If you missed it, Robert X. Cringely’s blog “Azure Blues: Microsoft and the electric power industry have a
lot in common” is worth a read.
Click here for Robert
X. Cringley’s Blog
In it, Cringely does a marvelous
job of explaining Moore’s Law and how it relates to the renewable energy market
– specifically solar power.
What I found particularly useful
was Cringely’s explanation of Moore’s Law – essentially that manufacturing costs
can be depended upon to diminish by half every 18 months. This happens as performance improves and
technology becomes less expensive.
Cringely uses the iPod as the perfect example – did you know that an MP3
player contain more computing power than what NASA required for its Apollo Moon
missions?
So what does this mean for solar
energy? Well, if Moore’s Law holds
true, in about seven years you can expect solar cells to not only become more
powerful and less expensive, but to hit “energy parity” with the grid. As Cringely explains, “The result of
this relentless application of Moore's Law to the solar industry is that we can
see a time in that near future when the cost of producing a watt of electricity
from a solar cell on your roof will be approximately the same as the cost of
delivering that same watt over a power line from an electric utility. And of
course that means that 18 months after that point the solar watt will cost HALF
of what the same power would cost from the electric company, which will
completely change the game.”
Utility companies will have to
change their game. Building solar
installations will cost a lot less and, according to Cringely, a retrofit on a
house could go drop from the current average of $40,000 to $10,000 or less. But what worries electric companies is
only good news for the onsite power market. It doesn’t take a genius to see all the
possibilities this type of advancement in power and cost will create for the renewables market
and distributed energy as a whole.
And you won’t need to hold your
breath for too long…
As Cringely predicts, “But
Moore's Law is relentless, you know, and the role of electric utilities will
change dramatically over the next decade as a result. As far as I can see, this
is all for the better.”