Why hasn't the cost of residential alternative energy come down?

[texas7]

Because right now - alternative energy is still "boutique energy" The standard type that everyone loves to hate is still the cheapest and as anything trendy and boutique the price is always more.

[TexasVines]

someone mentioned TVs

I took a materials science class one time where an engineer from TI came in and talked about their DLP chips and the development of them.....at that time there was concern that TI might quit the project because of the cost and the issues they were running into

every time they fixed one issue another would pop up and it would sometimes require a massive change in materials or design.....all that were highly expensive

one issue was that the DLP works by having thousands of little bitty squares that tilt on the diagonal from one corner to the other.......one of the issues that they had was the squares are so small that sometimes they would get stuck on the "on" or the "off" corner because the small charge they would put to attract one corner to move would not overcome the atomic bonding that was taking place on the corner that was in the opposite position because when you get down to a molecular level you are dealing with all kinds of forces that you normally don't even consider....they got lucky and they were able to solve that using a change in materials for the underlying surface of the area under the square that tilted

then they ran into an issue where the "hinge" or the "rocker" (it was really not a hinge or rocker per say it was more like atomic bonds that would rotate) were failing when exposed to the testing of them because those little squares tilt back and forth millions of times over the life of the TV and one failure of one square would show up as a failed pixel on the screen

they did not yet have a solution for that and he was concerned that would be what would kill the project.....because if they went in and changed the materials it was probably going to create issues similar to the ones they had just solved and they did not really discover this issue until they had a workable model that could be exposed to testing

this relates to solar because this is the point that solar is at......the current silicone based solar panels are (the actual very very small area that does the conversion) are only about 20% efficient at converting the light that hits them.......most of the rest is heat......this in efficient conversion of light to energy has pretty much been determined to not be able to be over come with the current technology

BUT there are not currently known materials that have the correct cost and that can withstand the heat for long periods of time to produce a product that can be more efficient than the current materials and come anywhere close to having the same price point

you either have materials that can take the heat, but the cost to produce them is out of control......or you have materials that can be cost competitive, but they won't last for a commercial quality product

this is a common occurrence in a multitude of product development situations especially when dealing at the molecular level

it cost more to study, produce, and research something when you are dealing at the molecular level (because you have to have the microscopy power to even view the materials to find the faults in it), you have to have the people with the knowledge to study and model those materials, and you have to have the facility to produce those materials......and almost none of those things come off the shelf.....they often have to be developed and refined right along with the movement forward in the end product......then just as happened with silicone based solar panels.....sometimes you get to the end point......and find that you are not going to progress with that particular material or materials an further no matter what you try

and it is right back to square one

this is what is holding solar back at this point.....most companies are looking at the fact that none of them are moving forward much on efficiency of light conversion with currently available technology.....and they are finding the other things the are looking at don't have the cost or the durability or both to stand up to the performance and durability demands of a commercially salable product

it is similar to computer CPU chips.....after a while when you get to a particular point you can't overcome the heat that is generated on a molecular level to have the power that will make any difference because at those speeds the chips will cook themselves like a molecular microwave no matter what cooling system you put on it......it would be like trying to cool a large roast with an exterior cooling system while you had a itty bitty BBQ pit inside that roast cooking it from the inside

computers and CPUs were able to overcome this by creating faster software and better controller chips that allowed multiple cores to be placed on a single CPU and the instructions to be divided up amongst those dual or quad cores by the extremely fast controllers so now you can "compute" 2 or 4 X the amount of instructions on a single clock cycle and you don't have to have the molecules in that core approaching the temperature where they self destruct

solar panels have not been able to do anything like this because the issue is right at the actual level of conversion from light to energy and nothing to do with any type software, speed, or control issue.....it is a materials issue

it could be solved next week in some lab somewhere where some researcher mixes the exact right amount of some exotic elements that produces a product that can make the conversion more efficient and be as durable as current products......or it may not come for years and years after scaling up dozens of different materials only to find they can't be produced at a reasonable cost or they will never get past the durability issue