by Ecotality blogger Bill Hobbs. Originally published today, April 6, 2007

If solar power is going to play a significant role in the energy equation of the future, there must be advances in technologies to store that power and more investment by manufacturers, concludes a new federally funded study by University of Massachusetts Amherst scientist Erin Baker. But in New Zealand researchers have developed new solar energy-collecting dyes that promise to make solar energy much easier and less expensive to collect.

The UMASS researchers’ report “explores the viability of sun-fueled technologies through a combination of evaluations by experts and economic modeling, allowing the researchers to look at solar power’s role in the electricity sector in 15-year chunks through 2095,” says the UMASS-Amherst news release.

Baker has been invited to submit the article to Energy Economics as part of a special issue on Technological Change and Uncertainty in Environmental Economics. It is the first in a series; future reports will assess technologies that harvest wind, biofuels and carbon capture. The U.S. Department of Energy awarded $347,000 to Baker’s team last year to investigate the costs and benefits associated with investing in alternative energies.

The research report might be interesting reading and should be released to the public for free, not stuffed into a research journal that can only be accessed with a subscription or fee. After all, you already paid for it as it was funded by tax dollars. Still, I wonder about the value of the report’s economic predictions for solar power given that economists can’t predict human ingenuity.

The same day that the solar economic forecast report hits the news comes news of yet another solar technology breakthrough.

Researchers at the Nanomaterials Research Centre at New Zealand’s Massey University have developed synthetic dyes hat can be used to generate electricity at one tenth of the cost of current silicon-based solar panels. The dyes work similar to natural photosynthesis – and even work in low-light conditions. Researchers say they soon will be able to be cheaply incorporated into common products, turning those products into generators of electricity. Think: roofing materials and window panes. Or clothing.

Here’s how the Manawatu Standard reports the breakthrough:

This means teenagers could one day be wearing jackets that will recharge their equivalents of cellphones, iPods and other battery- driven devices. The breakthrough is a development of the university’s Nanomaterials Research Centre and has attracted world-wide interest already – particularly from Australia and Japan. Researchers at the centre have developed a range of synthetic dyes from simple organic compounds closely related to those found in nature, where light-harvesting pigments are used by plants for photosynthesis.

Science Daily sheds more light on the potential of the “porphyrin dye” technology. Turns out that not only may the new porphyrin dye solar sells may not only be better at generating electricity from sunlight, even the manufacturing process to make , the itself be more environmentally friendly than making silicon-based solar cells:

Dr Campbell says that unlike the silicon-based solar cells currently on the market, the 10×10cm green demonstration cells generate enough electricity to run a small fan in low-light conditions – making them ideal for cloudy climates. The dyes can also be incorporated into tinted windows that trap to generate electricity.

He says the green solar cells are more environmentally friendly than silicon-based cells as they are made from titanium dioxide – a plentiful, renewable and non-toxic white mineral obtained from New Zealand’s black sand. Titanium dioxide is already used in consumer products such as toothpaste, white paints and cosmetics.

”The refining of pure silicon, although a very abundant mineral, is energy-hungry and very expensive. And whereas silicon cells need direct sunlight to operate efficiently, these cells will work efficiently in low diffuse light conditions,” Dr Campbell says.

“The expected cost is one 10th of the price of a silicon-based solar panel, making them more attractive and accessible to home-owners.”

I’m going to make a prediction based not on economic modeling and data-crunching, but on 42 years of observing humans at work and more than a decade as a business and policy journalist: solar power is going to play a much larger role and much sooner than the UMASS-Amherst report predicts, and it will happen largely because innovators and entrepreneurs will make it happen.