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
Interesting points, thank you. But I don’t see this kind of thing being used as baseload supply. If a utility can’t manage having a million grid-tied inverters supply intermittent trickles, then that plan will be shut down quickly.
It seems like useful applications for distributed usage — most especially charging spare, removable electric car batteries which I think is what we’ll start seeing.
There’s an interesting recent story of a guy who just got 8-figure funding for a system of battery swap stations where people could swap out their car batteries like you’d swap a propane tank. Pull into it, the attendant takes 3 minutes to swap you out, and you’re good for another 150 miles or whatnot.
Michigan gets 80% of the insolation that southern state like Florida get. So you’d need more panels — maybe 800 square feet compared to the 650 someone in Florida would need to supply all their electric needs. It all depends on how much stuff you are running off electric, though. Florida uses much more electricity for Air Conditioning than Michigan does. Of course, if Michigan used electric heaters, then that would use more than a/c.
Check your electric bill to see how much you use. 800sf of panels would get you an average of 1000kwh per month in Michigan.
“If you have electricity, you can make fuels for use in jet engines. More expensive than pumping it out of the ground, but you can do it. The less expensive the electricity is, the more feasible synthetic fuels become.”
Yup. During WW2, half of Germany’s oil production was from COAL -—> synthetic OIL. Takes allot of energy.
Current US COAL reserves are estimated to supply the country with 1,000 years of synthetic OIL.
Let you know when I can buy one and test it out. Then and only then ...
There has been a lot of pie in the sky inventions, someone is bound to do it sooner or later.
One more issue, where do the batteries come from where we store the energy?
“There’s an interesting recent story of a guy who just got 8-figure funding for a system of battery swap stations where people could swap out their car batteries like you’d swap a propane tank. Pull into it, the attendant takes 3 minutes to swap you out, and you’re good for another 150 miles or whatnot.”
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Someone stole my idea. bummer.
“There’s an interesting recent story of a guy who just got 8-figure funding for a system of battery swap stations where people could swap out their car batteries like you’d swap a propane tank. Pull into it, the attendant takes 3 minutes to swap you out, and you’re good for another 150 miles or whatnot.”
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This is an excellent idea. The problem with electric cars is the battery, and the problem with batteries is it takes forever to recharge one. Someone on a long distance trip is going to put up with sitting at a gas station for 15-30 minutes every 60 miles.
This idea requires a buttload more nuclear power plants to be built. Also, a large continuously variable excise tax on gasoline and diesel, just in case OPEC gets any funny ideas about increasing production.
Ready to take the big step? Didn’t think so. NEXT!
Modeling the US power grid is a challenge even for very learned people with state of the art software and real-time data resources. Indeed, the difficulties in this problem are exactly why a portion of the existing grid fails from time to time. In real life terms, a million KW of public supply and demand is not just 1 KW of supply and demand scaled up.
I don’t think we get even 100 days of sunshine here.
That's how the grid works now. It consists of several generating stations connected together with users and controlled by the grid operator, matching supply with load. The main reason so many powerplants on both sides of the border were knocked offline in '03 was because they were all tripped off by a power surge in Ohio.
Trivia: I've heard that the northeast grid is the largest single machine in the world. Every generator connected to it spins at almost exactly the same speed and phase.
“since oil is fungible, any amount we don’t buy will simply lower the price others pay, by reducing demand. If we stop using imported oil for transportation, and shift to using some substitute at twice, or three times the cost, we have hurt no one but ourselves.”
Actually, it will lower the price we pay for traditional crude oil by reducing demand as you say. Whether it would hurt or not would depend on the exact effect of the reduction in demand.
Suppose that we could produce 1/4 of our oil needs synthetically, and that 4M bpd reduction in demand was enough to drop the price of crude from $100/bbl to $50/bbl. The 3/4 of our demand that was still supplied by crude would cost us 37.5% of our old total cost for crude. The synthetic could cost $250/bbl and our total cost would be the same as it was originally.
Other customers would benefit more than we would because they wouldn’t be buying the expensive synthetic but still getting the lower price for crude. It might be worth it from a security standpoint to reduce the flow of money into OPEC countries.
One big application I can see is in air conditioning. A roof-full of this stuff could probably run a decent A/C unit, plus perhaps charge batteries for night-time A/C use. Say so-long to those "power emergencies" that seem to accompany every heat wave these days....
“Martin went on to argue that Eberspacher’s departure wasn’t that big a deal, a point upon which we apparently disagree.”
It would depend on how broad the Nanosolar patents are. Nanosolar may have trouble making improvements, but they do own the existing process and can run with it. Applied Materials has to develop something that is more efficient and/or lower cost, defend itself against obvious claims of patent infringement, and overcome not being first to market.
Not necessarily. A utility company may well save money by subsidizing consumers' solar cells, as opposed to having to build a new, large coal plant.
If, instead, we take Hazwaste's approach (use the grid as a battery for when there's no sun), then the flow is still one-way, but with a lower baseline demand.
bump
OK, we'll call you then.
We need more nukes for this and more. But a widely distributed storage system in the form of millions of car batteries is a beautiful thing for wind energy and other renewables. Turbines spinning at night have very limited market for the power today, but once people are charging cars overnight that equation changes drastically, and makes the economies of wind energy look very very good indeed.
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