Google R&D team's goal: Make renewables cheaper than coal "in a few years"

Google R&D team's goal: Make renewables cheaper than coal "in a few years"(fastcompany.com)

79 points by elbrodeur 14 years ago | 51 comments

tomelders 14 years ago |

This stuff is the reason I'll never hate google the way I hate Microsoft. Ok, hate is a strong word, but I just don't like or trust microsoft. I think the world is a worse place because of it. I Think the world is a better place because of google, but there's still a healthy portion of sceptisim that comes with that feeling.

The reason I mention this is because right now, it's all about google becoming the next Microsoft, but I don't think that's fair on google.

InclinedPlane 14 years ago | |

I think your hatred of MS is misplaced. The world is almost certainly a better place because of them. Maybe not as better a place as possible, but certainly better. The "MS is evil" meme always struck me as an immature response to MS's imperfections, few companies have done as much to put computing power into the hands of people, and that has had an amazing impact on the world.

As far as google, they'll lose more and more of the fire from their early days as they get bigger and older, but they still have a fairly strong ethical core for any company their size and I think that will help as they age.

lsd5you 14 years ago | | |

I don't think you are giving enough credit to the companies and services that never were (because of Microsoft). Infact an uncharitable reading of what you've written would be that you assume no microsoft means some kind of industry void.

It is certainly pretty disputable that computing adoption was in anyway accelerated by the exsistence of Microsoft since they have essentially been rent collecting and pushing up prices for everyone to join in.

patrickgzill 14 years ago | | |

MS was evil, at least earlier in the company's lifetime. The theft of IP from Gary Kildall, the Stac case, the Wang lawsuit, the way IBM got shafted over OS/2, etc.

tomelders 14 years ago | | |

For my money, the single greatest evil Microsoft has ever perpetuated is Internet Explorer. And they show no signs of giving up the ghost on that one. The World Wide Web would get my vote as mankind's single greatest achievement, and I think we're still right at the very beginning of it's chapter in history.

Sadly, my view is that we're 10 years behind where we should be because progress is anchored to Internet Explorer, and will be for another 10 years at least.

I will happily call IE evil because Microsoft have used it as a weapon in numerous attempts to seize control of something they didn't create, don't understand and above all have no right to mess with.

6ren 14 years ago | |

It's PR. As Page admits, it's how people see Google from the outside, but actually only 3-5 people somewhere in the company. There's none of the security that you might expect from a big company doing it - for example see what happened to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unladen_Swallow The main way that Google helps the project is providing publicity. Which aligns with Google's needs. It's PR.

PR is a crucial part of Google's strategy, because it's very easy to switch search engines.

georgemcbay 14 years ago | |

No Microsoft means no (or at least a very drastically different/less funded) Gates Foundation. No Gates Foundation means a world much worse off, particularly for those in the 3rd world.

Granted, Google is more directly involved in positive projects as a corporation than Microsoft has been, but "The world is a worse place because of Microsoft" is a very shallow view, and IMO very wrong.

loup-vaillant 14 years ago | | |

If you really want to do the expected utility calculation, you'd need to ask if the absence of Microsoft and the Gate foundation would have permitted wealth to be created and moved elsewhere, perhaps to another foundation.

Anyway, if the goal is to slay Poverty, a private foundation probably won't cut it. We need to do away with the current fractional reserve banking system, nullify most national debts, localize production and distribution of common goods (especially food), build things to last (no programmed obsolescence), and stop thinking that GDP growth is a good measure of wealth (it was a good predictor, but now we tend to cheat).

But the amount of collaboration needed to do that looks so huge that it may be easier to build a Friendly AI.

tomelders 14 years ago | | |

The Bill & Belinda Gates Foundation != Microsoft. It's true that it wouldn't exist without Microsoft, but the two are entirely different enterprises, with entirely different characteristics.

ajross 14 years ago | | |

The Gates Foundation does great work. They are certainly one of if not the most effective anti-poverty charities out there. But positing a world "much worse off" is stretching things. Even huge charities are dwarfed by the sizes of governments. Almost all aid is delivered by governments. How much money has the Gates Foundation spent in total over its decade or so of work? What is the USA humanitarian aid budget for a single year?

Again, my point isn't to diss Bill's charity work. But arguing that we should tolerate abusive monopolies in our tech industry because the owners might one day get rich and give the money to poor people is ... borderline insane, honestly.

icefox 14 years ago |

Getting solar this summer (live in MA which has very nice tax deals) and one of the interesting things I noticed in the process was how much of the cost is the install. Saw one company that is making the install process significantly cheaper which results in a better win overall than if the cost of the cells were dropped by half. Same goes with the idea of transparent cells. Even if they have a very low rating they can go in every window and get installed for "free" when the new windows are installed making the payback much faster.

brg 14 years ago | |

Do you have a breakdown of your own costs? Even in percentiles that would be interesting.

6ren 14 years ago |

I think Gladwell is wrong. Historically, there have been many cases where researchers have been unaware of relevant work, because it was done in a different field. Search could improve there. If search is the quest for knowledge, then the scope for improvement is unlimited.

Sinking to more consumer-oriented search, anticipating what you want before you know you want it is another (creepy) way for search to improve, that Google has specifically talked about.

Luyt 14 years ago |

The goal is very noble and I'm all for it, but there is this problem that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow, and electricity isn't infinitely transportable, nor easily stored.

tomjen3 14 years ago |

The problem with this is always that they are "a few years away", or that we can run the entire economy from biofuels "in ten to twenty years".

It has been going on for what, 20 years now? It is never going to change until we ignore them until they actually bring about their ideas.

ebiester 14 years ago | |

Yes, but in the last 30 years, we've went from prohibitively expensive 4.5% efficency cells in 1954 and $1500/watt in 1955 to a test 500kW installation in 1977 to $9.00 in 2007 to, in an ideal situation, 8.5 cents per KWH today.

http://inventors.about.com/od/timelines/a/Photovoltaics.htm http://greenecon.net/understanding-the-cost-of-solar-energy/... http://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/comments/hn7jn/while_were_on_...

We could start building a 100% solar/nuclear solution in the US today. The technology is there, and it would only be the construction time. Our energy costs would go up, but not significantly. However, if the technology keeps on this curve, unsubsidized solar will be cheaper than coal soon.

We aren't doing this today because the power companies know that the curve is coming soon. Why invest prematurely, outside basic research projects?

danielharan 14 years ago | | |

Upvoted. Same with Wind. Learning curves are bringing costs down below that of coal and nuclear.

Solar is already in plenty of niches - from highway signage to parking kiosks. Every niche helps increase production, which reduces price per unit.

This is why I support subsidies - unlike for oil or nuclear, they're actually working to get costs down.

elbrodeur 14 years ago | |

It's expensive to make things cheap. Usually when something becomes cheap quickly it's because demand is high and producing that thing is less expensive. In the case of new energy sources, reaching parity with the grid is very difficult: Not only are technologies like coal already operating at scale, they are also subsidized by the government.

If there was a strong public demand for renewables grid parity wouldn't be that far off. Unfortunately, we're a little too obsessed with other things at the moment, like politicians posting lewd photos online or which television shows to DVR.