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
Pumped storage is actually only effective at two or three locations nationally.
Good in theory - doesn’t work in th ereal world mountains and machinery and EPA.
This is what gets me about discussions on energy supply. Someone invariably suggests "renewables" as the answer, or at least part of the answer, to meeting energy supply. But look at the numbers, you're talking about one-fifth, or, at best, a little less than a third of our needs. All this time and effort spent on a source that will struggle to be at best a minor component of our overall supply. What about the bigger picture? There's an 800 lb. gorilla in the room (the other 70-80% of demand) that needs attention too. We'll be a darned sight further down the road in answering the question of our energy needs if we focus on meeting the four-fifths demand first, and then maybe later coming back to the question of the remaining one-fifth. Cart before the horse, people.
Yup. I agree, except I think that 20-30% is a substantial overstatement. 10% is a more likely number.
jas3
You looking at energy supplies in terms of their use today...but there has also been a constant increase of efficiency in technogies of various types with reduction of energy needed to power them.
My key point is to the discussion as to how to maintain national vitality and viability should foreign energy supplies suddenly be lost to us....not just to survive but to thrive!
OK, let's look at this question and talk about how to solve it. We can, you know. Let's look at it from the perspective of what we know how to do and what we can do.
What we know how to do and what we can do are two things. First, we can generate copious amounts of clean, economical, emissions-free electricity from nuclear generators. I'm talking current LWR technology, advanced LWR technology, full actinide recycle, fuel reprocessing to capture energy that would otherwise be dumped, breeder reactor technology, a closed fuel cycle as can be accomplished with a system like the Integral Fast Reactor, cogeneration to capture "waste" heat from steam electric plants, the whole smash. That opens the door to things like electric substitution in the transport sector, conventional electric trains, maglev trains, fuel cells, the hydrogen economy, basically everything that can be powered with electricity being so. That means time and effort and cost, but it gets us away from the foreign energy trap.
The second thing we can do is mine coal. Lots of it. Coal when burned as it is can be dirty, but if we have a robust electricity supply, we can use some of that in a massive synfuels program. Making diesel from coal and going with more diesel-powered vehicles can go a long ways towards reducing petroleum imports. Coal-synfuels byproducts can also be used in the petrochemical sector.
I know a lot of people on FR want us to exploit more fully our domestic petroleum resources, but I have to tell you, compared to what foreign reserves there are, ours are pretty minor. Sure, we should use, wisely, what we have, but I'm thinking those materials are quite valuable as feedstock for non-fuel petrochemical industries. I'd rather save them for that. Same with natural gas. Stop burning it in power plants and save it for better-matched end uses, like home heating.
What will it take to get us to this goal? Well, first, it will be to raise up a generation of political leaders who are not afraid to see it like it is and tell it like it is, and tell the business-as-usual, seven-copies-of-enviromental-impact-statement, a$$-kissing bureaucrats to stuff it where the sun don't shine. Likewise the special-interest groups and intervenors and obstructionist environmental wackos. It will take a willingness on the part of the public to spend money in government-private industry partnerships to make this kind of thing happen, exactly what we did in the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program. And it will take a generation of business leaders who will have a vision for the future that goes beyond quarterly profit statements and bonuses for CEOs and another penny on the dividend line for shareholders, companies that aren't afraid to take some risks and put the national welfare ahead of corporatism. Finally, it will take ordinary people to wake up from their American Idol and Dancing With The Stars-induced torpor and get educated and understand what is at stake here. If we get that kind of Average Joe, we just might hack it, if the other side gives us time.
“...if fully exploited to their maximum economic potential, so-called “renewables” will end up supplying somewhere in the range of 20-30% of projected energy demand.”
You don’t see where ‘maximum economic potential’ is the lynchpin of that statement ? Did the studies you refer to take into account a drop in costs of PV by a factor of 10 this early in the game ? The DOE computer model NEMS predicted almost $4K per kw installed costs for residential PV for the 2004 - 2009 time period, and $3K out to 2014, and $1,500 after 2020.
Instead, Nanosolar is talking about panel costs dropping to $300 per kw which would make the total installed cost only $1,500 per kw for residential systems. In 2008 rather than 2020. Which means the NEMS model needs serious revision and residential PV penetration will be much higher than ever forecast.
And no matter how much the cost comes down, you're still going to have the issue of capacity factor. As much as we might wish otherwise, the sun doesn't always shine and when it does it isn't always with the same insolation, especially where I live, which is known for nothing if not it's cloudy days. Right now it is very raw and chilly, with a snow-rain mix that started yesterday and is predicted to last at least another day or two. A PV solar array isn't going to be doing too well on days like these.
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