2 Role of We conceive SERI as having two roles in the exploitation of solar energy. Both require imagination and initiative. One is supportive, the other contributive. The two are necessary, desirable, and mutually reinforcing in an institution of the sort we propose. In its supportive role, SERI should 1. Become a leading center of expertise on the technology and economics of all methods of utilizing solar energy for the production of energy and the displacement of other energy sources. 2. Categorize for itself (and thus for ERDA and the nation) through detailed analysis those recognized solar-energy technologies that tions. (a) Have the greatest immediate commercial potential; (b) Are promising but need further research to exploit; (c) Appear promising but need further research to evaluate; (d) Are of minor or no importance because of fundamental physical or economic limita 3. Assess solar-energy research, development, and demonstration programs as to their quality, importance, and probability of success. 4. Serve as the key organization for defining a set of ambient environments to be used as standards for performance and design evaluation. This role includes the specification of characteristics for direct and diffuse sunlight, wind spectra, and ocean currents, for various regions in the United States. 5. Provide for its own use and for use by industry, universities, and other organizations essential facilities for experiment, simulation, testing, evaluation, and data analysis. 6. Identify the need for and develop new disciplines-for example, microbiological engineering in the photoproduction of fuels or thermochemical engineering for production of hydrogen. 7. Conduct symposia, workshops, and other technology-transfer activities to aid the utilization of solar energy. 8. Analyze incentives for communities and industry that will make the introduction of solar energy more attractive when it is economically sound. 6 ESTABLISHMENT OF A SOLAR ENERGY RESEARCH INSTITUTE To perform this supportive role effectively, SERI would need a core of able scientists, engineers, economists, and systems analysts. In Chapter 3 we discuss the internal structure of SERI and conclude that a dual organization is desirable (see page 10) with about 70 percent of the staff working in projects at any time and 30 percent in disciplinary departments (with transfer back and forth, so that a scientist or engineer might spend on the average 3 years in a project followed by one year in his disciplinary department). Some of these (temporarily) nonproject personnel would work in the analysis department. These individuals in various disciplinary groups, while they are rotated out of projects, can help in an important way to assure and demonstrate the soundness of the assessment and facilitative roles of SERI if 1. There is an in-house R & D program of sufficient quality and size to produce significant contributions to the technology of solar-energy utilization; 2. There is stable funding to assure the continuity of meritorious research-most of the funds should be discretionary, for allocation by the Director after discussion with ERDA and various advisory groups; 3. The success or failure of the research, development, and assessment program as defined by SERI itself provides a test of the realism of SERI planning. Thus, the supportive function of SERI is associated also with a contributive role, and in so participating SERI can provide a close coupling with policy formulation and a pace difficult or impossible to achieve solely by contracting individual research projects from ERDA headquarters. In this role, SERI should 1. Develop system models including geophysical, environmental, and ecological factors necessary for assessment of performance and economics of candidate systems. These models must include not only the particular solar-energy approach under consideration but also must permit consideration of alternative sources and needs for energy. For example, the economics of solar electrical power produced from photovoltaic systems using concentrators, where the waste heat may also be of value, should take into account the alternative of total-energy fossil-fuel packages (e.g., turbine-electric or diesel-electric generators, with waste-heat recovery), which could be available in the same time period. Solar-energy assessments cannot be performed responsibly without considering a whole environment of conventional and alternative energy sources and the impact of partial energy displacement by solar systems on the economics of the backup energy supplies necessary to maintain reliable service. 2. Carry on engineering and development programs to evaluate and optimize performance-tocost ratio of model systems using known techniques (or exploiting resources for which no practicable techniques have yet been defined). For example, the potential energy source represented by the difference of salinity between river water and seawater into which it flows is as yet without practical means of exploitation. 3. Address closely related questions such as energy storage, energy conversion, power conditioning (regulation, transformation, and the like), transmission, safety, and reliability needed to make solar-energy utilization practical and economical. Because of the intermittent nature of solar energy (in most approaches to solar-energy utilization) and the high capital cost, the problems and promise of energy storage and transmission loom larger than for other sources. Thus, SERI should have a major role in analysis, research, and development of storage and transmission techniques. 4. Have a major part in the evaluation of demonstration projects funded by ERDA even though these are not managed by SERI. In this report, in general, "demonstration" is used in Role of SERI 7 connection with a trial involving the ultimate user in a substantial way. Thus, the tying-in to a utility grid of a central solar-thermal electric generating plant, with the primary purpose of demonstrating to other utilities the suitability of such a tie, would be a "demonstration" and would normally not be contracted to SERI. Similarly, the demonstration of solar heating and cooling of thousands of houses, as an intermediate step in commercialization of the technique, would not be done by SERI. On the other hand, installation of advanced solar heating and cooling systems in a few houses with a view to demonstrating technical feasibility (and verifying SERI's own analytical and assessment techniques) certainly would fall well within SERI's charter. But even for multimillion-dollar user demonstration programs, SERI can play an important part. It can analyze various demonstration options. It should be involved in the "design of the experiment," assessing the conclusions that might be drawn from information that might become available in the course of the demonstration. It could help to design the instrumentation and the format for evaluation of data. Finally, it could provide additional instrumentation and analysis, taking advantage for its own purposes of the ERDA-sponsored demonstration facility. 5. Perform basic research to understand how to characterize and measure the spatial and temporal variations of direct and indirect solar resources. Since field measurements are expensive, some of the SERI activity should be devoted to the invention and demonstration of new instruments and measuring techniques to reduce the cost of those measurements that are made. Other activity is necessary to develop and validate theoretical models that would reduce the number of measurements required to characterize a resource in time and space and will help to forecast future availability of resources in various regions of the world. Far from being the routine storage of measurements in a solar-resource data bank, resource characterization requires an iterative and living interaction among theoretical modelers, instrumentation experts, and solar-energy technologists. 6. Conduct basic and exploratory research in new processes for harnessing solar energy. 7. Identify for ERDA basic research needs for advancing the solar-energy programs and, if possible, identify possible workers in universities, industry, or government laboratories. 8. Do research aimed at improving the performance or reducing the cost of components needed in current systems for utilizing solar energy. 9. Promptly report and disseminate for various audiences all significant results of SERI work. Some SERI work would be published in standard scientific journals. These results might include, for example, a paper dealing with the stabilization of some enzymes or one on the theory of turbulence. Other publications might deal with human response to various combinations of temperature, humidity, and air circulation velocity in order to allow the choice of the least expensive ways to provide reasonable comfort in buildings. These latter data would be most valuable in the form of charts of standard format to be used by heating-and-ventilating engineers and architects. Another type of publication would have policy implications, for example, an assessment of the status of various approaches to photovoltaic power production. Such reports would be distributed routinely (as desired) to various recipients in ERDA, elsewhere in the Administration, to interested members and committees in Congress, and to selected recipients in industry and from among the general public. 10. Do significant educational work in aiding the effective and economic exploitation of solar energy. Several mechanisms will no doubt be involved: (a) Encourage qualified individuals from industry, universities, and government to be involved at SERI for a year or two in the SERI program; (b) Send SERI scientists and engineers to work for a year or two in laboratories of ERDA contractors, universities, or other government laboratories to foster communication and technology transfer: 8 ESTABLISHMENT OF A SOLAR ENERGY RESEARCH INSTITUTE (c) Provide graduate and postdoctoral research positions to train a corps of personnel in the disciplines and cross-disciplines to be found in a goal-oriented center of expertise like SERI; (d) Help in the definition of training programs for technical schools, as well as the training of utility operators in the control, safety, and maintenance of solar-energy systems; (e) Furnish factual material for popular articles; (f) Provide a bibliography of those solar-energy-related materials that have proved useful to SERI staff; (g) Work as an informed user, with managers of technical data banks, including the Solar Energy Data Bank, to make such data dissemination more useful to all. In making a major contribution to the ERDA solar-energy program within limited SERI resources, SERI must be able to do work as needed, through the whole range from basic research to manufacturing research and technology transfer. Not only for SERI, but for mission-oriented agencies in general, and ERDA in particular, logic, efficiency, and long-standing national policy dictate that they do and support basic research relevant to their missions, which otherwise would not be funded to the optimum level by the other instruments of society-NSF, industry, and the like. 65-506 76-7 3 Internal Structure of SERI The internal structure of SERI should enable it best to perform the tasks assigned in Chapter 2. SERI should be a dynamic, competent laboratory, whose capabilities change with the changing needs and opportunities in solar energy, rather than one rigidly confined to its initial task. Furthermore, SERI as now conceived may not be needed indefinitely. Its role should be reviewed periodically; perhaps in 20 years or so it should be assigned a new mission in keeping with such capabilities. As we have noted, SERI's role would go beyond that normal for a mission-oriented research laboratory, in that it has responsibilities of primary importance in policy-oriented analysis, technology transfer to industry, and education in the solar-energy field. Furthermore, certain activities of SERI are perforce constrained to special (and variable) geographical locations. Since the environment, needs, opportunities, and technology of solar energy are in flux, SERI analytical personnel must be in intimate contact with research and development, if they are to take due account of prospective as well as conventional technology. To these unusual aspects of SERI must be added the requirement that its personnel remain competent, involved, and responsive to change. Finally, SERI must be managed in such a way that it does not compete with individuals or groups in industry, universities, or other research institutions, in those areas where the latter can do an equally good job. We conclude that these requirements can best be met by a single Solar Energy Research Institute with a number of relatively small field stations under its direct management. Multiple centers either would have to be specialized in individual areas of interest in solar energy or they would be multiproject centers to some extent overlapping one another. We reject the first alternative of permanent specialized multiple research centers because we believe that the evolution of the solar-energy field will require frequent redeployment of research resources. This can be most readily achieved if the resources are not divided into rather fixed packets so that a decision to phase down or abandon one line threatens the continued existence of a specialized research institute. Furthermore, although it is easy enough to establish a specialized center sufficiently large to sustain a single project team, the availability of specialized personnel, of readily deployable additional resources, and of stimulative job rotation is better the larger the institute. |