Posted on 11/19/2007 6:11:05 AM PST by Uncledave
The New Dawn of Solar
Imagine a solar panel without the panel. Just a coating, thin as a layer of paint, that takes light and converts it to electricity. From there, you can picture roof shingles with solar cells built inside and window coatings that seem to suck power from the air. Consider solar-powered buildings stretching not just across sunny Southern California, but through China and India and Kenya as well, because even in those countries, going solar will be cheaper than burning coal. That’s the promise of thin-film solar cells: solar power that’s ubiquitous because it’s cheap. The basic technology has been around for decades, but this year, Silicon Valley–based Nanosolar created the manufacturing technology that could make that promise a reality.
The company produces its PowerSheet solar cells with printing-press-style machines that set down a layer of solar-absorbing nano-ink onto metal sheets as thin as aluminum foil, so the panels can be made for about a tenth of what current panels cost and at a rate of several hundred feet per minute. With backing from Google’s founders and $20 million from the U.S. Department of Energy, Nanosolar’s first commercial cells rolled off the presses this year.
Cost has always been one of solar’s biggest problems. Traditional solar cells require silicon, and silicon is an expensive commodity (exacerbated currently by a global silicon shortage). What’s more, says Peter Harrop, chairman of electronics consulting firm IDTechEx, “it has to be put on glass, so it’s heavy, dangerous, expensive to ship and expensive to install because it has to be mounted.” And up to 70 percent of the silicon gets wasted in the manufacturing process. That means even the cheapest solar panels cost about $3 per watt of energy they go on to produce. To compete with coal, that figure has to shrink to just $1 per watt.
Nanosolar’s cells use no silicon, and the company’s manufacturing process allows it to create cells that are as efficient as most commercial cells for as little as 30 cents a watt. “You’re talking about printing rolls of the stuff—printing it on the roofs of 18-wheeler trailers, printing it on garages, printing it wherever you want it,” says Dan Kammen, founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. “It really is quite a big deal in terms of altering the way we think about solar and in inherently altering the economics of solar.”
In San Jose, Nanosolar has built what will soon be the world’s largest solar-panel manufacturing facility. CEO Martin Roscheisen claims that once full production starts early next year, it will create 430 megawatts’ worth of solar cells a year—more than the combined total of every other solar plant in the U.S. The first 100,000 cells will be shipped to Europe, where a consortium will be building a 1.4-megawatt power plant next year.
Right now, the biggest question for Nanosolar is not if its products can work, but rather if it can make enough of them. California, for instance, recently launched the Million Solar Roofs initiative, which will provide tax breaks and rebates to encourage the installation of 100,000 solar roofs per year, every year, for 10 consecutive years (the state currently has 30,000 solar roofs). The company is ready for the solar boom. “Most important,” Harrop says, “Nanosolar is putting down factories instead of blathering to the press and doing endless experiments. These guys are getting on with it, and that is impressive.” nanosolar.com —MICHAEL MOYER
Rainfall and snowfall, clouds, etc + latitude of course - also drive insolation values.
My story is comparable.
In my employment almost every day I am working with radiation sources (some in the kilocurie range), and generating millions of watts of nuclear energy. But I am able to do that work safely because I have training and education in the relevant fields of study. I have going on 30 years of experience. I can do those things because I understand them with an in-depth knowledge that allows me to work safely with the technology. Not everyone does. I guess the one thing I have gained from being relatively educated is an appreciation for how much I don't know, and the best ways to manage my lack of knowledge when it comes to practical problems. And not everyone can work with high current circuits, or make safe connections to the grid, or deal with explosive gases. I know I can't, so I don't even try. Better to pay people who know.
Pocatello just successfully attracted the construction of a new manufacturer of polysilicon materials to support their photo voltaic operations. The company is Hoku. The factory is under construction now.
(I prefer to keep the kcuries behind the primary containment! HP steam and 180 tons of rotating metal at 1800 rpm is threat enough.)
I’ve successfully left Pocatello and Idaho Falls many years ago. Good luck. 8<)
I wouldn’t assume this is equipment that most would undertake installing themselves. Heck, most people call for a handyman for even the most minor stuff.
In most homes you’ll find things like oil tanks filled with a couple hundred gallons of diesel, gas or oil-fired furnaces blasting away, wood stoves, plenty of electrical hazards — the vast majority of people manage OK. And then some do stupid things.
I was last living in Candor and have worked in the “City of Evil” as an Rn before my last job at Wilson Memorial in JC. I moved down here to Va., in 2003!
Well i would like to see more Nuke plants but even if the Enviro’s were all beamed back to their mother ships and a crash program of building new plants instituted, I would be an old man before the full benefits of the plants come on line. I would all be for more domestic drilly.
I don’t think the energy needs from all alternatives is going to be “insignificant” as you describe, but certainly won’t make an impact before the next 5 years or so. Part of the coming impacts is the revolution in electrical storage and the development of more efficient technologies that use less energy but run better and do more work for less. Intel’s new cpu chip sets for example come to mind, or my solar calculator that does scientific functions in candlelight! A single new product may not make much difference but many more efficient technolgies will in the aggregate!
But what my main focus has been and maybe I have not communicated it, if the intrinsic worth of energy independence. If we could supply all our own domestic energy needs of all types, even if the price were higher compared with what commodities we currently need to purchase from the outside, would that not be more desirable? I hate paying 3$ a gallon(equivalent ie electric, fuel,ect) to some foreign power out of sheer principle...but I don’t mind it so much paying it to domestic producers who supply jobs to our economy and pay taxes to our government!
I don't know, maybe you get the nail gun fer Christmas!!!!!
I moved to the Pocatello area to get away from the looney politics and overcrowding in California. Given your profession, you are likely happy to not be taking that long bus ride out to the site. Lots of my neighbors do that every day. Have a great Thanksgiving!
“I hate paying 3$ a gallon(equivalent ie electric, fuel,ect) to some foreign power out of sheer principle...”
Trade is not a bad thing. If we want other countries to buy American products, then they need dollars to buy them with. They get those dollars by Americans buying something they have.
A Trade DEFICIT is a bad thing, and oil is currently a huge contributor to that deficit. Trade that is so necessary that you are forced to overlook differences in philosophy, security, human rights, etc. is also a bad thing. That is not ‘free’ trade, since you have become dependent on that trade partner.
I agree that in the current situation we should be energy independent, or at least reduce our imports to the point where we are in balance with what they need to buy from us.
[The only reason I could justify investment in some kind of “off grid” alternative is if I was sincerely concerned that the “grid” was going away.]
Or ... if you really wanted to live a little further off the beaten path. Get a mile away from existing power lines and see how much the utility company wants to charge you to run power to your property.
As solar PV systems come down in price, it will allow people to spread out more without waiting for the grid to expand. For people like me that don’t want to live in tract housing, cheaper PV is key.
In warm climates the highest energy use is during the sunniest part of the day. Energy companies actually pump water from lower lakes to higher lakes at night and generate electricity during the day as the water flows back down through the turbines. Electricity consumers can also sign up for programs that charge less at night.
What this means is that photo-voltaic cells on individual homes and businesses would be connected to the power grid and would supplement the power supply during heavy load periods. If enough of them were used, then the coal-fired and natural gas plants could be throttled down.
If a home had enough cells and the occupants were not at home during the day using electricity, their meters would run backwards.
No storage system is needed.
Depends who you believe. The NREL chart shows Michigan as a 4.0 and Florida as a 5.0, and Atlanta as a 5.0 when even Arizona desert is only a 6.5.
The NREL chart says it takes into account “cloud cover, aerosol optical depth, precipitable water vapor, albedo, atmospheric pressure and ozone.”
So 80% Michigan vs. Florida appears correct.
“Alternatives will not make an impact at all. They will never be more than 10% of US energy consumption unless we decide to cover an area the size of Kansas with solar panels and decide we want to pay 10 times the current rate for electricity from coal”
You sound like luddites who said we would never fly or that we could never get a train to go faster than 30 miles per hour or that we could never break the sound barrier!
That’s all I was trying to get at...get our energy needs balanced to a point that we don’t threaten to fall prey as a nation to foreign black-mail...that we could survive as a viable nation even if some dhimmitude loving foreign power says to us...convert or no oil!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.