Google is pulling out of solar thermal technology to concentrate on its Internet business. And the implications seem to favor the future of solar PV. Having made substantial investments in concentrated solar power, they are now handing over their initiative to bring down the cost of renewable energy, or Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE
“So we’ve published our results to help others in the field continue to advance the state of power tower technology, and we’ve closed our efforts.”
The good news is that Google apparently feels that the future lies with solar photovoltaics. “Power tower technology has come a long way, too,” says Google on their RE>C research results page here. “But the installed cost of solar photovoltaic technology has declined dramatically over the past few years, making solar photovoltaic technology a compelling choice for consumers,” they concluded.
This could be interpreted as an acknowledgement that the future will belong to solar PV development and research and that solar photovoltaics will be the more competitive solar energy technology.
“We will continue our work to generate cleaner, more efficient energy—including our on-campus efforts, procuring renewable energy for our data centers, making our data centers even more efficient and investing more than $850 million in renewable energy technologies,” said Hölzle.
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Google Turns Out The Lights on Solar Thermal Energy Play
Google Ends Renewable Energy Research Program