HotmailJump start for solar? Car race shows potential
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Cell, battery advances
The competition is fueled in part by the fact that solar race cars are much faster these days. Two decades ago, when the first solar races were held, students were lucky if their cars could do 35 mph. Today, they can top 80 mph, though the race kept to posted speed limits.
The reasons: more aerodynamic designs, solar cells that have doubled in efficiency and much lighter onboard electricity storage. Instead of the 400-pound lead acid batteries used a decade ago, today's cars need just 70 pounds of lithium batteries, the same kind used in laptops, cell phones and some digital cameras.
The University of Michigan, the team with the deepest pockets, ended up winning a close race, just 12 minutes ahead of the University of Minnesota.
Success came down to having the most powerful array of solar cells, a large, well-drilled support team and aerodynamic wheel wells that kept the car on course even when crosswinds pushed competitors around.
“Our car sails in the wind,” says Robert Vogt, Michigan's strategy leader.
Incentives for solar
Despite the advances in technology, solar still costs about two to three times what most homeowners now pay for electricity. Even so, the price has come down by 80 percent in 25 years, says Gary Schmitz, another spokesman for the National Renewable Energy Lab.
The lab has set a goal of halving the cost further in a decade, and if the cost of electricity from fossil fuels continues to rise, Schmitz says, “we will easily reach parity in 10 years.”
Lower solar costs and higher fossil fuel prices have created renewed interest in the technology after an initial wave of support in the 1970s.
The energy bill passed by Congress last month provides a $2,000 federal tax credit for home solar systems. California is leading the way among the states with an initiative that includes homeowner rebates and requiring developers to include solar power as an option in new homes.
“I envision a solar house where the photovoltaic cells are on the roof power not only your house but your electric vehicle,” says King, the Energy Department solar expert. “That would make a wonderful second commuter family car.”
Hybrid Technologies, a company based in Las Vegas, is following that vision, helping to build a luxury home that is entirely off the power grid.
Electricity from solar cells, as well as small wind turbines camouflaged to look like chimneys, will be stored in lithium batteries. When completed in early 2006, the house and its plug-in electric vehicle will draw power from those batteries.
“We're closing the loop” for off-grid power, Hybrid Technologies spokesman Richard Griffiths said during a tour of the construction site in Calgary.
Career paths
Schmitz says solar power won't be a “silver bullet” that solves America's energy problems. But, he says, by 2050 it could meet up to half the nation's energy needs, compared with just 2 percent today.
By that time, some of the students who competed in the solar race will have built careers in the field.
Stanford's team leader is already on that road. Having just graduated, Eerik Hantsoo was hired by Nanosolar Inc., a company that makes super-thin solar panels for homes and other buildings and whose investors include the founders of Google.
“It's really shown me the potential of alternative energy,” Hantsoo says of solar racing. “Before this I thought I’d end up designing fighter jets.”
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