We all know PA as Steel Country. At the turn of the 20th century, PA was a hotbed of tech innovation. Bethlehem Steel patented a gamechanging process for making “high-speed steel” (HSS) and ushered in a century of steel: ships, planes, bridges, skyscrapers. HSS mixed Edisonian trial-and-error and Taylorism time-and-motion studies. HSS was both a leap forward in materials sci (precisely tuning alloys) and industrial management (mass production).
Today’s U.S. solar industry needs a leapfrog tech akin to HSS. High-speed solar must be a gamechanger, mass produced in U.S. factories, and sold worldwide. Our nation needs the spirit captured in Bethlehem to set in motion the solar century.
High-speed solar:
1. Tandem solar cells that eclipse 1J silicon cells. Efficiencies beyond the 30% SQ limit . Materials sci to find 2-J bandgaps that optimize the solar spectrum. E.g., tuning perovskite-on-silicon without band overlap
2. 50+ year lifetime encapsulates
3. Production techniques with a 2 GW/yr factories built in 3 yrs. Just like “Speedy Taylor” created 20th-century industrial management using the steel as his lab, we need “Speedy Solar” with 21st-century automation.
HSS gives an American precedent of rapid explosion of an industry. During the 2nd Industrial Revolution, the nation went from a bit player to making 72% of the world’s steel.
We need the same for solar.
© 2024
