National Public Radio, April 12, 2001, 7:00 AM

Solar Power Research

BROADCAST EXCERPT

BOB EDWARDS: This is "Morning Edition" from NPR News. I'm Bob Edwards.

The Bush budget released this week proposes severely cutting funds for research into renewable sources of energy. Funding for hydropower, wind, geothermal and solar problems all stand to be cut in half. One solar program is scheduled to be essentially eliminated. It's a small program most people have never heard of, but supporters say it's developing the only technology that'll make solar power affordable in the near future.

NPR's David Kestenbaum reports.

DAVID KESTENBAUM: If you want to hear the solar sermon, your man is Scott Sklar, now with Stellar Group, Ltd. He has more hair on his chin than his head and more years lobbying for solar energy that he probably cares to count.

SCOTT SKLAR: What's so stunning is 100 by 100 miles, which is the size of the nuclear test site in Nevada, could supply all of the energy with this solar technology that the United States needs.

KESTENBAUM: This is a lousy day for solar power in Washington, D.C. Outside his office, it's dark and raining. Not so in the Southwest of the country.

SKLAR: Arizona, Nevada, parts of California are like the Saudi Arabia of sunlight, the best, clearest sunlight on this planet.

KESTENBAUM: The problem with solar power is it's expensive to produce, 20 cents a kilowatt hour compared to three or four cents for coal. But that's for the kind of solar cells that convert sunlight directly to electricity, the sort you find on your calculator. There's another way to use the sun called concentrating solar power that's considerably cheaper. It takes advantage of the simple fact that when things sit out in the sun, they get hot. One method uses a curved mirror called a solar trough to reflect and focus sunlight onto a pipe.

SKLAR: The pipe is glass and filled with a synthetic oil, and it just gets very, very hot.

KESTENBAUM: Seven hundred degree Fahrenheit, actually. The pipe heats water, makes steam which turns a turbine and generates electricity. If you could improve the technology a bit and convince people to build lots of concentrators on a large scale, the cost could come down to maybe 5 cents a kilowatt hour, Sklar says. Research and assistance from the Department of Energy could have helped that happen, but the new budget cuts funding for this from $14 million to two million, just enough to shut the program down.

SKLAR: And the last thing you'd want to do when the technology finally is advancing to the point that the private capital markets are feeling confidence to invest in it, then the government says, oh, well, you know, it's not very important any more.

KESTENBAUM: The Department of Energy says concentrating solar power is important, but it's also the right time for industry to pick up the ball.

JILL SCHROEDER [U.S. DOE]: We've spent about a billion -- over a billion dollars in the last 20 years on this program, the Department of Energy has. And we consider this truly a success story for the Department.

KESTENBAUM: Jill Schroeder is a spokesperson for the DOE.

A report from the National Academy of Sciences recently recommended phasing this program out, she says. The Bush administration is simply investing in technologies that aren't so far along, such as ways to burn
coal more cleanly.

SCHROEDER: We like solar power. Solar power is available, and we need to encourage the market to work itself out. But we've done the research. That's what government was for.

KESTENBAUM: And it's true. Nine concentrating solar power plants are plugged into the California grid right now. They only produce about a third of a percent of California's electricity, but, still, they work.

Scott Frier is chief operating officer of KJC Operating Company, which runs some of the plants.

SCOTT FRIER [KJC Operating Company]: We've been here for 15 years now, and shockingly few people know about us.

KESTENBAUM: Frier is frustrated with the proposed cuts. The DOE is concentrating solar program is small, but effective, he says. It funds researchers at Sandia National Lab, for instance, who help develop better
reflectors and absorbers. With their help, Frier's company has already cut costs by 25%. With further research and development, he expects costs will drop even more. Ask Frier why industry can't do this on its own, and he
pauses.

FRIER: Well, I'd say that'd be an okay question if not for the fact that we've not got a level playing field. If, you know, geothermal and biomass and wind and, you know, my goodness, even nuclear, fossil fuels, they have huge, huge levels of funding. And you know, if they have all of these levels of funding that helps them get to the marketplace and our levels of funding are cut off at the knees, then we can't compete with these other sources
when we should.

KESTENBAUM: Frier is hoping the energy crisis will help, if not the government. The Mojave Desert solar plants produce power at about 12 cents a kilowatt hour. With prices of conventional electricity up to 20 cents a
kilowatt hour on the spot market, solar power is looking cheap.

David Kestenbaum, NPR News, Washington., D.C.