Some of my favorite listening is to Stanford’s Entrepreneur’s Corner. \u00a0It seems to be guest lecturers to one of Stanford B-school classes, and they’re almost always entrepreneurs who’ve made good, coming back to share their wisdom. \u00a0(The lectures tend to be entertaining, in Guy Kawasaki’s case<\/a>, highly so.)<\/p>\n

One of the recent lectures<\/a> is by a fellow named Bill Gross, who’s founded a large number of companies, but is best known for eSolar and and Idealab. \u00a0How he created Idealab, and turned it into a machine for generating ideas and exploring the interesting ones, while generating profit and not causing people to fear losing their jobs, is fascinating in itself. \u00a0It bespeaks a willingness to think outside the normal managerial box, and a love of play, which is often missing in business. \u00a0I think I’d like working for Bill Gross.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, he then turns to his other project, eSolar. \u00a0Now, Gross doesn’t mention looking for government subsidies, although I haven’t researched how many of the solar farms he’s created benefit from them. \u00a0But he freely admits that right now, on a per-unit-of-power-generated basis, solar cannot compete with oil. \u00a0His thesis is, of course, that growing third-world economies are going to need power, too, and that there just isn’t enough oil or gas to power them through the next century.<\/p>\n

Gross claims that solar is perfectly suited to the task, because unlike fossil fuels and wind, it’s evenly (democratically, in his word) distributed. \u00a0And then he asks the really cool question: how can we apply a law we know: Moore’s Law, the progressive advance in computing power, to solar? \u00a0He’s developed a means of closely coordinating the mirrors in a large solar-concentrator array, using microprocessors that help the mirrors tightly track the sun throughout the day, something that would have been prohibitively expensive only a few years ago. \u00a0It’s very clever, really. \u00a0Using these assumptions, he makes a compelling case for the long-term competitiveness of solar vs. fossil-fuels, without assuming huge runups in the cost of gas.<\/p>\n

But I think his assumptions are flawed. \u00a0First, solar power is\u00a0decidedly not<\/em> uniformly distributed. \u00a0Colorado has 300 days or so of sunlight. \u00a0Germany and Japan, solar leaders by virtue of massive (and since revoked) government subsidy, have far less sunlight. \u00a0It’s not just climate, either. \u00a0The farther you are away from the equator, the less sunlight you have on average, because the sun’s rays come in at a shallower angle during half the year. \u00a0Even during summer, I wouldn’t want to rely on solar in Alaska.<\/p>\n

He also puts his thumb on the scale in a more subtle way. \u00a0Other energy sources can also inventively use computing power, both in their production and their consumption. \u00a0By denying them the benefits of Moore’s Law, he’s giving his idea an advantage it won’t enjoy in the real world.<\/p>\n

He argues that wind has its place, but it’s not a very large place. \u00a0He argues that nuclear can’t provide enough power, and here, I have to say, I find his numbers unconvincing. \u00a0(He maintains that long lead times and the expenses involved in making nuclear safe limit the number of plants you can create. \u00a0But demand will make supply profitable, and you can finish as many as you can start.) \u00a0So while he’s willing to live with a suite of energy sources, he really believes in solar.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I think he’s built too many assumptions into that belief.
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