Solar’s Day In The Sun

Business Week: Solar's Day In The Sun

The big hurdle has been finding a technology that can match the low cost of fossil fuel. John O'Donnell thinks he has that licked.

………

The idea is to slow global warming and cure the planet's energy woes, not with plasma or windmills or "clean" coal smoke, but with mirrors. Miles and miles of mirrors, to be exact, focusing the rays of the sun onto pipes to heat water to run hulking steam turbines. This so-called solar thermal approach would mean no emissions that cause global warming. No worries about radioactive waste. No need for coal power, which faces increasingly hostile scrutiny. Not even much need for oil, if plug-in hybrid cars like the Chevrolet Volt start to replace gasoline burners. "I want people to have it in their heads that there is a solution–and it doesn't even mean raising their electric bills," he says.

A fantasy? Maybe. The big question is not whether solar thermal plants work, but how much the electricity will cost. Right now, the price for existing mirror and steam turbine systems is about half that of the more familiar photovoltaic (PV) panels, which use sheets of semiconductors to convert sunlight to electricity. But that's still nearly twice as much as a new coal plant. O'Donnell believes the technology he plucked from obscurity in Australia will be cheaper–although he has to prove it. And assuming his plants get built, transmitting power from desert to cities will be a challenge. "Big Solar is a dream," says Michael G. Morris, CEO of American Electric Power (AEP ), the nation's largest user of coal. "Is the land there? Yes. Is it practical now? I don't think so."