How far can we go with solar?
THE FUTURE OF PHOTOVOLTAICS WITH MARTIN GREEN
Solar deployments continue to accelerate all over the planet. The reason? I wish I could say it’s because humans are wise and rational and want to protect their biosphere, but the reality is, for 95% of buyers and 100% of investors, it’s about economics, not altruism. It’s cheaper and its simpler, and it’s been improving so fast it has blown all other forms of renewable energy production out of the water when it comes to wallet impact.
It’s ALL about the cost/efficiency curve. And it gives us certainty: take huge chunk of solar, couple it with a big chunk of wind, add smatterings of hydro and geothermal where it makes sense, and you’ve got our future energy systems. Good news! Brilliant news!
BUT we are also racing the clock to wind-down fossil fuel emissions to avoid the very worst consequences of climate change. As I’ve described many times, tough consequences are now ‘baked into’ our future no matter what we do, and to have any chance of making net-zero by 2050, we are going to have to ramp global annual solar technology install rates fourfold and more.
So, can we make solar even more attractive? How much more ‘headroom’ is there? Can we make solar photovoltaic cells ten percent more efficient? Twenty? Forty? More?
What about price and cost reduction? Can we shave more chunks out of the manufacturing cost? What about those breakthrough materials like Perovskites we keep hearing about? Where are we at with those?
I had the pleasure of spending a happy morning with THE global expert on photovoltaics, during which we explored all these big questions about the future of solar power.
And (spoiler alert) it was pretty darned inspiring ...
MEETING MARTIN GREEN
Has Martin Green done more than any other human to safeguard our future?
I could try to answer that by saying Martin is Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales and Director of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics which involves multiple Universities and research groups, and is a winner of the 2002 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, the prestigious Global Energy Prize, recipient of numerous national prizes, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and has been honoured with countless science medals around the world.
Or I could say this:
For fifty years – yes, half a century – he has dedicated his professional life to extending the capabilities of photovoltaics (pv) systems so they convert more sunlight into electricity (aka convert more photons into electrons :-) and produce that electricity at a rapidly reducing cost.
Martin and his team have held the world record for solar pv cell efficiencies for 30 years of the past 39. The PERC technology he invented is now imbedded in – wait for it – no less than 91 percent of current worldwide solar module production! Wow.
Think about it. What an impact to solar power's future potential! What a contribution! And it gets better, because … he isn’t stopping.
Martin was softly spoken, courteous, and exceptionally generous. After our interview he also took the time to walk me through the labs so I could see the incredible investment that the University of New South Wales has made in equipment to design, manufacture and test improvements to photovoltaics. Impressive hardware! Even more impressive were the people: the best of the best working diligently and quietly throughout the building, each making their own contribution to a better future.
Enjoy the podcast!
CHECK OUT THE PODCAST TRANSCRIPT →
DOUBLING THE PERFORMANCE OF SOLAR Power’s future potential
Did you enjoy it? How about that next-gen four-layered cell Martin has been working on?
The big takeaway for me was confirmation of the vast amount of headroom still remaining on both the conversion-efficiency side and the manufacturing cost side.
Solar's clean energy already annihilates all fossil fuels on price. The International Energy Agency confirms silicon solar panels are producing the lowest cost electricity in HISTORY, and that’s BEFORE accounting for any of the substantial societal costs of greenhouse gas emissions.
So, here’s a question: what happens when Martin and his colleagues squeeze out DOUBLE the number of electrons for the same panel cost, thus halving the price of electricity again? Picture that, please ...
Nice picture, isn’t it?
Hold onto it. Think about it again whenever you are drowning in gloomy headlines and need some ‘innovation inspiration’ to lift you up!
ADVANCES ON MANY FRONTS
There are so many more gems in this podcast. The way it all started in the 1970s with space satellites. I loved what Martin had to say about the ‘bumpiness’ of current PV pricing due to geopolitical events and supply-side impacts, style versus standardization and other considerations when incorporating solar energy technologies like ‘solar skins’ in buildings and vehicles, and the present versus future economics of manufacturing and recycling.
I now know there’s no inherent reason you can't make a thin film module that lasts for 40 years, and he left me more optimistic about progress on that pesky Perovskite lifespan issue. 20,000 researchers working on it! Now that’s inspiring!
TSUNAMI OF OPPORTUNITY in the future of solar power
The future of energy and sustainability is such an important topic for me, and Martin has equipped me with a long list of deeper, more nuanced insights I can share with audiences.
This episode is also a great reminder that the future is a moving target. If you don’t want to miss out on the tsunami of opportunities coming our way, DON’T make decisions based on today’s numbers. ALWAYS look at the technologies in the pipeline.
In terms of the global energy transition, how does a $73 trillion opportunity grab you? How about a payback period of six and a half years? Or a $11 trillion dividend every year thereafter, FOREVER? Any way you look at it, any slice you take of it, the opportunities are BIG in the future of solar energy.
CONTRIBUTOR TO HUMANITY
And finally, yes, by leading the charge in photovoltaics for so long, and with so much success, and with that work translating to such widespread adoption, I really do believe a case can be made that Martin Green has done more to safeguard our future, planet-wide, than any other person alive.
Thank you, Martin!
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