What is the Solar Review?

Every day, numerous things come by my desk from the internet or elsewhere purporting to be truths about solar. Yet most have serious errors or misstatements, or are too narrowly focused to tell the whole story. Some have wonderful insights that deserve more attention. The Solar Review will respond to both – challenging some authors to change their views or be more precise; praising others and building on their insights.

Even good news is greeted with a yawn these days, because there is so much hype in the system. How many people are sophisticated enough in solar technology to tell the wheat from the chaff? Can they distinguish between claims for hypothetical future achievements and achievements already made? Do they know that scaling up a solar cell to a solar product is a 10 billion-fold challenge in making large area, near-perfect semiconductors? And that this can take over a decade of huge investment? Apparently most of the venture capitalists who put money into PV startups in the last ten years didn’t know this!

This may be the solar century, where solar makes not only a tangible, but even a majority contribution to our energy supply. We deserve a forum for understanding what matters. That is the purpose of the Solar Review.

Ken Zweibel is Director of the George Washington University Solar Institute.