Solvent Green: Carter, Reagan, and the New Solar

A good precedent: Ted and I invading a random Taiwanese house
for Chinese New Year dinner and alcohol soup

The journey has begun! After months of planning and saving, Ted and I have finally embarked on our mission to experience the full force of Asia while researching sustainable practices and renewable energy. Before meeting in Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam in a month’s time, we’ve separated ways to first focus on our own passions in this arena: Ted’s being sustainable development and farming, mine being renewable energy. First stop: The frozen north!

DSC are transparent, flexible, and cheap

Solar panels have long been an interest of mine and I was very excited to stumble upon the opportunity to spend a week working in an “Organic solar cell” (DSC) lab in Dalian before heading farther north to Yingkou to finish out the month at the head professor’s company that puts this research to work, producing the actual panels.

Poor Jimmy showing off his shiny new panels and energy policy

Cowboys and Solar: Why solar is still playing catchup

When one typical thinks of solar panels, myself included, arrays stuck on top of houses, large power plants with row upon row of panels, or those calculators that were so cool in 4^th grade come to mind. One thing to note about these: all are silicon based solar cells. This is the technology that just turned 60 last year. Another type that has been flitting in and out of our consciousness for generations was initially made famous by the solar hot water heaters that Jimmy Carter threw up on the White House and Ronald Reagan ripped down in a show of American bravado. Carter foretold that:

The Gipper went all in for oil, pushing off solar development
with lack of funding

“A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people; harnessing the power of the Sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”

How prescient…

Although Reagan’s actions may have been a simple knee-jerk reaction to please the masses (or stick a fork in Carter), they represented a larger policy direction that left solar tech stagnating in underfunded limbo and out of the public eye. The original cowboy president slashed subsidies in 1985^[1][2] and opened up the market, making certain that only the cheapest and most profitable energy sources (oil and coal) requiring the shortest term investment get any attention.^[3] Out with science and in with the Hummer.

A Change in Tune


Obama's policy is much more green energy-friendly, but it was Bush II who reinstalled solar panels at the white house

As everyone who has left their house in the past 10 years knows, there has been a major push to educate the public about global warming (think Inconvenient Truth) and as well as some fruition from consistent, if slow, progress in renewable technology.

This has created a real possibility for green profits, pushing public (and private) funding back towards solar. This has also spawned the revival of a wide variety of solar technology, all with a range of potential and varying application, whereas the previous lack of funding made everyone put the few eggs they had in the silicon basket (1^st generation solar cells). Among these are thermal solar, concentrated solar, solar updraft towers, thin-film solar (2^nd generation solar cells), and organic solar (3^rd generation solar cells).

The Chemical Route

The ability for photons to excite electrons in organic chemical dyes to create electric current, known as a photoelectric electrochemical effect (literally using liquid chemicals), was first observed in 1887 by James Moser. This concept was set aside for most of the glorious century of oil and consumption and was not revisited seriously until over 100 years later.

The increasing number of patents is emblematic
of how close DSC is to reaching the market

Enter Organic Solar

Inventor and creation

Flash forward to 1991 and you get a breakthrough in a little-known field of science dealing with chemical dyes and solar energy production with organic chemical compounds. After fighting through decades of technical snags, Michael Grätzel showed that dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC or DSC), the third generation of solar cell (following thin-film as the second), could be efficient enough to compete with traditional silicon solar. His jump from a lowly 1% to 5-6% efficiency began the flood of interest and funding that has brought DSC to its current max at 11-12% efficiency. However, the real reason why it now sits in a prime position to take over the market is because the lifespan, previously limited to less than 1 year, has been extended to 15 to 20 years. Silicon is now completely in its sights.