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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."
Eetimes.com.
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
The mythical solar-powered flashlight becomes achievable!
Daniel
Carpe Diem
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.
3 laptops and the other essentials (TV, etc) run me a quick $100/month bill in electricity. Must... get... solar..
--------
Free your mind.
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
Does the phrase "Organic Plastics" strike anyone else as exceedingly stupid?
"Get this! It's plastic... made from LONG CARBON CHAINS! BRILLIANT! Why did we never think of this before!?!"
Someone want to explain that to me? Aren't all plastics "organic"?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
This should make space probes, satellites, etc that use solar energy much cheaper.
Dr. Michael Gratzel (credited with pioneering the technology in the article) has a startup in Lowell, MA that has been working towards commercializing polymer based photovoltaics since 2001 called Konarka Technologies, and from what I understand from talking to them, they're almost done. I wonder if this involves some technology license, or if STMicro is going to beat Dr. Gratzel out the door with his own technology.
Excited.
Reading the article leaves you with a lot of "will, should, could" and no prototype.
And the $0.20 is a target to be reached, not an acheived goal.
What's Slashdot becoming, a free way to secure prior art against when companies actually has a patentable working model?
Grell
...when it gets down to fundamentals, do what you have to do and shed no tears. Dr. Matson in Tunnel in the Sky
to successfully set up and harness the power of the sun using solar cells would mean venturing out into the sun. what's a geek to do?
It's like a forcing yourself to drink some nasty cough syrup to make a cold go away.
See this company: http://www.spheralsolar.com/ their technology makes very cheap, very efficient, very flexible solar-cells... they are building a massive manufacturing facitliy as-we-type, they do small(er) runs currently in their original test/research facility.
this is one to watch.
This is not an announcement of any new solar cells. It's a press release detailing an advanced research program that STMicroelectronics hopes will eventually lead to cheap solar cells. RTFA whover posted this.
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.
If you really want an ecologicly friendly source of power look into electric eels. Sure they're a bit slimey and would get you weird looks from airport customs, but for anyone looking for a macho ego boost, "Is that an eel in your pocket or are you just happy too see me?"
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.
Now I can wear a flashy solar cell scarf to power my MIThril jacket.
The Free Light by Avexa-Swisslight.
t s% 20main/free-light.htm
http://www.tadgear.com/x-treme%20gear/flashligh
Uses a rechargeable coin cell. 8 hours of sunlight = 2 hours of LED light.
Solar cells generate power.
Power companies sell energy.
20 cents per Watt means that will buy you enough solar cell to generate one watt.
If you run it for 1 hour, you get 1 watt-hour.
Energy = Power x Time = Force x Displacement
Don't they teach physics anymore?
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
Bush commented "We didn't just have a war for oil to have folks stop using it. Switching to Solar means the terrorists have won."
I don't believe this story for a second. Not a bit.
For decades I have been folowing solar cell technology, absolutely salivating at the promises that efficiency rating would soon rise above 15%, or that costs would no longer be prohibitively expensive or damaging to the environment (moreso than more conventional, polluting alternatives).
Well, I've given up. I've read shitty pie-in-the-sky stories like this almost every year for the last 25-years.
Now, if someone on Slashdot tells me that they bought these +50% efficient solar cells in Home Depot, that's when I'll get excited. Like I'll get excited when Chevrolet markets a flying car or my city puts a nuclear fusion power plant into service.
Well, they've not actually developed these cells yet, but here's why the need exists:
:) We'll call that the average because it won't usually put out 1W and yet it'll always produce at least some power. Therefore, said solar cell produces 8 Watt-hour's of energy each day.
Lets do the math.. We have $4 / watt for current generation solar cells which last 20 years..
Suppose that a "1 watt" solar cell can produce that 1 watt from 10am to 6pm each day (8 hours) in the average installation (unless you live in Pittsburgh or Seattle!
8Wh x 365 days x 20 years / (1000W / 1kW) = 58.4 kilowatt-hours during the lifespan of the cell.
$4 / 58.4 = $0.0685 / kWh
My local electric utility costs about $0.10 / kWh, making solar sound cheaper. However, the cost of the individual cells is only half the cost of a solar installation. Once you add in the cost of storage batteries, a charge controller, a high-efficiency DC->AC inverter, etc. now your solar installation is typically MORE expensive than the utility! And it's worse for the environment too with the silicon production chemicals, lead-acid batteries, etc. Yuck!
In contrast, if ST can even reach half their goal and produce $0.40 / watt cells, now we're looking at $0.00685 / kWh for the cells themselves. Even if battery storage technology is not improved by then, at least you can supplement your utility needs during the day at very minimal cost!
Simple enough: cut the efficiency in half and you need double the area to get the same amount of power.
Life is short: void the warranty.
so what does a watt of electricy cost delivered these days, like from the power company?
A watt is a unit of power (energy per time). A watt-hour or kilowatt-hour (power times time) is a unit of energy. One kWh currently runs at around 8 cents, plus around roughly another 30% for taxes and equipment charges (depending on usage).
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.
To quote the CNN Article:
So, the question is, did Reuters screw up, or is there an announcement that didn't make it to the STMicroelectronics page that was linked to in the body?
Perhaps the United States govt. could spend just a tiny fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars it is throwing at the oil companies, on some serious R&D into clean energy...Meh.
The Welkin: Online Music Reviews
Last time I priced solar power it was about $25,000 for my residence before rebates. Knock $6000 off for rebates, and it's still almost $19,000 out of pocket. It would take an estimated 27 1/2 years to pay for itself (assuming no maintenence since I don't know what that would cost). By all means, keep up the research on this, but to expect joe sixpack to adopt solar power right now for a household is just not realistic.
It's not that I'm opposed to solar power, but until something can be done to bring the price out of the stratoshere, it's simply not economicaly plausable right now. I generaly try to be environmentaly sensitive, but I shouldn't have to be a millionaire to make a significant contribution. All of which disregards the energy spent making the things and the fact that used solar panels are bad for the environment! I think I'll stick with nuclear energy for now.
Just stretching out the "back yard" to the moon is all.
Wind power runs into this all the time, too.
Consumer: "Yes, let's build more wind/solar power plants."
Power company: "OK. The best location for that is site A."
Consumer: "What? That will ruin the view!"
Power company: [sigh]
------ "Darn floor. Big bite." (Koko the gorilla's best attempt at explaining the experience of an earthquake.)
If you've got $5 million for an acre of land in an area of the world which gets sunlight you might get the same amount of power as 1 square foot of expensive solar panel. The real story was on 9/30 in EE Times.
>they hope to use nanotechnology to produce cells
>with lower efficiencies -- about 10 percent rather
>15 to 20 percent -- while reducing manufacturing
>costs
Nanotechnology of course means organic chemistry in a time when nanotechnology sounds better. It would probably be cheaper just to make solar panels using Chinese laborers instead of fullerene and copper.
In a a previous /. article regarding solar power, someone did a little calculation and concluded that you'd need a big house to hold enough solar cells for 2kW annual power consumption. This company believes their reasearch will yield solar cells that will be cheaper to produce, and less efficient in use than today's solar cells.
So... your 3.3kW/year estimate is over 50% larger and your solar cells are about 50% less efficient than the assumptions used in the previous calculation. I believe you'll nead a really big house to hold all of those solar cells.
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 made the same mistake at first,
but if you read the article carefully,
you'll see they aren't amortizing the price.
If STMicroelectronics can reach their target,
that 75 watt panel would cost fifteen bucks.
(But probably $115 with the mounting hardware.)
When you amortize the cost,
they're hoping to produce electricy for 1/4 cent per kilowatt hour.
Even at five times the price it's cost competitive with fossile fuel generation (unlike current solar panels.)
-- this is not a
I've worked in the Conductive Polymers area for about a year and I can tell you that this article seems more of wishful thinking than any. Conductive polymers are exceedingly difficult to work with, have a very narrow range of pH under which they work, their properties have not been sufficiently characterized and so on. The replacement of liquid electrolytes sounds exceedingly difficult if not impossible to me, atleast from my experience.
All that aside, $.20 per peak watt is freaking incredible. At that price you can probably make electric awnings out of the stuff. Let's just hope that this doesn't turn out to be vaporware like so many other stunning "advances" in energy have turned out to be (coughcold fusioncough)
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
That's the whole point of this article. Buy using organic plastics, they can reduce the price considerably. As they further their research, expect the price to drop further. A few more advances like this one and we'll have our affordable solar. These greens you disparage may not be working with ideal technology, but they are working, and making progress.
Look at history. In the 60's the idea of a 'personal computer' was probably pretty laughable.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
No, I wasn't against it. But I would've been against requiring all citizens to use space capsules to get to work at a time when it was cheaper to drive a car (and still is, of course). Likewise, I'm not against the use of solar or alternative energy. It's a great goal. I *AM* against the government *requiring* alternative energy before it is economically viable.
The point here is that, hopefully, these guys are going to make solary energy more economically viable--at which point solar energy will be adopted by the masses whether the government requires it or not. As such, the business operating in the free market is making solar energy economically viable and attractive to everyone. What the government couldn't force down our throats capitalism and the free market provide all by themselves.
Funny how the "evil capitalists" eventually do more to help the environment than the environmentalists that run around in circles complaining about evil capitalism and all the consumption in our society--consumption which generates wealth which allows companies such as this to develop technology that, in the end, improves the environment. :)
Gotta love it.
That is only because things like long term environmental damage and the inability to sustain our mining of resources like oil in the future are not factored into the price you pay for company generated electricity.
In fact, damage done to the environment usually hits us multiple times (and very little of it is factored in)... just to make the fuel you have the mining, the shipping, the refining - all of which cause air pollution and water pollution that isn't factored into the cost you pay for company generated electricity. Then, if we're talking about fuels that are burned, that also generates air pollution that may only be marginally factored into the overall cost (by filter technology mandates etc. - but then there are always grandfather clauses)
Basing judgements of actual value - actual cost - purely on prices, is really quite naive.