough material for a large rollout of PV 

One possible reason, to be pessimistic about the global rollout of PV might be the scare elements used in PV systems. Today almost all PV systems use Silicon to convert sunlight into electricity. The MIT analyzed the production of different raw materials, essential for the production of SI-PV-modules. 

To set up a PV system we need concrete and steel to mount the panel in the direction of the sun. Glass, aluminum and plastic are necessary to protect the silicon cell, copper and more plastic are necessary to transport the power away.

Figure 3: Commodity materials required for PV. [1] page 131

Today, all these commodities are produced in a volume, that no real bottleneck will occur. In figure 3, we can see, that the steel production of 9 days is sufficient, to mount all PV panels for 5% of the global electricity production, within half a year, the steel production is sufficient for a 100% conversion to PV.

The least available material in this consideration is glass. For a 100% PV world, we need the glass production of 20 years. But glass production is in no way a limiting factor. The necessary raw material is sand, an endless resource.

The solar cell itself consists of a silicon wafer and some silver, are they rare?

Figure 4: The annual production and requirement for a solar future. [1] page 135

In figure 4 we see, that silver might get a little problem because we need an amount of silver that is produced within 30 years. It should be mentioned that new technologies of production can reduce the necessary mass of silver very strong. Other elements, like Ga, are only necessary if we would use GsAs cells in our PV systems what is not widely the case. 

We conclude the raw material is no show stopper for a PV future.

My prediction of PV growth

Compiling all this information, I come to a quite different prediction than the IEA. My simple, but till today best guess is, that the exponential growth will continue, but at a lower rate. 

Figure 5: Long-term trend of PV installation.

In figure 5 we see the global installation of PV shown as a black curve in this logarithmic plot. In the year 1992, we had only 100 MW of PV installed, ten years later, in 2002 it was 1000 MW, Today it is about 200 000 MW!

Update to Figure 5 including the growing power demand, wind, and the latest figures available 2016.

If the growth rate continues at 25%, as seen within the last three years, we will reach 100% PV not long after the year 2030. Remember, today we have a global power plant pool of 5300 000 MW, sufficient to power half the world. Even if we expect, that the future is fair to all people, we need "only" 10 000 000 MW to bring electricity in every home on this planet, long before 2050.  

One problem remains: Storage

Without an affordable storage system, PV can only bring electricity during sunny daytime. For a complete conversion, we need about 90 000 GWh of storage [2].

One solution for residential systems may be the power wall from Tesla, but I am not convinced, that this makes sense on a large scale. For large scale, I recommend the Gravity Storage!

References:

[1] The Future of Solar Energy, 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ISBN (978-0-928008-9-8)
[2] Elon Musk predicts (minute 18) during the presentation of the power wall 90 000 GWh of required storage. https://youtu.be/yKORsrlN-2k

PV Price in the Future

Massive Price Drop in PV Systems

The future will be solar if the price of photostatic (PV) systems drops. There is a new research result about the future of the PV price online, done by Fraunhofer ISE [1], that gives surprising insights. I will discuss the results in this blog post.

Learning from experience

The first silicon PV cell date back to 1950s and since the 1980s there is a global market and production worth mentioning. Since then, the price of PV cells was constantly dropping. The interesting thing is, there is a mathematical law, that describes this drop. To keep it short, this law tells us, that every time, the production of PV doubled, the price fell about 20%. 

The actual development is shown in the graphic:

Development of PV module price since 1980 [1]

To understand this plot, be aware, the right axis is the accumulated produced capacity of PW measured in GW. It starts with 0.001 GW (=1 MW) and ends with 100.000 GW. To cover this vast range, the scale is logarithmic. The first price tag dates back to 1980, where we had to pay more than €20 per watt. The price is adjusted for inflation to the level of 2014, an exchange rate of one Euro gives $1.25 is in use. The last price tag is for 2014 and is in the range of €0.5 to €0.7 for large-scale PV power plants. 

Learning Curve

It is not surprising, that the actual price in different years is not always precise on the long-term trend curve, that shows a drop of 20,9% per year, due to market effects. 

The big question is, how will this learning curve develop in the future? There are three scenarios, a very conservative one, that tells us, only 19% drop with another doubling of the installed PV base, a medium scenario with 20.9% drop and a progressive one with 23%. However, the result will always be a sharp drop of the PV panel price, if the installed base grows in the future. 

Below a price of €0.2/W, there seems to be another limitation of the pure raw material cost. To me´, this limitation seems a little artificial, because of the price of this raw materials, like silicon or glass, could also drop if the production volume grows far beyond today's volume. 

It should be mentioned, that a capacity of 100.000 GW PV installation is equivalent to a surface of one million square kilometers, this is the size of a country like Egypt or Texas and California combined!

How expensive is electricity in the future?

The price of a PV panel is not the only part of the cost drivers in solar power. To break the price down to a kWh of electricity at the grid feed in, we have to include other cost drivers. 

Price of different elements for real-world PV grid-scale sites. [1]

The first surprising thing is, that the PV-modules are no longer the main cost driver, as shown in the figure above. The cost of mounting, connecting and planning top already this cost. The paper from ISE does not cover "Red tape", this will hopefully drop in the future, but nobody knows.

Another significant part of the cost drivers are the inverter, they produce AC from the DC, generated by the PV cell. The price of this inverter follows a similar law of price drop by market volume as the PV panels.

Price per kWh

To calculate the price of a kWh of electricity itself, we have to take the solar radiation and the capital cost into account. There is a calculation method, the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). It includes capital cost and maintenance of the PV power site. If you are a geek, you can do the math with the following formula:

Calculation of the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). [1]

The interesting result is, that one of the main factors for electricity from PV is not only the sun but the interest or discount rate. Today, we live in a world with very different interest rates. A strange effect is, if we look at the globe, the countries with high insulation have often very high-interest rates. For example, Germany has a low insulation but also a low-interest rate, Spain has a relative high insulation but a significantly higher interest rate. The result is, the price of PV energy is much more similar as we first guess.

PV power price depends on the cost of capital. [1]

Long-term development

To look into the future beyond 2020 is very difficult, but the gathered information gives us some hints. The first thing is, PV electricity price will drop due to the learning effect resulting from the growing market. The market is growing because PV electricity gets cheaper and is competitive with all other electric power sources. The long-term price in the scenario of ISE is in the range of  2 ct/kWh. 

The share of the market will be beyond 30% in 2050. 

But there is an obstacle on the path to solar. The sun shines only at daytime and only if there are no clouds. This results in a strong request for energy storage. One solution is the new concept of Hydraulic Rock Storage (HRS) as developed by the Heindl Energy in Germany. 

Energy storage using the Hydraulic Rock Storage. [2]

Combining a cheap storage with a storage price of 3 ct/kWh and PV in the range of 2 ct/kWh gives a long-term price for electricity over the whole day, only a fraction is stored, for less than 5 ct/kWh in most regions of the world.

Reference:

[1] Fraunhofer ISE (2015): Current and Future Cost of Photovoltaics. Long-term Scenarios for Market Development, System Prices and LCOE of Utility-Scale PV Systems. Study on behalf of Agora Energiewende. http://www.agora-energiewende.org/service/publications/

[2] Heindl Energy, Hydraulic Rock Storage, http://heindl-energy.com/ 

Is the Hydrogen age rising?

Hydrogen or Electricity

Hydrogen seems to be the perfect energy carrier. Everything from heating, moving with a car and chemical processing should be powered by hydrogen. The idea of the hydrogen age is old and dates back to 19th century, when the great science fiction writer Jule Verne published 1874 the idea, that in the future, hydrogen will power everything we need.

'"And what will they burn instead of coal?"

"Water," replied Harding.

"Water!" cried Pencroft, "water as fuel for steamers and engines! water to heat water!"

"Yes, but water decomposed into its primitive elements," replied Cyrus Harding,' Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island, 1874 [1]

Hydrogen was used for the first time to fill balloons (Source: Wikipedia)

Why are we still in the electricity age?

Electricity seems to be one of the greatest innovations, mankind ever made. Electricity has some advantages, which other technologies do not even come close to. Let me list some of them:

• The speed of light: Electricity travels with the speed of light and can be transmitted theoretically within a tenth of a second around the globe
• No mass transportation involved: To transport electricity, we don't need to build trucks, railways or ships because there is no mass during transportation present
• Almost no conversion loss: To convert electricity into mechanical energy there is almost no loss, the efficiency in a modern electric motor is significantly higher than 90%
• Multiple applications: Motion, light, information processing, heat, chemical reaction, sound, and unlimited other applications can be driven by electricity
• No emission: This is a statement about electricity itself, not about the production of electricity.
• Simple distribution even to the smallest applications with simple wires
• No risk of explosion

Although the list of advantages is impressive, there is a hard problem remaining with electricity, and this is storage!

We have seen 100 years of research, but only a limited number of efficient storage concepts for electricity are available. Bulk storage is covered by pumped hydro systems, converting electrical energy into gravitational potential energy with a high efficiency of 80% during a round trip. Pumped hydro is, therefore, the absolutely preferred technology, when large amounts (GWh) of grid power have to be stored, in simple words, 99% of grid storage is pumped hydro-based. 

Small amounts of electricity in mobile devices from smartphone up to electric vehicles are powered by batteries of different types, preferred Li-Ion batteries.

Here comes Hydrogen

Every new concept of energy carrier needs at least some advantages over the previous one. Hydrogen has a big advantage, it is a storage concept for energy by itself. 

One kilogram of hydrogen contains 33 kWh of energy if it is converted to water, and we use the oxygen of the air and don't count the weight of the air. This number is the highest for any chemical, this is three times more energy than one-liter diesel contains. But there is a problem, hydrogen is the gas with the least density, useful for balloons and Zeppelins. One liter of hydrogen at normal pressure contains only 0,003 kWh of energy and this is, without any discussion, insufficient for any application.

There are three ways to enhance the energy density of hydrogen per volume:

• Pressurize: Typical modern storage systems have 700 Bar pressure (1,5 kWh/l)
• Liquidity: At a temperature of -252 °C hydrogen gets liquid (2,8 kWh/l)
• Hide in metals: some metals suck up hydrogen in their crystal grid 

All these techniques' ad some significant weight and cost to the hydrogen and in addition it costs some energy to reach the dense state of the hydrogen. Typical loss is about 10% of the energy by the pressurization or cooling process.

In summary, storage of hydrogen is expensive but not prohibitively expensive.

Conversion to Hydrogen 

Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source as often cited. There is just no significant amount of free hydrogen on earth, so hydrogen has to be produced. The standard process of hydrogen production is steam reforming, using natural gas to produce hydrogen. This is by no means a sustainable solution.

To produce hydrogen for a sustainable energy future, it has to be produced with electricity from wind or solar sources. This is possible but expensive. The core problem is, an electrolytic process, that disintegrates water molecules to hydrogen and oxygen by its very nature produces oxygen. We like oxygen for breathing, but metals don't, they imitatively corrode if oxygen and water are present. To get rid of this problem, we have to use noble metals like platinum or palladium, and they are expensive.

Modern electrolytic cell for hydrogen production (Source: Wikipedia)

Another big problem is, the conversion of electrical energy into hydrogen comes not without losses. Depending on the details of the process, we end up with 20-30% loss of energy, a significant problem.

Distribution of Hydrogen

Transportation of hydrogen is preferably done by gas pipelines. A well-known technology from natural gas, although not with the same efficiency, due to the very low density of the energy in even compressed hydrogen gas. Another problem is, hydrogen is a tiny molecule that can travel even trough metal grids, so special care is necessary to use the right materials. 

Today, no country has a large hydrogen pipeline grid, resulting in the problem, it has to be built from scratch. And a pipeline grid is expensive!

Using Hydrogen

At the end of the pipe, hydrogen has to be used in power consuming applications. The simple way to use it is to burn hydrogen. It generates clean heat, only water is emitted into the air. Sounds perfect, but it doesn't make any sense because using the electricity that generated the hydrogen could have been used in a radiator, this would be not only more energy efficient, it is also less dangerous.

Hydrogen engine in a BMW (source Wikipedia)

Cars can use hydrogen as clean fuel. A slightly modified combustion engine can burn hydrogen, emitting water, and some toxic nitrogen oxides, therefore we still need a catalyst at the exhaust pipe.

Another problem is the very low efficiency of a combustion engine, somewhere at 25% of the energy in the hydrogen reaches the road to accelerate the car. Resulting in a very low overall efficiency if we start with electricity. Compare this result to a Li-Ion battery, where about 90% of the energy reaches the road and as a bonus, we can reuse the energy when we brake to charge the battery again!

Another idea is, to convert the hydrogen back to electricity, whenever needed. This is possible, using a fuel cell. The sad thing about this part is, it comes again with a high-cost due to the expensive precious metals and with more loss of energy during conversion.

Is Hydrogen the Future?

Summing up all these points, today, an electric grid with pumped hydro and batteries in mobile applications seems to be the better solution for the rising age of the renewable energy world.

But there is always research and no one can predict if there is a breakthrough in technology. But this is not only true for hydrogen technologies, it is also true for batteries, pumped storage, e.g. the Hydraulic Rock Storage seems to be one, and many other technologies.  

Comment by Elon Musk to hydrogen

Confusing Hydrogen and Hydrogen

It should be mentioned, that there is a technology of nuclear fusion, using hydrogen to produce nuclear power. This path of research was not very promising until today, although an interesting new path, low energy nuclear reaction, commonly known as cold fusion might be a very disruptive technology, this is another story.

References

[1] Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island, part 2, chapter 11, 1874

Cold Fusion fake or fact

Cold Fusion  Fact or Fiction?

Cold Fusion (LENR) as a scientific problem

In 1989, there was next to the revolutions in Eastern Europe, an observation of Pones and Fleischmann that could extend far beyond the date. Excess heat at a palladium cathode was created and interpreted as a sign of the energy release resulting from the fusion of deuterium. This observation was announced on March 23, 1989, in a press conference. 

Why is this observation of such importance

At least since the droppings of the atomic bombs, everyone knows that nuclear energy can release extremely large amounts of energy and can also be destructive. In the "Atoms for Peace" speech by President D.D. Eisenhower, a research program was initiated to construct nuclear reactors to produce energy from uranium in large quantities. Ultimately, this technology has significant side effects, particularly long-lasting results, radioactive substances (final storage), the reactor may melt (worst case scenario) and the technology is suitable in principle for the development of nuclear weapons (proliferation). Therefore, the development of nuclear energy in the version of nuclear fission has come to an almost complete stop.

Wendelstein 7 experiment in Germany using temperatures above 10 million °C to analyze "hot" fusion.

The energy of the atomic nuclei can also by fusing of hydrogen, specifically deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, release extraordinarily much energy. The waste product is helium, a completely harmless gas. Science is trying hard to produce nuclear fusion for over fifty years, unfortunately so far without visible success. The main problems lie in the extremely high temperature, several 10 million degrees Celsius, the elaborate reactor construction with considerable problems by neutrons and thus radioactivity as well as problems of energy, if it ever occurs, because the dissipate process is far from easy.

The absolute silver bullet would be a catalyst that merges two deuterium atoms into helium, thereby releasing heat energy, but not emitting radioactive radiation. Just that would be cold nuclear fusion, the perfect power source. Since deuterium is present in very larger amounts in normal water, there are no resource problems, no waste problems, no size limitation of the reactors. A range from a few watts to gigawatts could be possible, thus the perfect power source!

With such a power source all the classic energy sources from coal to oil as well as wind and solar energy would no longer be necessary. Including the infrastructure such as power grids, gas stations, storage and the like. 

The observation problem

Modern science is based on a simple principle, someone makes a discovery, publishes this discovery, others reconstruct the experiment and confirm or refute the observation. In the case of cold fusion, the sequence is unfortunately difficult. This is due to a fact that scientists Pones and Fleischmann did not take the traditional route to publication, they have chosen the path of a press conference. That did leave the taste of dubious at least.

In the second phase, the experiment was even by Pones and Fleischmann not direct reproducible. There is a lack of, at least at that time, the expected neutron radiation and in particular the generation of heat. Within a few months, the topic was done and could actually disappear in the archives of science.

A particular problem was, that the Department of Energy (DOE) described in a report [in the fall of 1989, 1]

" Others, however, report excess heat production and either no fusion products or fusion products at a level well below that implied by reported heat production."  

The interesting part of that sentence is, that heat production was found, but the theoretical explanation was not possible, suggesting, that the fact of heat production did not exist. This is a curious situation in science, that some experiments, not aligned with the current theory are rejected simply by the result! 
The DOE continues with "... Hence, we recommend against the establishment of special programs or research centers to develop cold fusion...", sorry, the results are against the current theory, we don't fund such stuff.

It is a deep problem of science, on the one hand, one can never disprove an experiment, due to open problems in using the exact same material and procedure, it can only show that it is reproduce-able in the best case. This corresponds, in a modification, to the Popper's principle, that, while falsify is simple, verification is in theory impossible.

Why Cold Fusion should be impossible

The nuclear physics and solid state physics, both based on quantum mechanics, are well-developed theories of physics. 

The following facts play an important role in the evaluation of cold nuclear fusion.

1. Atomic nuclei are positively charged and therefore repel each other. For a fusion these rejection needs to be overcome, using an energy corresponding to a temperature of about 100 million degrees. 
2. With the fusion of deuterium to helium energy of 27 MeV, emitted as a gamma ray, should be visible. Such a radiation has never been observed.
3. Chemical catalysts can lower the energy barrier, but the changes are in the range of chemical bonding forces, these are a million times smaller than the nuclear forces.

The behavior of matter, especially in crystals, is anything but easy to understand. Again and again, effects that are not expected surprise physicists. As two examples out of many, I will introduce the Mössbauer effect and the discovery of high-temperature superconductor. In the Mössbauer effect, a gamma decay of the atomic nucleus happens, the momentum is directly released into the crystal lattice, one would have expected that the atomic nucleus flies away, taking the momentum with it. Rudolf Mössbauer, the discoverer of the effect, found a theoretical description that explains the effect. 

High-temperature superconductors are far above the temperature, described by the theoretical limit of the well known BCS theory, without electrical resistance. The exact reason is unfortunately still not fully understood.

Observed facts

helium development

Notably, the observation of cold fusion begins in 1926! The German scientist Fritz Paneth and Kurt Peters report on the transformation of hydrogen with the aid of a palladium catalyst to form helium [3].They go very well into the questions of possible error sources and also calculate the heat.

The first observation of cold fusion back in the year 1926 [3]

They also investigate whether there is radioactive radiation which is not proved successful. It should be noted that this was done prior to the establishment of the quantum mechanics. Due to the small amount of helium, 10E-7 cc, economical conversion to helium production is not pursued. This article is so far harmless since he obviously has no interests other than purely scientific reporting.

heat

Leaving the experiment of pones and Fleischmann first unconsidered, we found in the literature numerous indications where palladium cathodes together with deuterium release a surprising excess heat. I quote from the report of the European Commission: "The main task was to demonstrate, on the basis of signals well above the measurement uncertainties and with a cross check, the existence of the excess of heat production during electrochemical loading of deuterium in palladium cathodes. The target was achieved and the existence of the effect is no longer in doubt." [2] emphasis added by author. This statement is very remarkable, in particular, it is clear that there is definitely an excess of heat. The source of the heat, due to the amount far beyond any known chemical reaction, can only be from a nuclear origin.

material ejection

The occurrence of material ejection in palladium, which is loaded with deuterium, is another strange observation [4]. An examination under the electron microscope of a palladium cathode, as Jacques Ruer has analyzed when it came to unusual heat, shows clearly small craters. See picture.

Five-micrometer crater in palladium, what generated this artifact? [4]

How do these craters exactly develop is unclear, an estimate in his article suggests selective high heat up to temperatures beyond 20,000 °C. It is very difficult to imagine an effect that is based on chemical reaction to produce such a local high energy density. 

neutron

The observation of neutrons is a notoriously difficult problem because neutrons are neutral and therefore do not cause ionization. To observe neutrons, one must observe a nuclear reaction of neutrons. For example, a carbon-12 nucleus decays into three alpha particles by the capture of a neutron. There are special detector substances, such as CR-39 doing this.

Detected neutrons in a cold fusion experiment. Source: P.A. Mosier Boss [5]

PA Mosier-Boss has a CR-39 detector mounted on a palladium cathode and observed after two weeks, several neutrons with an energy above 9.6 MeV [5]. This can be seen in the graph above: You always see a point, from where three "lobes" emerge, these are the three alpha-particles. The two left columns are from an experiment of cold nuclear fusion, the two right-hand columns show the same detector substance as measured in a well-known neutron source. Obviously, no difference can be seen between cold fusion neutrons and "normal" neutrons. However, the neutron flux is extremely low, this can only be a sub-branch of the reaction.

Problems for physics

Following the previous observations, and I find it very difficult to stamp all those experiments with the simple word "fraud", there is obviously a phenomenon that is not understood to date.

This is by no means unusual in physics, as already indicated, the high-temperature superconductivity (HTSC), or the exact way in which a lithium battery works, are not fully understood. Noteworthy is the surprising resistance of scientists over this discovery. Why accept the reference magazines nature and science no paper which reports cold nuclear fusion experiments and delivers positive results? Negative results are regularly adopted.

For a research program, it would be important to clarify the key question, how are the reaction details of cold fusion. With today's technical resources, it was possible to prove the Higgs particle, I find it very hard to believe that this could not quickly succeed in the area of cold fusion if sufficient resources are provided. 

There are now some good theoretical approaches, such as Peter Hagelstein at MIT who tried to clarify the energy transfer of 27 MeV in the crystal lattice. Those who are interested, view MIT Colloquium ColdFusion / LENR IAP  online (Note the list of speakers).

Consequences

After a review of the raw material prices, I noticed that the palladium price increases regardless of the gold and platinum prices for some time. As an explanation, I suggest, the reason could be that some hard facts for cold nuclear fusion were encountered. Refer to the blog post (in German).

The price of palladium, red line, is now decoupled from gold and platin prices. source: http://www.finanzen.net/charttool/ 

Being a very skeptical scientist, I read some papers on the subject available to me and I am now convinced that the phenomenon of low-temperature nuclear reaction (LTNR) exists. 

However, this means that the global power supply can potentially take a completely different direction in the near future, as we all have previously believed. 

I want to take this opportunity deliberately not to spread too much euphoria since many aspects are unclear:

• Is it possible to build inexpensive palladium reactors?
• If the catalyst is so rapidly destroyed (cratering) that a deployment is ultimately uneconomical?
• Are there companies aware of the development and try to slow down the cold fusion development? 

Obviously, there is a massive need for research, as many questions remain unanswered and the potential benefit in the success would be almost immeasurable. 

Notice: Who holds the opposite opinion, can read the contribution of publicly funded Germany Radio. You can find the article here. There is surprisingly many information from the year 1989, although it was presented in 2014, why did they not address the current state of research, this remains a mystery to me.

Sources: 

[1] Cold Fusion Research, November 1989,  A Report of the Energy Research Advisory Board to the United States Department of Energy

[2] European Commission, Materials for Emerging  Energy Technologies, 2012, page 23

[3] Fritz Paneth and Kurt Peters (1926). " About the transformation of hydrogen into helium. " Natural Sciences 14 (43): 956-962.

[4] Jacques Ruer,  Simulation of Crater Formation on Surfaces LENR Cathodes, J. Condensed Matter Nucl. Sci. 12 (2013) 54-68

[5] PA Mosier-Boss et al. Flawed How the Journal Review Process Impedes Paradigm Shifting Discoveries
  

Is German Special?

Germany is the country with the largest relative (4%) and absolute (27 GW) share of solar energy in the grid. The reason is not the nice sunny weather in Germany, the reason is a strong subsidies policy called EEG (Renewable Energy Law). It gives the producer of photovoltaic (PV) electricity a good, fixed price over 20 years. Did this really have an impact on the growth of photovoltaic installations?

German was leading the growth rate, now the world has changed!

At the end of the 90s, the growth of PV installations grows with a rate of about 30%. This is quite a lot. With the start of the EEG in 2000, the growth rate in Germany leap jumped to more than 100%. At the same time, the rest of the world has ever seen a decrease in the growth rate, down to 20%. During the last two years, things have changed again. The World, without Germany, has now 2011 a growth rate of 80% in PV installations, while Germany has fallen back to 40%, half of the global speed.

Why this Change?

The reason for this change lays in the price of PV-systems. During the last decade, the price declined from somewhere above 5000 $/kW down to 1000 $/kW due to the strong market in Germany. This low price makes PV economical within most of the sunny countries like Italy or India. Most countries have about double the sun radiation during the year than Germany receives.  

It seems so, that the growth of the solar installations is now market driven and therefore sustainable. But be aware, what 80% growth means, within 11 years, if the trend continues, the world may have changed to a complete solar energy driven world. Today, only 0,4% of the electricity is from solar, but in 2023 it could be near to 100%!

Storage Maters

Fuel is Stored Solar Energy

We live in a world, where the energy we consume was stored eons ago by nature. The conversion efficiency of solar energy into oil was really lousy, only a fraction of the solar radiation was converted to biological mater, only a fraction was laid down into the ground and only a fraction is now available. If we do the math, we find, that less than one billionth (10E-9) of the solar energy, which reached the earth within the last 100 million years, is stored in our fuel resources. This leads to the idea that we can do better than nature! Using solar radiation energy conversion systems like photovoltaic or concentrated solar power, we end up near 20% conversion rate, which is sufficient for economic land use and by a factor of 100 better than plants, who only convert 0.1% of the energy in usable fibers or sugar. It should be mentioned, plants need water and solar cells love deserts! Resulting in no competition of land use if we are smart and don’t plant for energy but plant for food.

The Storage Problem Remains

There remains a problem, storage! Storage was never an easy business, but if solved it changed the world. Inventing hey, for example, was necessary to conquer the northern hemisphere, where in wintertime is no food for the livestock. Storing information in books was the breakthrough for the industrial age and unlimited computer storage capacity is essential for our information age.   

The upcoming renewable power age lacks efficient and cheap storage capacity for electricity. Knowing this, we could visit the known technologies and there potential to solve the problem if further developed. Best known to the public are batteries. This is, by the way, a big problem, because our politicians, driven by their simple mind and the public, believe in batteries. Batteries are fine for mobile applications like cell phone and laptop. Cars using batteries are still expensive, but it may be within the reach of our technology to power them by batteries. Things get much more difficult if we want to use batteries for grid-scale applications.
Batteries are expensive and need some more or less rare and expensive metals, they use processes which are not perfect rechargeable, this is the reason that batteries run out of business after a few thousand charging cycles. All this does not matter, if we use a mobile phone, live time is limited, the price of the battery is not the main value of the device and we don’t care to much on the environmental impact on the small scale that is involved.

Grid-Scale Storage is Different

If we need storage for large scale, and grid technology is always about GW and TWh, values, which are trillion (10E12) times above the mobile phone and laptop scale. This is, by the way, easy to guess, as long as billions of consumers are out there. There are three different questions, how expensive is the storage capacity, how many times can we recharge it, and how efficient is the process. The reason why price matters is we can only earn a limited amount of money on every charging cycle. If the battery life is already finished, before we have earned enough money to pay for the battery itself, it is useless to buy the battery at all.  The situation for the efficiency is in some way similar. If we have to pay more for the energy to charge the battery as we earn during discharge, the system doesn´t work either. The problem of efficiency is not the core problem of batteries, but of many other storage concepts. Batteries suffer from the price per storage capacity. 

Why Batteries don´t Work

Price of storage capacity for many batteries is above 200$/kWh, even for the very simple and widely used lead-acid battery. Lithium-based systems are often above 1000$/kWh although prices were dropping during the last two decades. Let´s do a simple calculation; our battery should be charged every day, as it makes sense in solar power systems. During nighttime, the price of power should be 10ct/kWh more expensive as at daytime. If we discharge the battery, we earn 10ct every day and within six years we have a return on our investment into the lead-acid battery. But this does not hold due to the fact, that our battery dies after about 1000 cycles. Using the Lithium system, things are even worse, we have to wait about 30 years for the return of our invest without any interest rate, this does not attract many investors.

More Storage Technologies

We visit other techniques of storage in the next blog posts

• Methane
• Pumped Hydro
• Hydraulic Hydro Storage

Global Growth of Growth of PV

The global volume of installed photovoltaic installation is growing fast, this is a well-known fact. But not so widely known is the exact growth rate so I will give some figures for a deep insight.
Different countries are different, so have a look at different countries.

An incredible dynamic in the growth of PV-installations

Fifteen years ago, the USA was the leader in PV-installations. In the year 1996, Japan became the leader but in 2005 another change at the top happened, Germany, supporting PV with high subsidies, took the lead. But the PV-market has a very high dynamic and in 2011 Italy installed already more PV-panels than Germany. This race is interesting, but not the core of the global change in the PV market. Let's have a look at the growth rate itself:

The growth rate is growing at 3% per year!

If we plot the growth rate between two years, we find an astonishing plot. Beginning in the mid ninety's, the growth rate was about 20% per year. And sometimes I have the feeling, many people have adapted this and believe in a moderate growth of PV. The last 15 year show a very different picture. The growth rate itself was growing. And a simple linear approximation results in a slope of 2.9 percent points (absolute!) per year, resulting in an approximated growth of the PV installation 2011 compared to 2010 of 67% (the actual value was even higher with 76%)

Reasons for the PV Growth

This mind-blowing effect is not widely anticipated. The reason for this effect is no longer the high subsidies of German PV-installation, the reason is, more and more countries start installing PV at a very high rate, as the first graph shows. And the reason behind this is, that many countries have much more sun as Germany combined with the hard drop of PV-prices. This results in an unprecedented dynamic, higher market volume result in higher production rate, higher production volume results in lower prices due to a learning curve.

The learning curve tells us, if we double the production, the price will fall about 20%. The dropping price opens more markets, if the price is below the power price at the consumer, he will install PV soon. 

Where will this growth end, this is not clear, but I will write about that topic soon.