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New Solar Cells 20 Times Cheaper
handy_vandal writes "STMicroelectronics has announced a new generation of photocells made from organic plastics. Over a typical 20-year life span of a solar cell, a single produced watt should cost as little as $0.20, compared with the current $4. See also article @ cnn.com. On a related note, this article @ IEEE discusses new improved LED technology by the same team."
That might shift the balance of power to sun-soaked states, right? At least if you couple it with fuel cells.
It's just a BloJJ
Consequently, although the "fuel" for a solar-powered generator is free sunlight, the overall cost of solar-generated electricity (amortized over the lifetime of the solar cell, typically 20 years) is around ten times higher than the cost of electricity generated by burning fossil fuels.
No wonder we still don't have widespread solar use. I had no idea it was this much more expensive to "buy" initially.
Every year, it was going to put the power companies out of business. The last time I priced it in 1999, it was still too expensive. I hate to sound conspiritorial, but it sounds to me like someone is jiggling the switch. It is 2003. Why don't we have affordable solar power for home use?
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
This should make space probes, satellites, etc that use solar energy much cheaper.
Power companies provide at about 15c per kilowatt-HOUR. What does 20c per watt mean ? Meaning running continuously 12 hrs a day for 20 years ? Watt is a power unit. Watt-hours is energy.
I've lived off the grid for over 6 years now.
Even with existing prices, it is about as cheap to buy cheaper land in outlying areas and generate your own power as it is to pay a power company _and_ pay higher prices for land. The main problem is you have to have a fair degree of mechanical aptitude to keep one of these systems running reliably.
Cheap solar cells would open up quite a bit of land for human use that is accessible by road but has no power access. When you combine that with WiFi/sattellite access the infrastructure advantages of cities become far less pronounced.
"The new solar cells would even be able to compete with electricity generated by burning fossil fuels such as oil and gas, which costs about $0.40 per watt"
This is certainly excellent news. With oil reserves slowly running down and with countries that require 'liberation' slowly dwindling, we certainly need new cheap energy sources. It's great to see a product has been created that harnesses solar energy to the point that it could one day replace all need for fossil fuels. This is also have many positive ramifacations on the environment, making a lot of people happy.
Another large source of energy that has been largely untapped is geothermal energy, which is obtained through convering heat from the Earth into usable energy.
It really demonstrates the effect that these large oil corporations have on our world, when there are much better cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels, yet these are being ignored for the sake of the oil companies.
so what does a watt of electricy cost delivered these days, like from the power company? And one traditional silliness about solar power is that by the time you actual install it, the energy cost of the materials exceeds the expected lifetime output of the solar cells. So the green types who install solar are really pretty brown.
Darn... I just bought a solar powered watch (Citizen Eco-drive) - which requires a few hours of office level light, several minutes under a bright lamp, or just a few minutes of direct sunlight, to recharge each day.
:-)
This article makes me wonder if a substantial amount of the price was because of the power cells (no silver or gold). I'm sure a watch doesn't need the best efficiency (15-20%) of the current pricy solar cells - 10% efficiency would mean my new watch needs about 30 minutes under a lamp rather than 15-20. Big deal. Of if I'm lazy, I'll stand in the sun for 5 minutes instead of 3.
Making solar power affordable, attractive and practical is the first step in converting to environmentally friendly sources of power. Cost effectiveness is a primary obstacle for new technologies, especially for the environmentally friendly. I guess the other would be defeating the entrenched monopolies that currently rely on oil and other natural resources.
Here's to a cleaner planet!
Cheers,
RC
RC
Well, with a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation... If you roughly assume an average of 5 hours of good sunlight per day and roughly assume a house consumes 500KWh per month, then you need 3,333W of generated power (before taking storage into account). In previous price ranges, you're talking $15,000 for that many solar cells (not counting power storage cost or a multiple for storage efficiency). If they can successfully bring solar cells of 20 cents per Watt to market, then you're talking about enough solar cells to cover a house's usage for possibly around $2000.
Assuming no major error in the calculation, that makes it accessible to anyone who can afford a house. A year's electricity at that rate of consumption would be about $720.
Hopefully they will succeed in delivering this, and the usage of the words "organic", "nanotechnology", and "renewable energy" are more than just buzzwords in search of funding.
The reason there isn't affordable solar power for home use is that there are no government subsidies for solar power at the level of subsidies for oil.
Not just that, but according to the article I read about this, they are shooting for only 10% effeciency. That means more sq. feet (sq. metric length unit for those out of the US) requirements. Area is already a major limiting factor with solar now.
One thing you never hear about with solar energy also is that the panel absorb a certain amount of heat that would normally be absorbed by the earth. Will this cause issues on a large scale?
Similar with wind generators, the energy taken from the wind is also removing energy that would be dispursed further down the line. Again, small scale doesn't seem to matter much.
However, a single combustion engine isn't a major issue either. So, while I think alternative energies are a wonderful and exciting thing, keep in mind, everything has environmental impact.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
Well, finally some good news. If it will soon be possible to produce cheap solar cells this could mean a more distributed power base. If houses and businesses can generate most of the their electricity from solar cells on the roof the average consumer would no longer be dependent on the local power company. It remains to be seen if the current administration with its ties to the oil corporations would let this happen.
The CNN article does seem to confuse Watts and Watt-hours. CNN.com's science writers have always had a weak understanding of scientific concepts. In an article about the close approach of Mars they said "About every 26 months, the two planets pass relatively close to one another, during periods now known as opposition." What was it known as before??
Bio-desiel burns in desiel engines with no modifications and achieves the same per litre efficiency. Hemp grows as a weed on six continents and is cheaper to make into diesel fuel than any crude oil deposits.
It seems like solar power efficiency has been at about 10-20% for about forever now, and I thought I read somewhere that where purifiying the semiconductors will get you more efficient at a higher price, there was still a maximum amount you could get out of current designs or theories.
Is there some sort of theoretical limit we're hitting with current technologies, or are there different technologies that may have some promise? This article doesn't address efficiency, it just says they can make them cheaper than anybody else.
Any links or references would be appriciated.
so what does a watt of electricy cost delivered these days, like from the power company?
According to some folks at Alliant Energy (one of their reps recently gave a lecture at my engineering college), it costs about $1.00/watt to build a coal power plant. In other words, building a 500 MW coal plant would cost $500 million. Also keep in mind about 50% of that power is lost as heat during transmission - so the cost to the end user is really about twice that.
Interestingly, in our area large wind turbines cost about the same (a buck a watt) - and the power companies are becoming more interested. Despite what you might think, they actually hate to build new large power plants. It's a huge chuck of cash for them to lay out, especially when the full capacity of a large plant may not be needed for another 10-20 years.
Anyway, $0.20/watt would be cheap!
I'd love to do this. Unfortunately I live in Florida. Its up to the power company to allow you to put power back onto the grid, which they don't want to allow here. So I either need to store the extra power I don't use, or I have to discharge the excess if there is any.
Why do such obvious karma whores continue to get modded up?
Perhaps because the original article was in <FONT name="Eight-point Eyestrain">?
I suppose it "looks better" to some web "designer", but it's practically impossible to read at a resolution higher than 640x480.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
cost of production != market value.
If this were true, I'm sure these cells would sell retail for $14,999.99. Or whatever one-penny cheaper than it would cost to buy electicity from the power company is. Price is what the market will bear. Not what would make life better for everyone.
This is why DSL costs $50/mo, instead of $10/mo. The service doesn't cost that much to provide. It's what the market will bear.
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