Have No Fear, The Superman Of Solar Power Is Here

The US Department of Energy struck fear into the hearts of everyone on July 7, when it released a report warning that blackouts will increase by 100 times in 2030 — which is just around the corner — unless somebody swoops in to save coal and gas power plants from the scrap heap. Well, this is not your father’s DOE any more, so consider the source. Alarmist misdirection from the government aside, private sector stakeholders are already gearing up for a renewed spurt of interest in solar power.

The New DOE Relibility Report: I Can’t Even

No, seriously, I can’t. The new report, titled “Evaluating the Reliability and Security of the United States Electric Grid,” was rushed through to satisfy the timeline of an executive order issued by the President on April 8, which sends up a red flag right there.

DOE reports typically include the names of the lead authors, but apparently nobody wanted to take credit for this one in person, at least not up front. Or out back, either. I scrolled through all 70+ pages. If I missed somebody, drop a note in the comment thread.

For those of you in a hurry, the executive summary spells out the bias. “Our Nation possesses abundant energy resources and capabilities such as oil and gas, coal, and nuclear,” the Energy Department states, neatly sliding past wind and solar power as well as energy storage, which are easily the most abundant, widely available, most accessible, and least expensive resources at hand today.

If you don’t have the bandwidth to wade through the whole report, the Energy Department also provided a handy summary in a press release, which underscores its bias even more.

“The analysis reveals that existing generation retirements and delays in adding new firm capacity, driven by the radical green agenda of past administrations, will lead to a surge in power outages and a growing mismatch between electricity demand and supply, particularly from artificial intelligence (AI)-driven data center growth, threatening America’s energy security,” the agency declared.

“President Trump’s administration is committed to advancing a strategy of energy addition, and supporting all forms of energy that are affordable, reliable, and secure,” chipped in Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who came to the agency fresh off his tenure as CEO of the leading oil and gas services firm Liberty Energy, so consider that source, too.

Solar Power Is Here To Save The Day

The rebuttals to the new DOE report are beginning to trickle in (here is one example). Among other plain-as-day shortcomings, such as the omission of transmission and modernization factors, the report dramatically overestimated the amount of near-term load growth attributed to demand outside of the data center industry.

Meanwhile, the nation’s renewable energy industries have already proven to be fully capable of handling an increase in electricity demand, particularly in the solar field. Solar power has been dominating new utility-scale capacity additions in the US by a wide margin, which explains why fossil energy stakeholders have become increasingly desperate.

For the record, the preference for “firm” or baseload power generation in the new Energy Department report is consistent with the new American Energy Dominance policy. However, the new policy does not exclude renewable energy, at least not entirely. The policy embraces geothermal, hydropower, and biomass, all three of which fulfill the conventional baseload definition of consistent, 24/7 availability. Notably, hydropower also performs a key energy storage role in the US.

Earlier this week the Energy Department also slipped marine energy into the mix, in an updated energy collaboration with the government of Norway. Marine energy refers to devices that harvest the kinetic movement of waves, tides, and currents, of which the US has in abundance.

More & Better Solar Power Is Coming For Your Fossil Fuels

All of this is by way of saying that singling out wind and solar power for exclusion is a partisan exercise from the get-go, and it doesn’t even make sense within the context of the President’s own renewables-inclusive energy policy.

Whatever. Meanwhile, solar industry stakeholders are not waiting around for the other shoe to drop. Solar power is here to stay, and solar innovators will keep on innovating, regardless of the abrupt shift in federal energy policy. In the latest example, the US startup UbiQD (pronounced “ubiquity”) is bringing its proprietary solar technology to the US manufacturer First Solar, which aims to boost the solar conversion efficiency of its bifacial solar panels.

The “QD” in UbiQD refers to nanoscale “artificial atoms” called quantum dots. The application of quantum dots to solar power began surfacing on the CleanTechnica radar almost 15 years ago, and all that hard work is finally starting to pay off. In 2016 we took note of the first successful demonstration of quantum dots in a perovskite solar cell, and the perovskite connection popped up again earlier this year, when UbiQD acquired fellow startup BlueDot.

As described by UbiQD, quantum dots can more than double the quantum efficiency of bifacial solar panels for specific wavelengths of light. Quantum efficiency is a sort of census measurement. It is not the same as solar conversion efficiency, but it does indicate the potential for incremental increases in conversion efficiency. Those increments can add up to significant gains in a utility scale array.

In a coincidence of timing, UbiQD announced the agreement with First Solar just two days after the Energy Department somewhat frantically urged the nation to get behind conventional power plants.

“This collaboration between two U.S.-based companies comes as the country seeks to rapidly expand competitive power generation capacity to serve demand from data centers, artificial intelligence (AI), and manufacturing,” UbiQD pointed out in a press release dated July 9.

The push for conventional power plants notwithstanding, UbiQD is loaded for bear. In April, the company locked down $20 million in Series B funding, which the company aims to stake on building “one of the highest volume QD manufacturing facilities in the world.” If all goes according to plan, construction will start on a location in New Mexico later this year.

On its part, First Solar has been manufacturing thin film solar panels in the US since 2002. The company has seen federal energy policy shift through multiple Democratic and Republican administrations, from Bush through Obama, Trump 1, Biden, and now onto Trump 2. As of February this year, First Solar anticipated that its manufacturing capacity will reach 14 gigawatts per year by 2026, which is just around the corner. No word yet on how the new tax law will impact its plans, but the hookup with UbiQD indicates that First Solar is in the solar power game for the long haul.

Photo (cropped): The US solar power field is getting a shot of adrenaline in the form of new quantum dot technology, just in time to save the US grid from a forthcoming blackout catastrophe (courtesy of UbiQD).