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Back in 2003, a 2.5 kw AC system cost about $10k to $12k to install, depending on various conditions, such the type of roof. Prices usually scale proportionally as you increase the size of the system. Nowadays, I hear the figure is about $16k to $18k.

This is true for silicon PV cells. Nanosolar will be mass-producing a 10'x14' (~3m by ~4m) 2.6Kw panel for an installer price of $2500, about half what the silicon panels run. Their factory is set up to output 480MW of capacity per year, with a total construction cost of around $100million US (about 1/10th what a older-tech scale plant would run). This should do a really good job of helping out w/ electric generation in the 'States...

In this light, with no pun intended:

Google founders invest in solar energy (Nanosolar company)
http://www.nanosolar.com/cache/cnetgoogle.htm

Payback depends on how you measure it.

If you measure it as "payback of the purchase price", it could be as little as 2.5 years, depending on the specific technology.

If you measure it as ERoEI, it's generally acknowledged by everyone except die-hard solar power advocates that the ratio of Energy Returned over Energy Input for solar is less than 1, unless you use very very recent strained Silicon-based technology, which barely hit break-even earlier this year.

If you use thin film technology the purchase price payback grows to 4 years, and the Payback ERoEI drops to about 0.8.

There's also the little problem of there being a shortage of polycrystaline Silicon, from which solar cells are made. This shortage is expected to last through at least 2008, since it takes about 3 years to build a manufacturing plant for it, and that's what would have to happen to reduce the cost overhead.

So for right now, any decision to switch to solar by Google is going to be an economic one, rather than an environmental one.

This makes sense, since Larry Page and Sergey Brin are invested in a Solar power startup, Nanosolar http://www.techreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=170 25&ch=biztech; they provided the initial seed funding, according to a release on Nanosolar's web site: http://www.nanosolar.com/pr5-6.htm (see second release at this page).

Since Nanosolar is a thin-film photovoltaic shop, we are looking at a longer economic payback time; their output capacity after their plant is built will be 430MW of cells per year, so this will eaither be the first run cells, or it will be about a day and a half of cell output at their full production capacity.

FWIW, the 1.6MW capacity is going to put them at ~1/500th of the total US Solar capacity, which as of this year is at 927MW, for just this one installation. Comparatively, total US solar capacity is only 85% of the output of one of the two reactors at Diablo Canyon (1087MW each), while total US wind power capacity is 10,000MW and growing by 3,000MW in 2006 alone, according th AWEA (the American Wind Energy Association).

-- Terry

are interesting, the real solution as I've pointed out in the past is cost effective Solar power. Solar power has been coming down in price exponentially for years and the latest breakthroughs in nanotech promise to make it cost effective when compared to even Oil and Coal. This company is one of the many companies that are working on this type of technology. And no, I do not have a financial interest in this company.

There is a lot of research that goes on you just never hear about it. How about http://www.stirlingengine.com/ or http://www.nanosolar.com/ ?? Those companies founders are risking it all, and if they fail, you'll never hear about it.

but hasn't it always been that way? Er, well - maybe it used to be that way. Today we have ginormous established companies that use all the tools available (primarly lobyists/governments) to suppress competitors that make them obsolete.

thanks for the links, btw.

There is a lot of research that goes on you just never hear about it. How about http://www.stirlingengine.com/ or http://www.nanosolar.com/ ?? Those companies founders are risking it all, and if they fail, you'll never hear about it.

The pain and death is a valid point to consider also, that usually is not given enough consideration, but we have gotten a lot better at war over the years, that aught to make it more justifiable in certain instances, for instance I don't think there is any question of what to do with Iran but destroy their nuclear reactor with cruise missiles, a little pain and suffering for big returns later on, unless of course you trust Iran, heh. ;)

Slicon?

The interesting thing here is that the fastest growing solar cell market is not silicon: it's organic solar cells. They're incredibly cheap, but currently inefficient. However, their efficiency has been growing dramatically. One company, nanosolar, claims to have achieved almost the efficiency of amorphous silicon cells. Their patent is rather interesting, and well worth a read.

Yeah, I Googled for more information as soon as I read about this, with the exact same results and conclusion. Plus, check out the images on the Nanosolar Products page -- they have two black JPGs on there, one with gridlines.

I'm not calling BS just yet, but I can't say I'm convinced this is anything more than a hoax right now. If it turns out to be true..... well, it'll be something to think about once I become a homeowner.

You're probably mistaken about generator companies. There probably won't be all that many, unless they are maintaining the panels on the roofs of buildings and carports. If you put the generation right next to the points of use, you don't need any more transmission and distribution equipment and your capital costs go way, way down; the companies which sell power along with a contract to maintain a roof are going to beat the other guys, because they'll get their real-estate for free.

Note also that if the cost target can be hit (note that Nanosolar doesn't have any recent press releases, so take carefully) the cost minimum for electricity will not be late at night, but in the mid-morning when the panels hit their full output but demand for e.g. A/C hasn't come up yet. Expect new markets to come out of the opportunities for arbitrage.

And as long as morning juice is cheap, why not charge your car and replace some motor fuel?

Here's the one taken during the day

As per Nanosolar's website:

OPEN QUOTE
----------
Q: What is the expected cost per square meter of typical Nanosolar solar cell module?

A: A square meter of (an array of interconnected) Silicon solar cells (a "module") has a product cost of approximately $300 (or $2.75/Wp) from today's cost leaders in Silicon. Nanosolar solar sheets/modules are based on much thinner cells (up to 1000x thinner in their active layer) and tend to cost as little as $30 per square meter, or 10x less. Note that this does not mean that there is a cost/performance difference by this same factor, however, as Silicon solar cells will continue to be the efficiency leaders for the forseeable future.
----------
END QUOTE

Note:
Wp as in "$2.75/Wp" is Watts at standerdized peak-sun levels.

So there technology seems to be significantly cheaper... although they dont mention there own power generation levels ($2.75/Wp that is mentioned is for current solar technology), but they seem to imply it is similar to or better than (although not necessarily significantly so) current solar technology.

END

Their investors are well-known and have funded or founded some very "real" companies. They include Benchmark Capital (who funded eBay), USVP (who provided initial funding for Sun), and the founders of Google (Brin and Page).

If anyone bothered to look at the website for the product http://www.nanosolar.com/products.htm they will find the following facts:

1) the 14 foot by 10 foot model produces 110 Volts and costs about 30 dollars per square metre (they make no claims as to the wattage per square metre of their product)

2) this compares with current technology costing 300 dollars per square metre, which produces somewhere in the region of 120 watts per square metre.

3) they claim that their product produces cheaper electricity (i.e. it cost less to produce power than the current state of the art)

4) as their product is about 10% of the cost, their product only needs to be more than 10% as effecient as the current products to be better value.

In other words, someone has found a way to mass produce cheap but not very efficient solar cells

http://www.nanosolar.com/pr2.htm

http://www.nanosolar.com/articles.htm

They've got government contracts, funding out the wazoo, etc. They're not just a garage shop with fancy website.

This isn't snake oil. They have pictures up here.

Q: What is the expected cost per square meter of typical Nanosolar solar cell module?

A: A square meter of (an array of interconnected) Silicon solar cells (a "module") has a product cost of approximately $300 (or $2.75/Wp) from today's cost leaders in Silicon. Nanosolar solar sheets/modules are based on much thinner cells (up to 1000x thinner in their active layer) and tend to cost as little as $30 per square meter, or 10x less. Note that this does not mean that there is a cost/performance difference by this same factor, however, as Silicon solar cells will continue to be the efficiency leaders for the forseeable future.

Yes, the surface area would have to be HUGE. Looked at how much area in the USA is beneath roofs? That's HUGE. Roadways and parking lots? Even HUGER. And all of it is potentially available when the price becomes right, at near-zero ecological impact.

Solar is limited by the physics, and the limits of the physics are a long way off. Even at 10% efficiency, sunlight falling on area that's already built up could replace all electricity used in the USA and then some. At 30% (which the plastic-cell folks think they can get to by adding quantum dots) it would generate about 150 quads of electricity per year, or 1.5 times the USA's total energy consumption for 2002 (and all of it electricity, none lost to waste heat). At 60%, which seems to be the limit for quantum dots, that would be 300 quads. Needless to say, this potential dwarfs what we're currently using from all sources combined.

A better technology has been created. "Solar Fabrics". Several companies are using "Nano-materials" based on titanium-oxide to do "roll to roll" printing of Solar-to-electric energy fabric. Cost is less, is much more rugged ,integrates with buildings better, more usable capture space. Yield not equal to Solar Panels, but it is new and is improving. It is likely to surpass traditional panels on a volts per unit of area basis.

Two companies already doing this: konarka and nanosolar:

One possible application: building materials (roofing, exterior siding) which can generate power.

http://www.konarka.com/ http://www.nanosolar.com/

Nanosolar SolarPly is one of these products. The manufacturer claims a cost as little as $30 per square meter (cheaper than some fancy non-solar roofing materials) and less than $2 per peak watt by 2006.

The efficiency isn't great (they aren't going to make self-powered electric cars), but this doesn't matter. When we've already covered an area equivalent to Ohio with impervious surfaces, we've got plenty of area we could re-cover with PV. If 1/4 of the 112,610 square km of impervious area was covered with 8% efficient PV, it would have a peak power potential of approximately 2.25 terawatts (more than double current US nameplate generating capacity). I think that would hold us for a while.

Nanosolar SolarPly is one of these products. The manufacturer claims a cost as little as $30 per square meter (cheaper than some fancy non-solar roofing materials) and less than $2 per peak watt by 2006.

The efficiency isn't great (they aren't going to make self-powered electric cars), but this doesn't matter. When we've already covered an area equivalent to Ohio with impervious surfaces, we've got plenty of area we could re-cover with PV. If 1/4 of the 112,610 square km of impervious area was covered with 8% efficient PV, it would have a peak power potential of approximately 2.25 terawatts (more than double current US nameplate generating capacity). I think that would hold us for a while.

research

use in solar cell production

This is a potentially serious consideration, technically known as the "energy payback time" but for solar the numbers are not so bad. For example, the energy payback time of silicon solar cells today is 2-4 years, but for the nanocrystalline cells I was referring to is apparently only 3 months. See http://www.nanosolar.com/advantages.htm [nanosolar.com] as recommended above.
For wind power a google search on "energy payback time" suggests less than 6 months

Great article, but you can improve it for us with just a little bit of html, making links is not hard:

You can find it with many slides at http://online.itp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/lewis1/

Some of the recent research, and the progress made by startup companies is summarized at:

http://www.konarkatech.com/news_articles-forbes_no v.php

http://www.konarkatech.com/news_articles-solracs-h ybPV.php

http://www.st.com/stonline/press/news/year2003/t13 55h.htm

http://www.nanosolar.com/advantages.htm

The organic LED based technologies (polymeric / organic /nanostructured / Titania / Gratzel / Graetzel) cells are not yet ready for prime time, though they have huge promise. Check out Konarka or Nanosolar. GE and HItachi are also fooling around with this. The idea is that you can make solar cells out of TiO2, which is almost infinitely cheap in industrial quantities (see here toothpaste or white paint.)

Uni-Solar's product is in fact based on conventional silicon, just like 90%+ of the market today. The difference is that instead of slicing it out of crystals, they sputter it onto a backing, enabling them to make, e.g. peel-and-stick solar panels for commercial raised seam roofs, a conventional shingle for residential roofing, as well as, here, a flexible backing product for airships. Many are working in this area; it's sort of the next generation for solar cell cost decreases (which have come down by more than half in the last ten years; world production doubled between 2000 and 2003 - however, we're going to run out of tricks with conventional silicon within about 5 years at this pace.)

I find everyone's obsession with conversion efficiencies touching; what sense does it make when your fuel source is infinite and free? Area - related costs are subtle, so focus on this: with solar, efficiency matters not at all - the be all and end all is cost per watt.