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 Nanosolars 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.
"[W]hen the Paris Exhibition closes electric light will close with it and no more be heard of."
- Erasmus Wilson (1878) Professor at Oxford University
"This `telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a practical form of communication.
The device is inherently of no value to us."
- Western Union internal memo, 1878
"Radio has no future."
- Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), British mathematician and physicist, ca. 1897.
"Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia."
- Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1793-1859), Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London.
You still have daylight don't you? Solar power does not require a bright, shiny day.
Or what about that stuff you spray on your shower to keep water spots and soap stains away...
bttt
Kewl!
And it has an inverted meniscus like mercury.
ummmm... what can I do with gallium? Am I going to start getting spam about how this will help me satisfy a woman?
Very cool link ... thank you.
Interesting. I wish them good luck.
This one
"announced plans to build a production facility with the capacity to make enough solar cells annually to generate 430 megawatts."
Capacity is a weasel word used to prop up their numbers, capacity means yeah sure it will produce 430 megawatts if the earth stops rotating and the sun stays overhead 24-7-365
Typically solar falls below 25% of it's Capacity so we are really talking about 108 megawatts at most, the reality being much less.
Meanwhile, The Palo-Verde Nuclear power plant actually produces 3254 megawatts, so you would need a solar farm over 30x the size just to match one nuclear power plant.
In 1989 solar produced 0.011% of the USA's electricty, since then, even with all the billions in tax breaks, subsidies and grants spent on solar power 17 years later in 2004 it only produced 0.017%. Solar is a waste of time, it's a feel good measure that only makes a completely trivial contribution to addressing our electrical needs.
"Capacity is a weasel word used to prop up their numbers, capacity means yeah sure it will produce 430 megawatts if the earth stops rotating and the sun stays overhead 24-7-365"
They're not talking about a single unit producing 430 megawatts. They're talking about the total of a lot of smaller units doing it. Think about it.
Indeed, may they make rapid progess. It will be a good thing for this country.
Certainly, if you wanted to go 100% solar.
But these things would still be great simply as a source of energy for air conditioning. Something like 20% of the electric energy being used in the middle of the day is to power air conditioners.
Right now power plants must have inefficient, on-demand generators to supply the extra energy. That costs extra money.
But a field of solar panels would be coming on-line with the rising sun just as air-conditioners are coming on.
Economically this gives solar a big advantage since, in effect, solar power isn't competing with efficient coal-powered generation, but instead with inefficient back-up generators.
And then there is some company that puts a special film on windows that will create electricity for buildings, etc.
(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
Yeah It will melt in your hand, but unlike mercury it's kind sticky.
(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
Your buddys in Texas are driving Detroits SUV's at a frantic rate as to speed up the global warming cycle! Doing our part to pollute more so you can enjoy the suns incinerating rays!
$ per watt = business
How many $ per watt? $5 has been the going rate for the past two decades.
The electrical part of my PG&E bill is $4.88 this month.
If the legislature would pass enabling laws my inverter would support 2 more arrays, and I'd be getting money from PG&E.
No point in paying for them now. By law any "excess" energy I could generate would be a gift to PG&E!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.