The coming era of unlimited - and free -

clean energy.

2014-09-19, Washington Postblog

In the 1980's leading consultants were

skeptical about cellular phones.

The handsets were heavy, batteries didn't

last long, coverage was patchy, and the cost

per minute was exorbitant. The experts are

saying the same about solar energy now. They

say that solar is inefficient, too expensive to

install and unlreliable, and will fail without

government subsidies. They too are wrong.

Solar will be as ubiqitous as cellular phones

are.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil notes that solar power

has been doubling every two years for the

past 30 years - as costs have been dropping.

He says solar energy is only six doublings - or

less than 14 years - away from meeting 100

percent of today's energy needs. By Kurzweils

estimates, inexpensive renewable sources will

provide more eneregy than the world needs in

less than 20 years.

In places such as Germany, Spain, Portugal, Australia,

and the Southwest United States, residential-scale

solar production has already reached "grid parity" with

average residential electricity prices. In other words,

it costs no more in the long term to install solar panels

than to buy electricity from utility companies. The prices

pf solar panels has fallen 75 percent in the opast 5 years

alone and will fall much further as the technologies to

create them improve and scale of production increases.

By 2020, solar energy will be price-competitive with energy

generated from fossil fuels pn ann unsubsidized basis in most

parts nof the world. Within the next decade, it will cost a

fraction of what fossil fuel-based alternatives do. Despite

the skepticism of experts and criticism by naysayers, there

is little doubt that we are heading into an era of unlimited

and almost free clean energy.

Elon Musk Takes on Carbon With Solar, Battery Bets

2014-06-17, ABC News/Associated Press

the energy world is not keeping upwith Elon Mus, so he's

trying to take matters into his own habds. Musk, chairman

of the solar installer SolarCity, announced (on June 17)

that the company would aquire a solar panel maker and

build factories "an order of magnitude" bigger than the

plants that currently churn out panels. Musk is also a

founder and the CEO of the elctric vehicle maker

Tesla Motors, which is planning what it calls a

"gigafactory" to supply batteries for its cars. In both

cases, Musk';s goal is to make sure that the components

crirical to his vision of the future - electric cars and

solar energy - are available and cheap enough to beat

fossil fuels. Musk's fututre customer could ignore

traditional energy companies completely. They'd have

SolarCity oanels on their roof that would generate 

enough power to charge up a Tesla car inn the garage.

A Tesla battery could then power the home at night 

with stored solar power. Musk has made a career of

thinking far into the future. He is also the CEO of SpaceX,

the rocket company with an ultimate goalof enabling

people to live on other planets. SolarCity says it won't

try to turn out more of the garden-variety

panels nowcloggingthe market. Instead, it wants to make

panels that are more efficient, and make them at a low

cost in huge factories in prder toreduce the overall cost

of solar electricity. Just as he drew customers to electric

vehicles by making sleek, fast sport cars, Musk wants to

attract homeowners to solar with pretty panels. "We want

to have a cool-looking aesthetically pleasing solar system

on your roof," he said.