National critical technologies report.

  • United States. Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Date:
1995
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: National critical technologies report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    however, and it is possible that the U.S. will gain a significant leadership position in the coming years. Japan has been active in the development of engines (one of the critical components) for dish/engine systems but lags the U.S. and Europe slightly on the total system. Developments in power towers have taken a different technology focus in the U.S. and Europe. Europe is emphasizing systems using air as the working fluid, while U.S. systems are designed using molten salt as the working fluid. A new U.S. development applying the molten- salt technology with natural gas hybrid systems using combined cycles has the potential to reduce solar energy costs by over 50 percent. The United States has a clear technology lead on the concept and has both domestic and international patents pending. In photovoltaics, Europe is now in a strong position, principally due to the purchase of two major U.S. photovoltaic companies by multinational companies headquartered in Germany. In 1992, Siemens Solar USA purchased ARCO Solar, the world's largest photovoltaic manufacturer. Siemens Solar produces crystalline silicon products and is developing a next-generation thin-film technology. In 1994, Mobil Solar was purchased by a German group and renamed ASE Americas Inc. Mobil Solar had a twenty-year history of developing a crystalline silicon technology with good performance and potentially low cost. The remaining U.S. photovoltaic companies are still strong ~ in crystalline silicon technologies and especially strong in thin-film photovoltaic — technologies, considered to be the most promising photovoltaic technology. The — United States leads in concentrator technologies, but this market is small and : confined to areas with extremely high solar resources. Japan continues to slightly lag the United States in photovoltaic technologies. Japan remains the leading producer of thin film photovoltaic cells used in consumer products such as solar cell calculators but their technical strengths in crystalline silicon technologies, which make up 96 percent of the world's photovoltaic products, continues to lag behind that of the United States. Japan also lags the United States in photovoltaic concentrator technologies, although the sales of this : technology are still negligible. Europe is slightly ahead of the United States in wind turbine technology, while Japanese researchers, with more modest R&D programs, lag behind the world leaders in innovative turbine designs. The effort to reduce the cost of wind turbines in the United States led most government-funded research and turbine developments toward light-weight, flexible rotors, such as two-bladed teetered rotors, developed commercially by four U.S. companies in the early 1980s (Boeing, Westinghouse, ESI, and Carter Wind Turbines). Europeans pursued a . more mature, low-speed, heavy, structurally inefficient, three-bladed-rotor technology. Today, most European turbine manufacturers are developing light- weight, structurally efficient, three-bladed rotors in intermediate size ranges. For the larger sizes (500 kW and greater), there is a strong trend toward two-bladed- rotor technology. Because of the strong market for wind turbines in Europe and