Taming the Sun



Taming the Sun: Innovation to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet
by Varun Sivaram

Main Points:

  • The History of Solar Energy has its origins in the Chinese Yong Sui, Augustin Mouchet who in 1874 built a solar engine using concentrated solar power, Bequerel who in 1839 started employing the solar voltaic effect, Einstein's Annus Mirabilus in 1905 where he published the first paper on the effect, Bell Labs who in 1953 helped develop the first commercial solar cell in remote locations to power relaying stations/switches for AT&T Bell, and the Big Oil industry that helped also invest in the technology through the 90's into the 21st century.
  • The purpose of the book is to understand the potential for solar, why we have not adopted the technology widely, and what it will take to get there. Sivaram notes a "Capital Gap" of $2.5 trillion in investment that will need to take place by 2040. He also believes in a hybrid system in developing countries that still have blank canvas in their energy space. A combination of super grid and microgrids that are intelligently programmed and deploy similar philosophies to both the developed Western system and the cell-phone boom maybe our best hope to deploy solar at scale.
  • One point that is interesting that Sivaram makes is the justification for distributed solar. He recommends ways to make solar investments liquid and painless for institutional investors- namely pension funds, insurances, and sovereign wealth funds. One example of this is when Sun Edison created Yield Co- a collection of renewable projects packaged into public listed companies. Sivaram states that "stable cash flow from customers making monthly payments makes distributed solar a natural fit for institutional investors.


Watch Dr. Varun Sivaram talk at the Middle East electricity Power Congress where he talks about the necessity to increase the pace of innovation in the renewable energy space! He talks about Mission Innovation- a way to collaborate in the research space.

Foreign Affairs also got to sit down with Varun to talk about the Clean Energy Revolution, the Paris Climate agreement, and the "right tools" necessary to arm countries to do more. This talk is based on Teryn Norris and Dr. Sivaram's May/June 2016 article on clean energy R&D in Foreign Affairs magazine.

Read Johannes Urpelainen's review of the book in Springer here!

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