A Venture Capitalist View of the Top 5 Entrepreneurial Energy Opportunities

No wonder things are do dismal... VC's are clueless.

That's the first conclusion I drew after reading the white paper. When it comes to technology these people are living in phantasy[sic] land.

Sure the points examined are valid and the conclusions bear some resemblance to truth, BUT, -- and this is a really big but -- THE PREMISES ARE WRONG. So the conlusions are worthless.

[quote]

This creates opportunities

for the rest of the solar ecosystem, which rides these trend

lines much as the IT industry has ridden memory and storage

cost/density curves and Moore’s Law for decades.

[/quote]

Moore's Law does not apply to PV! Moore's Law is from information theory the reasons are that data had 40 orders of magnitude to improve i.e. 10^40 is a huge number. While PV has already reached about 15% of perfection in Silicon and 40% in multijunction. Unless the industry can price the stuff cheaper than seawater there is little room left for improvement -- That conclusion is based on the laws of physics.

[quote]

“Balance of system” in solar is an area we have studied

intently, and believe there is strong opportunity for next generation

approaches.

As an example, the inverter is an interesting part of the system

for several reasons. First off, it’s the most despised part of the

chain, accounting for the majority of failures in the field and

stubbornly resisting cost reduction due to its Edison-era architecture.

As cell prices drop, the inverter’s share of system

cost rises, making it an increasingly important area of economic

focus and an increasingly attractive target for reinvention

by entrepreneurs.

[/quote]

This is a correct zero-sum-gain analysis of the other important component of a PV system. However the inverter is only about 1/5 to 1/6 of the equipment cost. And despite its Edisonian origins it represents a mature and well developed technology -- It there was room to shave the price then engineers would have done it years ago -- Oh wait, they did! Inverters went from $10-$15/Watt in the 1970's to <$1!

So Mr. VC, I think it's about time you knock that chip off your shoulder.

CTYankee of CT @ Aug 19, 2009 11:08:21 AM