Solar power may yet go together with electric dreams
埃隆•马斯克的太阳能之梦
广州能源翻译公司：这位硅谷创业明星所构想的太阳能电动汽车的梦想，并非遥不可及，但仍然需要一些必要的扶持才能变为现实。
It is a nice dream. You catch the sun’s rays in photovoltaic panels on the roof. The resulting electricity is fed down to a large battery hanging on the wall in the garage. You plug your electric car in overnight and charge it for the next day’s commute.
这是一个美好的梦想：你可以利用屋顶的光伏电池板吸收太阳光，将产生的电能输入挂在车库墙上的大号电池中；你把你的电动汽车插上充一晚上电，为第二天的通勤做好准备。广州能源翻译公司。
This is the post-carbon future, as imagined by electric car and space entrepreneur Elon Musk. Last week he tried to hasten it into existence, with a proposal by his battery and electric carmaker Tesla Motors to buy solar power company SolarCity, a company of which he is also chairman.
这正是电动汽车及太空创业家埃隆•马斯克(Elon Musk)所构想的后碳碳氢能源时代的未来。不久前，为加速实现这一目标，他提议由自己旗下的电池及电动汽车制造商特斯拉汽车(Tesla Motors)收购太阳能发电公司SolarCity，后者也由马斯克任董事长。
There is a question of whether it makes sense to combine all these things in one company. Wall Street certainly is not convinced. But the timing of this proposed deal still highlights how close these sustainable energy technologies are to reaching the mass market. Mr Musk is probably getting ahead of himself but his vision is not far-fetched — provided government does not withdraw support for sustainable energy technologies too soon.
问题在于将所有这些项目集合到一家公司是否合理。华尔街无疑没有被说服。但这笔拟议交易提出的时机仍凸显出，这些可持续能源技术距离触摸到大众市场已经多么近。马斯克或许有些操之过急，但他所构想的前景并非遥不可及——如果政府不过早停止对可持续能源技术的支持的话。广州能源翻译公司。
The technologies behind Mr Musk’s dream have made steady progress for years. Batteries and solar panels do not benefit from Moore’s Law, which has brought a doubling of efficiency in semiconductors every 18 months or so. Instead, there has been a more gradual decline in the cost curve of both technologies, one that brings improvements of about 5-7 per cent a year.
支撑马斯克梦想的技术多年来取得了稳步进展。电池和太阳能电池板没有出现摩尔定律(Moore's Law)所描述的那种进展，符合这一定律的集成电路每18个月左右性能即提升一倍。而电池和太阳能电池板的成本曲线下降更加平缓，带动性能每年提升约5%至7%。
Periodic hopes for technology breakthroughs have been disappointed. After the 2008 financial crisis, for instance, the Obama administration pumped billions of dollars of stimulus money into trying to create an advanced battery industry in the US.
人们一次次对技术突破抱以希望，这希望又一次次破灭。例如，2008年金融危机后，奥巴马政府投入了数十亿美元的刺激资金，试图在美国打造先进的电池产业。广州能源翻译公司。
The resulting companies were more like chemistry experiments. They might have come up with demonstrations in the lab but could not scale up in production. That has left slower-advancing lithium-ion as the default technology, particularly where lightweight batteries are needed in things like consumer electronics and transport.
但由此建立的企业更像是化学实验。他们或许拿出了可在实验室里演示的产品，但无法实现规模化生产。这使得进步缓慢的锂离子电池成为默认技术，特别是在需要轻量化电池的消费类电子产品和电动汽车领域。
Solar power has been through much the same cycle. The prospect of a step-change reduction in the cost per watt of electricity generated was one of the hopes that fed Silicon Valley’s “greentech” boom a decade ago.
太阳能发电也经历了差不多相同的周期。每瓦特发电成本可能实现跨越式降低，曾是十年前推动硅谷“绿色科技”繁荣的希望之一。广州能源翻译公司。
Boom turned to bust, and the new thin-film solar technologies turned out to be no match for the prevailing technology of the day, crystalline silicon. Instead, Chinese manufacturers brought prices down through massive investment in large-scale production. This may not have been good for the balance of trade but has helped make solar power affordable to many homeowners.
后来繁荣破灭，人们发现新的薄膜太阳能发电技术其实无法媲美当今主流的晶体硅技术。中国制造商通过大规模投资规模化生产降低了价格。这对贸易平衡或许并非好事，但使许多业主可以负担得起利用太阳能发电。
To take the next step, Mr Musk thinks he can go one better in both batteries and solar power with what are largely incremental advances.
马斯克认为，下一步更好的办法是，同时利用电池和太阳能发电方面基本上为渐进式的技术进步。
Silevo, a panel maker bought by SolarCity, produces hybrid products that layer some thin-film elements into crystalline silicon panels. The company will end up manufacturing panels producing “tens of gigawatt hours a year” of power, according to Mr Musk — quite an ambition considering the US is still not expected to reach even 10 Gwh this year.
被SolarCity收购的太阳能电池板制造商赛昂电力(Silevo)，主要生产薄膜材料与晶体硅电池板相结合的混合太阳能电池。马斯克表示，该公司将来制造的电池板可以达到“每年数十吉瓦时”的发电量。这是一个相当有雄心的目标，考虑到预计美国今年的太阳能发电量仍达不到10吉瓦时。广州能源翻译公司。
In batteries, Tesla is getting close to completing a large factory in Nevada that will double the world’s production of lithium-ion cells using technology from Panasonic.
电池方面，特斯拉在内华达州建设的一座大型工厂已接近完工，利用松下(Panasonic)的技术，该工厂将把全球锂电池产量提升一倍。
The plan is the same in both cases: find even a small edge in the mass technology of the day, scale up fast and ride the cost curve down towards world domination.
两方面的计划是一致的：在当前的主流技术中找到即使很小的技术优势，快速扩大规模，压低成本曲线，从而实现世界性主导。
But whether this formula will be enough to usher in a sustainable energy economy is in the hands of governments. Subsidies are still needed, whether of the direct or indirect sort. Mr Musk has shown himself an astute user of government support: Silevo has been promised $225m of state backing to build a plant in New York, while Tesla itself was a beneficiary of a Department of Energy loan guarantee.
但是，这个方式能否开创可持续性的能源经济取决于政府。这一行业仍然需要直接或间接的补贴。事实证明，马斯克很会利用政府支持：赛昂电力已获承诺，将得到政府2.25亿美元支持在纽约州建设一家工厂，而特斯拉自身也是美国能源部(Department of Energy)一项贷款保证的受益者。广州能源翻译公司。
Buyers of solar panels and electric cars have been reliant on government largesse, though it is questionable how long that will last. Tesla buyers in the US, for instance, will soon lose the tax credit for electric cars. And solar power faces an uncertain future, with a federal tax credit due to be phased out by 2021 and some US states starting to shift part of the fixed costs of their traditional electric utilities on to solar customers.
太阳能电池板以及电动汽车的买家一直依赖政府的慷慨补贴，尽管补贴政策能持续多久还是个问题。例如，美国的特斯拉买家将很快将不再享受电动汽车税收抵免。太阳能发电也面临不确定的未来，联邦税收抵免将在2021年年底之前逐步取消，一些州开始将传统电力公司的部分固定成本转嫁到太阳能用户身上。
There are other hindrances. Silevo’s advanced panels, made in China, are blocked by US anti-dumping laws. The company is appealing against that exclusion, though domestic manufacturing could eventually get around the problem.
还有一些其他障碍。美国反倾销法使得赛昂电力在中国生产的高效光伏电池板无法进入美国市场。该公司正在对这种情况进行上诉，尽管转移到美国国内制造最终可以绕过这个问题。
The sunshine-to-electric car dream is not far-fetched. But it still needs some timely assistance to become a reality.
太阳能电动汽车的梦想并非遥不可及，但仍需一些及时的扶持才能变为现实。
