Consumer Markets Will Lead the Way to a Solar-Powered Future

Dana Blankenhorn
December 15, 2010 | 5 Comments

Before the dawn of the PC era, electronics companies were dependent on do-it-yourself enthusiasts and high-end consumers looking for kicks.

That's the way markets work. The bottom of the “s” curve is littered with false starts, with ideas that look crazy in retrospect, but which turn-on a few and lead to better things.

Today, that means solar chargers. Prices keep coming down, and capabilities keep going up. The best news is that while solar chargers today only support low levels of power, increasing numbers of electronic components only need small amounts of power. So the utility of such devices is increasing exponentially.

Most American consumers just plug in when our iPhones need a charge. Most solar charger buyers right now are people who are vacationing off the grid but who want to bring their gadgets with them.

Given these limits, the preferred output is USB. Smart phones often support USB for charging. They're trickle-chargers, as this press release from one such maker, SunTactics, makes clear. Many older units include an internal battery that charges from the solar panel. For 2010 two watts was the norm for output. Newer units are now being introduced at 5 watts.

Beyond campers who want to keep their iPhones and GPS devices charged when out in the woods, there is also a market in the developing world, where the grid does not exist. Things like the Solar Ear – a specialized device for recharging hearing aids – are starting to gain traction.

What comes next? As was true 40 years ago, military necessity is leading the way. The U.S. Army is evaluating things like the PowerShade, a collection of thin-film cells sewn into a command tent. The most powerful of these solutions, dubbed the TEMPER-Fly, is rated at 750 watts of output. The company which makes it, the Tactical Solar unit of Energy Technologies Inc., Mansfield, Ohio, is a great place to bookmark for future developments. Their most powerful unit weighs 450 pounds and currently tops out at 2 kilowatts.

There will be more, which will weigh less, cost less, and deliver more power, by this time next year.

Of course, 2 kilowatts is not a ton of power. It's a laptop, a low-powered radio, maybe a few of them at the high end. But remember, this is 1970 in renewable energy time, and since we have the Internet all around us, things could move even faster this time than they did then.

The information and views expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author and not necessarily those of RenewableEnergyWorld.com or the companies that advertise on this Web site and other publications. This blog was posted directly by the author and was not reviewed for accuracy, spelling or grammar.

5 Comments

Roger Moore
December 25, 2010

Dana: With all due respect, we are $16 Trillion in consumer debt and $14 Trillion in national debt. It can never be paid. Yes, we've seen an anemic blip in GDP after more than $3.8 Trillion of deficit spending, but it's a mistake to think this is a recovery. Now it's time for the inflation to set in from all this money that has been created.

Our supply of conventional (e.g, affordable) crude oil is essentially gone. There is no effective alternative to oil. We're heading toward triple digit oil prices again, and we've seen what triple digit oil prices did to the economy at the end of 2008. So the main point from all my gloom and doom is that we had better come up with a quantum leap in ET which revolutionizes everything we do in the next couple of years, or we're we're stuck with WW-3 in the middle east fighting over the last scraps of easy to extract oil. Come to think of it, why are we selling Saudi Arabia $65 billion of advanced weaponry? Why is China supplying other countries in the region with weaponry in numbers larger than what's being spent on alternative energies?

I'm certainly hopeful to hear an explanation of how we're not entering another depression but the situation just doesn't look good.

Dana Blankenhorn
December 20, 2010

Rojelio: Unemployment of 10% still leaves 90% employed. There has been no collapse of GDP, save for what happened in 2008. (Growth has been positive since the middle of 2009.) Most of the lay-offs that actually happened came in fading industries or among the lower-educated (think real estate).

In other words rumors of the death of the middle class are somewhat exaggerated.

Roger Moore
December 17, 2010

"....high-end consumers looking for kicks."

We don't have that so much anymore in the USA. Many of those people aren't so much looking for kicks any more but rather spare change under the sofa so they can get a couple things at the grocery store while waiting for their food stamp entitlements to dry up right alongside their unemployment benefits.

Dana Blankenhorn
December 15, 2010

I was sort of joking. The tent shown only runs at 750 watts, though. You have to balance the weight of the tent by the power output in considering it.

Mortimer Shnerdlyfrump
December 15, 2010

I'm not clear if the author is joking in the last paragraph. 2KW will run more than a laptop. It will run an entire house including refigerator, tv, airconditioner...(maybe not all at once).

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Dana Blankenhorn

Dana Blankenhorn has covered business and technology since 1978. He covered the Houston oil boom of the 1970s, began making his living online in 1985, and launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of e-commerce, in 1994....