>>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.
This is really cool, and I hope it all happens quick and production ramps up well beyond those numbers. But let’s offer some numbers to see what we’re up against.
30 years ago, I worked a few quarters as an engineering co-op student in the power generation industry. The coal plant I worked at had 2 units rated at 800 MW and two at 880MW, or an overall plant capacity of >3.3 GW. That’s three orders of magnitude bigger than that European plant, and around 8 times the annual output of this nano-solar manufacturing plant. And the coal plant can run in the dark, and has full output even on a cloudy day, so it’s MWH production will be much higher than an equivalent installed base of solar cells.
And this was but a single (albeit quite large) conventional generating plant.
Like I said, I hope this nano-solar tech is cheap, works out technically and economically, and completely replaces coal plants. But there’s a *long* way to go.
The Miller steam plant in Alabama is a 4 gigawatt facility. It can do that 24x7. How much physical space is required for this technology to replace just this single facility?