We have been blogging about decentral- ized solar power generation with ownership distributed over the whole population - Power to the People. Exxon Mobil and British Petroleum are trying to convince you via TV ads that solar power generation is best left in their hands and not spread ubiquitously to every Tom, Dick and Harry. They want to corporatize and commodify it so that they can charge everybody whatever they want and make enormous profits the way they've done with oil. Wall Street wants to get the speculators involved thereby driving up the price. The fact of the matter is that third generation solar panels are so cheap to produce that solar power can be generated everywhere and anywhere with the power being consumed immediately or put out on the grid with a credit given to each citizen.
They already do this in Germany where the government subsidizes each citizen (not just large corporations) to install solar panels on their rooftops or fields. It can be generated in either urban or rural settings in a totally decentralized manner. Each citizen can generate his or her own power and profit from putting the excess back on the grid. So everyone can be a producer not just a consumer. In the 2008 issue of PC Magazine Jim Louderback writes:
A real breakthrough has appeared with solar's third-gen technology: thin-film solar panels. What's so special about this technology? Instead of growing and slicing silicon ingots, or vacuum-based glass etching, specialized printers spew nano particles onto rolls of thin, flexible material through a futuristic mashup of ink jet printing technology, aluminum foil, and space-age chemical compounds.
Third-gen solar factories create panels for a fraction of the cost of earlier generations. The first thin-film ink jet–based panels started rolling off Nanosolar's assembly line here in Silicon Valley last December.
A handful of start-ups are racing to dominate this exciting market, but Nanosolar has taken an early lead. The company claims incredible pricing for its panels: as little as $1 per watt, compared with around $4.50 for traditional solar cells. That's roughly equivalent to using fossil fuels—the holy grail for solar power. Even though the efficiency of these new thin solar panels is lower than that of previous generations, their incredibly cheap price, coupled with their flexible nature, will usher in much wider use of solar power. Nanosolar's entire 2008 production run has already been snapped up.
So energy production promises to be, if not free, pretty damn close to it. Tents can incorporate the thin flexible films so that campers can enjoy all the benefits of home life: light, power for their laptops and TVs, and power for cooking. This would be great for the homeless and dispossessed all over the world! Airplanes would be able to generate their own power since flexible solar panels could be built in to the fuselage and wings. They would be able to fly forever without jet fuel. It's already being incorporated on the roofs of the Toyota Prius.
But the truly exciting promise of decentral- ized, decorporat- ized, decommod- ified energy and power generation is that individual citizens would not be at the behest of large corporations who would not be able to bottle and sell them power at whatever price they and the speculators wanted to set. This would be a democratized industry, and would represent a situation that enabled the citizens of whatever country to be a yeomanry. Think of the initial years of the US where almost everyone was a small farmer. They provided most of their own needs locally on the farm and put the excess whether it be milk or produce back out on the grid. Ubiquitous power generation via solar would allow a return to the same situation, and would allow a truly uncorporatized democracy to flourish much as it did in the good old days. It would be Thomas Jefferson's dream of a nation of small farmers come true only the farming would be for energy.
From "Germany Embraces the Sun" in Wired:
FREIBURG, Germany -- Germany is not necessarily known as the sunniest spot in Europe. But nowhere else do so many people climb on their roofs to install solar panels.
Since the introduction of the Renewable Energies Laws (EEG) in April last year, Germany has been experiencing a remarkable boom in solar energy.
"When my cab driver gives me a lecture about solar technologies, I know I am back home," raved Rian van Staden, executive director of the International Solar Energy Society (ISES) about Freiburg, the sunniest city in Germany and host to the InterSolar conference July 6-8.
The little university town in southwest Germany, about 40 miles away from the French and Swiss borders, is Germany's "Solar Valley."
A gigantic solar panel at the train station greets visitors to Freiburg. The city also boasts the new Zero Emissions Hotel Victoria, which is the first European hotel to run completely on alternative energy sources. Even Freiburg's premier league soccer stadium is solar powered.
More than 450 environmentally oriented companies and institutions take advantage of the favorable weather, research, networking opportunities and progressive political climate in Freiburg, which makes even Berkeley -- its soul mate in the San Francisco Bay Area -- look comparatively conservative.
The German solar industry has exploded in the last two years. DFS (Deutscher Fachverband Solarenergie), the German Association for Solar Energies, recently reported a 50 percent rise in solar panel orders during 2000.
German solar companies sold 75,000 solar systems in 2000 in addition to 360,000 solar systems installed previously, and photovoltaic installations increased fourfold from 1999.
Solar power means big business in Germany: Solar companies generated revenues of $435 million in 2000. According to DFS, Germany -- with its 54 percent market share -- is by far the European leader in produced solar collectors.
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It was not fear of power outages, high gas prices or tripled power bills, but economic incentives that jump-started the solar revolution in Germany.
Last year in April, the Social-Democratic/Green German government introduced the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) to boost the planned switch to renewable energy sources. Producers of renewable energy get 43 cents for each kWh (kilowatt per hour) of solar power generated and 7 cents per kWh of wind energy generated.
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Another program, initiated by the German government is also gaining momentum: the "100,000 roofs" initiative. Consumers get low-interest credits to finance solar panels for their roofs. By 2003, Germany intends to have given subsidies to more than 100,000 private homes with photovoltaic systems.
So the US has a decision to make. Will it follow the German model in which each citizen is encouraged and empowered to profit from solar power generation to meet his or her own needs and to put the excess back out on the grid or will it go the way of centralized, corporatized solar energy production ala Exxon Mobil and British Petroleum? Thousands of corporate lobbyists are gearing up to descend on Washington to insure that the latter alternative will be realized. Will we have economic democracy or corporate domination of the economy?
Click here for even more exciting news about "spray-on" solar panels and harnessing the sun's infrared rays even on a cloudy day!
