IEEE Spectrum July, 2012 - 8

spectral lines

O

n a sunny afternoon
in California, I drive
past the shuttered
factories of Solyndra Corp.,
the bankrupt maker of
solar panels. A billboardsize "For Sale" sign sits
prominently on the frontage
road of Interstate 880, a main
artery into Silicon Valley.
Solyndra's empty factories
are grim reminders of how-
even in America's innovation
heartland-life on the solar
frontier can be nasty, brutish,
and short.
My destination is Sand
Hill Road, home to the
world's largest concentration
of venture capitalists.
I meet a gang of them at a
swanky bar where they
are celebrating (a few days
in advance) Facebook's
extravagant initial public
stock offering. While VCs
who are invested in social
media cheer their bonanza,
those who had bet on
solar energy ponder the
difficulties of innovating
in the energy field.
8

"We tried to apply the
Silicon Valley model to solar,"
one VC explains. "Moore's
Law would make everything
go faster and cheaper. We'd
become environmental
heroes-and rich."
Demand for solar doubled
last year, but technologists
overpromised and underdelivered. The few solar
champions that have avoided
Solyndra's fate are firing
staff, curtailing ambitions,
and conserving cash. The
solar panel, once seen as the
"microprocessor" at the heart
of an energy revolution, turns
out to represent only a sliver
of the actual cost of assembling and installing solar systems. Government subsidies
to makers-Solyndra received
US $535 million-and consumers contributed to a glut.
Then China's solar
exporters, fueled by cheap
capital, overwhelmed their
American rivals by providing
sturdy and reliable, if not
particularly innovative,
products, often at below

NA * iEEE SpEctrum * july 2012

that imposes a single set of
standards for solar generation
and delivery across the nation.
The resulting economies of
scale are impossible today
because hundreds of local and
national governments insist
on differing rules and requirements for the technology.
This kind of regulatory
standardization-which is
distinct from the technological standardization that
organizations like IEEE
spearhead-is not going to
happen. The United States
is pluralistic: Let a thousand
solar shoots bloom. We
are not China, after all, a
country led by a politburo of
engineers who can impose
a technological system on a
billion people.
As with electric cars, solar
as a major source of U.S.
electricity is at least another
generation-technologically
and politically-from coming
of age. This technology will
not be ready for prime time
during my lifetime (I'm 56).
Solar will be a small player
for the next 20 years: an
expensive novelty that
attracts enthusiasm, talent,
and some investment but
fails to deliver at scale.
-G. Pascal Zachary

G. Pascal Zachary is a
professor of practice at the
Consortium for Science, Policy
and Outcomes at Arizona
State University and a frequent
contributor to IEEE Spectrum.
Correction
In "Top 10 Tech Cars 2012" [April] we
wrote that the Mazda CX-5's direct fuel
injector operated "under a pressure of
204 kilograms per square centimeter."
We should have used the standard SI
units for pressure, which would result in a
measurement of either 20 megapascals
or 20 meganewtons per square meter.
spectrum.ieee.org

DaviD Paul Morris/BlooMBerg/getty iMages

Solar for All? Not
in My Lifetime

the cost of raw materials,
no less assembly and shipping.
"Forget solar," one of the
VCs says. "Even the word
energy scares me now."
The debacle on the solar
frontier confirms anew that
innovation in electricity is
ridiculously hard-far more
difficult than, say, creating
Facebook or any number of
photo-sharing programs.
What ails solar is a dearth of
revolutionary innovations-
either present or in the
pipeline-that would make
solar generation, distribution,
and storage far less expensive
and far more compatible with
the existing grid.
The need for more inventiveness is only part of what's
holding back solar. Electricity
is, after all, the product of a
complex technological system
that stretches back more than
a hundred years. This system,
while dependent on great
gobs of (carbon-spewing,
climate-altering) gas- and
coal-powered plants, permits
us to plug in and turn on,
whenever we want, 24/7.
Electricity is also political.
In the Great Depression, the
federal government built
a vast hydro network in
the Appalachian region to
bring electricity to some
of America's poorest. In
the 1950s and '60s, the
government aggressively
promoted nuclear-generated
electricity. Today, reformers
insist that modernizing
electricity generation is so
costly to undertake, and
the benefits sufficiently
difficult to capture, that
ultimately private actors will
underinvest in this area.
What's needed to correct
the solar market failure is a
powerful political movement
http://spectrum.ieee.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum July, 2012
