Palo Alto, Calif. – Over the years, the Palo Alto Research Center has developed numerous electricity-gobbling innovations.
Now the storied lab that gave the world laser printing and graphical user interfaces is trying to harness the sun to power its inventions.
The Xerox Corp. subsidiary, known as PARC, has produced super-efficient solar systems that experts say could make photovoltaic power – sunlight converted directly into electricity – available on a large scale at prices competitive with fossil fuels for the first time. PARC’s technology is one of several promising approaches in the field.
“Solar is growing at 30 percent annually,” said analyst Ron Pernick of Clean Edge Inc., a research organization that specializes in alternative energy technology. Comparing the expansion to the best years of the personal computer industry, Pernick forecasts that solar power will be a $51 billion global business in 2015, up from $11.2 billion last year.
The research at PARC is part of an eco-friendly technology trend that draws on the materials and know-how that built computer microprocessors and other high-tech staples.
PARC’s efforts dovetail with Silicon Valley’s push into “clean tech,” including conservation and renewable energy. Reusable paper is another of PARC’s development projects. The California Clean Tech Open, sponsored by dozens of companies, venture capital firms, universities and other groups, recently received 155 competing business concepts.
In an era of stratospheric oil prices, investors are beginning to see solar as the next big thing, despite its embryonic state. Many industry watchers expect to see large rooftop collectors for powering businesses and solar farms that will approach the size of major power plants.
“The electricity market is as big as the sky,” said Erik Straser of Mohr Davidow Ventures in Menlo Park, who has invested in emerging solar companies.
That hopefulness stems from dramatic technology changes. For decades, solar power was dominated by thermal systems that heat water for bathing or power small turbines to create electricity.
Photovoltaic technology – the combination of light and electricity – is gradually replacing thermal.
Recently, some companies have developed systems that use mirrors or lenses to concentrate the sun’s rays as much as 500 times and increase efficiency to as much as 26 percent, with projections up to 50 percent. Higher efficiency means cheaper power.
Several such “concentrating photovoltaic” schemes have been devised.
PARC’s concentrating technology was developed with Sol Focus, a startup being incubated inside PARC. PARC estimates that the new system would easily compete with fossil fuels at today’s prices, although it won’t be ready for commercial use for a few years.
New technologies are making solar a hot bet for venture capitalists, who pumped $150 million into solar startups last year, according to Clean Edge.
Straser has invested in Energy Innovations Inc., a Pasadena, Calif., company run by Bill Gross of technology incubator Idealab.
Its computer-controlled Sunflower product tracks sunbeams and produces both photovoltaic power and hot water.
Straser also supported Nanosolar, a Palo Alto startup that prints ultrathin solar cells – made from metal alloys rather than silicon – on metal strips, much in the way newspapers roll off a press.
Nanosolar announced in June that it had raised $100 million to build a fabrication plant.
Energizing the solar industry to make it a significant part of the energy economy may prove the tech industry’s most daunting challenge for the future.
In 2004, the most recent year for which data are available, solar accounted for only 0.06 percent of the nation’s power supply, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Just 19 firms with about 2,900 employees shipped photovoltaic systems.
