Is it time for the solar power industry to focus less on
tech R&D and more on delivering affordable solar energy to
the masses? That's a question posed by Alexander Bernstein, managing director
of Merriman Curhan Ford & Co., to industry leaders at the investment
bank's
Next-Generation
Energy Conference Tuesday. Bernstein and his fellow panelists agreed
that lowering the cost of solar power for consumers is essential to mass
adoption, but they offered differing views on the role technology will
play.
Randall MacEwen, CEO of solar roofing maker
Solar
Integrated Technologies Inc., argued that technology will provide
"incremental improvements in deployment and scaling."
"It's not about the technology," added Earl Fuller, general manager of
Emcore Corp., which
makes gallium-arsenide solar cells and panels. "It's about getting closer to
the customer. We need more than one way to get cost out, including economies
of scale and increased efficiency."
Fuller argued against a solar industry equivalent
of Moore's
Law, which predicts that transistor density on microchips will double
roughly every 18 months.
Tom Werner, CEO of solar cell and panel maker
SunPower
Corp., disagreed, insisting that the Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon Moore's
famous dictum applies to the increase in solar tech efficiency.
"We're where semiconductors were 20 or 30 years ago," he said.
The panelists did agree that the industry will continue to consolidate.
The opportunities are ripe for companies that can offer integrated
technologies and services. SunPower, for example, acquired solar system
integrator PowerLight Corp. for $332.5 million last year.
"Solar's on the verge of going mainstream and will become a much bigger
industry," Werner said. "There's going to be a land grab like the Wild Wild
West." —Mary Kathleen
Flynn
See
Nov. 15, 2006, story in The Deal
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