It melts, becomes liquid, at approx. 86ºF
Posted on 06/24/2006 11:19:37 AM PDT by Abathar
A well-financed California startup is promising to build a solar-cell factory that could finally make solar power affordable.
This week, Nanosolar, a startup in Palo Alto, CA, announced plans to build a production facility with the capacity to make enough solar cells annually to generate 430 megawatts. This output would represent a substantial portion of the worldwide production of solar energy.
According to Nanosolar's CEO Martin Roscheisen, the company will be able to produce solar cells much less expensively than is done with existing photovoltaics because its new method allows for the mass-production of the devices. In fact, maintains Roscheisen, the company's technology will eventually make solar power cost-competitive with electricity on the power grid.
Nanosolar also announced this week more than $100 million in funding from various sources, including venture firms and government grants. The company was founded in 2001 and first received seed money in 2003 from Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Experts say Nanosolar’s ambitious plans for such a large factory are surprising. "It's an extraordinary number,” says Ken Zweibel, who heads up thin-film research at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. Most groups building new solar technologies “add maybe 25 or 50 megawatts," he says. "The biggest numbers are closer to 100. So it's a huge number, and it's a huge number in a new technology, so it's doubly unusual. All the [photovoltaics] in the world is 1,700 megawatts."
Today, the lion's share of solar cells are based on crystalline silicon, which is about three to five times too costly to compete with grid electricity, Zweibel says.
Nanosolar's technology involves a thin film of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium (CIGS) that absorbs sunlight and converts it into electricity. The basic technology has been around for decades, but it has proven difficult to produce it reliably and cheaply. Nanosolar has developed a way to make these cells using a printing technology similar to the kind used to print newspapers, rather than expensive vacuum-based methods.
Although the company expects to start selling solar cells next year, ramping up to full production will take more time. Meanwhile, high demand for solar cells worldwide will keep prices high, Roscheisen says. Eventually, however, he says the company hopes to attract more customers with lower prices, in several years reaching prices that make solar-power electricity competitive with the grid.
Zweibel says the company is likely to face challenges in ramping up production, although their pilot manufacturing facility is a big step. And he adds that Nanosolar is not alone in developing inexpensive manufacturing processes for CIGS solar cells, and at least one other company is working with a printing process.
Meanwhile, Andrew Gabor, senior engineer at Evergreen Solar, a silicon solar-cell developer and manufacturer in Marlboro, MA, says current supply problems related to conventional solar cells are easing as more production capacity is coming on line. This could mean that prices for silicon cells start dropping again, eventually becoming competitive with grid electricity. He suggests that in the future solar electricity supply will likely be met by a mix of technologies.
The cost per watt has consistently gone down. If this technology works, it will go down some more.
Solar isn't any sort of do-all and be-all, but it's already in use where it makes sense. I expect it to be used in more applications as time goes by. I've always been interested in the idea of a roofing material that doubled as a solar electrical panel. Who knows.
If these guys can make this work, good for them.
Hydro would be good here if it weren't so expensive to build even small generating plants. Michigan has some 300 unused dams that do nothing but hold water back and make pretty waterfalls. Wind power along the lake superior shorelines seems feasable too. Unfortunately both are in conflict with eviromentalists wishes.
"Solar power will never work on a large scale. "
It doesn't have to. All it has to do is substitute for the grid when it can, and it will make a difference.
We'll know soon enough, if we see the envirowhacks start protesting it. They just love "alternative energy sources", at least until someone announces a way to actually make them feasible. Then, they suddenly discover all kinds of "problems" with them.
Wind power was just wonderful to the eco-nuts, until people announced they were actually going to build windmills. Now, all we hear from them is how windmills cost too much, kill too many birds, "just won't work!" and will spoil Ted Kennedy's view when he's out on his yacht.
I wonder what the excuse for large scale solar cell production will be? I'm guessing whining about the "impacts" from mining the copper and other materials, "pollution" and greenhouse gas emissions and maybe even water use from the manufacturing process, and of course the usual hard-headed liberal "pragmatism" that is applied to missile defense and racila profiling ("It just doesn't work!").
Eco-whacks and other liberals don't want "alternative energy" - they want "no energy for you, and all for me." These people won't be happy until we're all sitting in the dark, freezing or sweating as the season dictates, tending our tiny little subsistence plots of soybeans, while they sit on their redwood decks with chilled wine and brie, congratulating themselves for how much they "care."
I believe the US produces about 800 Gigawatts. 430 Megawatts is about half the size of a single nuke plant.
Thanks. I've seen those. Still too expensive to be practical, I'm afraid. However, the technology being discussed in this post might just do the trick. Once it's possible to get away from crystalline silicon, there's a good chance that such roofs will be cost effective.
A guy I know has a summer cabin on a lake. He's off the grid, but not by choice. He uses, like most cabin owners, a generator for most of his electrical needs, but does have a large array of traditional solar panels for some uses, including refrigeration, using peltier-effect.
He stores electricity in gel-cell batteries during the day, then uses it after dark, as needed.
Is it cost-effective? For him it is, since it allows him to use a smaller generator than he would otherwise and reduces the amount of diesel fuel he has to haul into the cabin. It doesn't go much past the break-even point, but it does break-even. Many nights, he uses only the lights, etc. that are solar powered and leaves the generator off.
With an acronym like "CIGS", they (and the anti-tobacco folks) will be all over it.
" Hell if Walmart did all their parking lots alone they could probably generate enough to at least take a chunk out of their air conditioning costs..."
Only if nobody drove a car to Walmart to do their shopping and kept the parking lot empty!
Well said!
One aspect of solar power that gets little discussion is the effect of cleanliness.
A dirt film on the collector rapidly degrades performance. Which means somebody has to clean the darn things on a very regular basis. Somebody who will want to be paid for his work.
Probably another job Americans won'd do.
In that case, it'll be doing the lion's share of work because CA grids are totally unreliable.
Humanity just has not perfected energy storage, although I believe that will be the "hydrogen solution."
That is to say, using the hydrogen for the storage, and NOT the creation, of energy.(Yeah, I already know, can't "create" energy)
"I wouldn't discount this company at all."
As a working man conservative, I love Wal-Mart and can't wait for affordable solar energy that I can install for my own off grid living.
I'm encouraged by these efforts, every step forward is more fuel on the fire of free market forces, giving individual consumers choices on where from, and how they'll supply themselves with electricity.
Nuclear is great for the core of our nations energy needs, but there is plenty of room for more options for individuals and communities.
Combine this new solar technology with the new developments in nanotechnology and batteries, and I think this could be very exciting.
Good point, but some types of solar materials can convert a wide range of frequencies, which gets mostly around the dirt problem. There are also coatings like titanium dioxide that can chemically break down dirt using nothing more than sunlight.
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