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.
"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.
Solar cells have been around just as long, since 1883.
There's a reason why those other things have taken off while solar remains a liberal's pipe dream
For starters those other things aren't limited by the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, the Solar Constant, etc.
"make enough solar cells annually to generate 430 megawatts"
One day, these writers/editors will learn the difference between power and energy.
I was too quick. I think they mean that they will annually produce solar cells capable of generating 450 kws, not that the solar cells will generate 450 kws annually. My bad. Carry-over from last energy thread ...
(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
what happens when the parking lot is full of cars?
Bookmarked
To put that in perspective, it takes roughly a decade to build a nuclear power plant. So that's ~500MW/year capacity for solar compared to ~100MW/year capacity for nuclear.
If what they are saying is true, they could make a good piece of money in the southwest.
If not, well, we'll never hear from them again. It's win/win for most of us. :P
Unless you throw away 30 or 40 bucks on a set of those crappy solar Malibu Lights...total waste of money.
"CD's will never catch on...you'll never replace the record album." My boss at work circa 1990.
But first, they'd have to discontinue that informal policy of allowing half their lots to be RV Parks...
I've never touched the stuff. Thanks for the info.
Alloyed with other metals, I suppose it's main charm is helping raise conductivity? By itself, it is highly conductive, I take it... The stuff seems rare, or at least difficult to refine to purity, at least. A by-product of aluminum ore refining, for the most part, but significant percentages realized only with enhanced processes...
Yeah, I agree, whatever you said.
Discontinue?, Nah, just amend it, to run 'em out during the "peak" daylight hours. Let 'em park at night. They can shop early morn, or in the evenings.
That too, although it likely has to be reapplied from time to time.
Nuclear construction is not limited to 100 MW/year. The new Texas reactors will result in 1356 * 2 MW in 9 years and that is only one site. That is from announcement to commercial. Actual construction might be say 5 years per plant and we could easily construct many plants at the same time with existing infrastructure. We could probably put more than 8000 MW of capacity on-line each year.
Peak energy usage is in the late afternoon when the cells are not very efficient.
You're right, I'm comparing apples and Fords. :P
Sorry!
How exactly will that deal with vulcanized rubber deposition from the wheels of passing cars?
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