Project Solaris - How to break the fossil fuel cycle?

Renewable energy investments always take a major blow when the world economies slow down, the reason is fossil fuels are very cheap compared to the renewable sources, when the factor cost of production is to be economical to continue to sustain a business all renewable energy ideas and plans get shelved. This renewable energy on, renewable energy off cycle has stopped progress in really developing a sustainable model of generating power from renewable sources.

I have been working on a project although it is still in a very early stage on breaking from the downward cycle of building sustainable renewable energy sources. Even Mr.Warren Buffet is warming up to the idea of Solar, which was the fools gold until the last decade.


Project Solaris is an initiative to establish a manufacturing company in Iceland for components that are used to generate Solar Power.  Solar power is the conversion of sunlight to electricity. Sunlight can be converted directly into electricity using photovoltaic (PV), or indirectly with concentrating solar power (CSP), which normally focuses the sun's energy to boil water which is then used to provide power.

PVs are arrays of cells containing solar photovoltaic material that converts solar radiation into direct current electricity. Materials presently used for photovoltaics include monocrystalline silicon, polycrystalline silicon, microcrystalline silicon, cadmium telluride, and copper indium selenide/sulfide.

CSP systems use lenses or mirrors to focus a large area of sunlight onto a small area. Electrical power is produced when the concentrated light is directed onto photovoltaic surfaces or used to heat a transfer fluid for a conventional power plant.

All the above materials used to produce solar power are manufactured using energy. The company established in Iceland will use the renewable energy in Iceland from Geothermal as well as Hydro sources to manufacture the above material to produce more renewable energy. The concept is a renewable energy bootstrap. There is a growing demand for renewable energy in the world; however there are places in the world like the Far East and developing countries where there is no energy or resource to produce these components or the energy used to produce these components is generated from fossil fuel like coal or oil. This cycle prolongs the transition from fossil based energy sources to renewable energy sources and increases the overall cost of renewable energy.

The company established in Iceland will aim to reduce the overall cost of implementing solar power plants through innovation in established technologies and utilizing the vast energy resource in Iceland to produce solar components that would make solar power affordable even in the developing world.

The innovation in the idea is to split the manufacturing process into chunks that are cost effective in the respective region. The energy intensive part of the manufacturing would be done in Iceland and the labor intensive part would be done in India. This would break the challenge of reducing the cost to produce and transport solar components to markets where they are needed the most.

The advent of the financial crisis in Iceland and the inherent excess energy capacity in Iceland has made Iceland the ideal destination for investment and development of a company as described above. The company will focus on being the developer and manufacturer in Iceland, in addition a buyer and electricity generator in India. The value proposition is to be the owner and operator of the entire value chain of the solar power generation process.

Related articles

• The Solar Industry's Dead? Not Hardly, US Installations Set New Record (treehugger.com)
• Renewable Energy Adoption and the Increasing Cost of Electricity in the U.S. (renewableenergyworld.com)
• Facebook Unfriends Coal, Partners with Greenpeace for Clean Energy Future (thinkprogress.org)
• Solar Power Becomes Cheaper Than Diesel Generators in India (treehugger.com)
• Prologis, SCE, Kimberly-Clark Announce Installation of a Major Single Rooftop Solar Power System at California Distribution Center (prnewswire.com)

All Images via Wikipedia