Here's a slide show.
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
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Down in Florida and elsewhere, people in retirement communities keep electric golf carts to get around and go to the stores. Having a solar panel on the roof of the cart to keep it charged for these short intermittent trips would mean these vehicles could be entirely solar powered
Looks like great stuff. Too bad it is privately held and you can’t buy stock in the company.
If it truly works, they will be under such pressure to grow that they will have to raise money to keep up with the demand.
That'll change before long.
This has potential to be a seriously revolutionary technology. Houses, schools, even vehicles could run from this -- and they will, since it's 1/3rd the cost of coal.
They already have some huge pockets behind them, like Google's founders. Although I am sure an IPO could raise some serious cash.
Cool stuff but that is still 3x the normal retail rate.
New power technology 30 cents a watt
independence from foriegn oil-—priceless!
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Cost has always been one of solar’s biggest problems.
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And what other problem with solar power is there besides cost? Cost is the ONLY problem.
In the entire history of solar power, I am not aware of a single technology that had a cost below the market cost of other power sources but that had other issues that caused the market to reject it.
The biggest challenge would be the size of the panel; a panel that would charge a golf cart in less than a week would be too big to mount on it. A panel covering the roof of an average house powering a charging station would probably charge it in a day’s time. A far more practical application would be for mobile electronic devices.
You're confusing price per watt and price per kilowatt hour.
The quoted price is $0.30 / watt. That means that it would have to run for 3000 hours to have an average price of $0.10 / kilowatt hour. To get 3000 hours you need 250 12-hour days of sunlight. You might not get that the first year, but even if it has a two year payoff I would be covering my roof with them.
There will be some additional costs for energy storage so you can turn on a light bulb at night and use power at a higher surge rate than the sun is providing.
Cool stuff.
They already DO "have panels on the market". They've been shipping test lots out to potential customers for a while now. This article is only referring to their "full-scale" production plant--they've had pilot and proto-scale production lines up and running for quite a while. I don't know about "reasonable $/Watt", as I've seen no direct pricing info. However, all the articles on their product quote prices of less than 1$/watt.
The figure I saw for a solar/wind installation for a home was roughly $10/watt which included the regulator and battery bank. This material would probably reduce that by a couple of dollars per watt and in some regions could out-compete wind turbines. In northern regions wind is still needed in the mix due to the reduced daylight.
Current retail cost for residential electricity if between 7 cents and 16 cents per kWh.
There is no practical way to compare these two numbers. Solar is spotty in its current draw verses an always on power plant.
Not so simple. A 747 cannot get its power from a solar cell. If we really wanted to be independent from foreign oil, we fully have the resources to do just that: the US has twice has much in hydrocarbons in the form of coal and oil shales as OPEC has in the form of crude oil. We could convert other organic waste materials such as sewage sludge. At this very moment, ConAgra Foods is converting the waste from processing Butterball turkeys into a marketable liquid biodiesel. Lastly, we have placed fully 85% of our continental shelf out of bounds from drilling for oil.
see:OSD Clean Fuels Initiative (US DOD PDF presentation):
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/femp/energy_expo/2005/pdfs/t_s4c.pdf
Anything Into Oil from DISCOVER Magazine:
http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/anything-oil
The other problem is geometry. The Sun will deliver 1.3 kW per square metre at noon, so at the efficiency level of today's technology (~15% IIRC) and the fact that the peak power is only collected for a few hours per day, a roof-sized panel will not be enough to power the home on which it is installed. That being said, if the cost can be brought down enough then it would pay for itself in savings on hydro bills and as a bonus it would reduce the load on the grid and potentially make the grid more resilient if the utility buys surplus power.
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