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Comment by jes5199 | Hacker News Reader

This is interesting to me because it’s such a cultural blindspot: the left-wing point of view is that energy efficiency is the only way forward, and the right-wing point of view is that more traditional fuels is the only way forward.

But solar panels seem to have a version or Moore’s law - and even a single doubling of efficiency from here would completely revolutionize our energy economy (and dramatically shake up world politics!). Two doublings and we have a green future. Three or more doublings and we suddenly have the biggest energy surplus in human history.

It might be a little slower than the computing revolution - but it also might not be. If this is 1980, and solar is at the Apple II phase, the next 30 years are going to be wild.

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Solar panel efficiency does not have an analogue to Moore's law, and their efficiency physically cannot double two or more times.

Solar cell record efficiency is 46%, that only gives room for 1.12 doublings theoretically, and thermodynamics is nasty in the real world so we probably cannot even get past 1 doubling from here.

You are correct about thermodynamic efficiency. I interpreted it to be about economic efficiency. In which case one or more doublings of kWh output from dollar input is still a stretch but plausible.

Modern rooftop solar modules haven't even doubled efficiency from 40 years ago, but they have improved cost per kilowatt hour by more than 100x.

Yeah, I tend to agree with you here. The difference I see is that solar has already been heavily invested in and developed recently, so it's probably near the limit of today's material science.

My personal philosophy about technological progress is based heavily on the idea that material science is the principle barrier to what we can accomplish. That's why humanity's progress is recounted in "ages" named by material.

So, I think solar panels can get maybe 2-10x more economical, whereas other options like new hydrocarbon sources, fission, and fusion can probably all get at least 10x more economical than the maximum possible with solar, purely due to the physical limitations of the technology.

I can believe significant price improvements to come for solar, fission, and fusion since their fuel costs are zero or tiny. What new hydrocarbon sources could be 10x cheaper than coal or natural gas?

Well, I'm not really supposed to talk about this but we're working on a hydrocarbon byproduct of our fission reactors. Can't extrapolate but point is, there are unconventional ways to make hydrocarbons that become economically viable when they are a byproduct of an already profitable process.

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