Breakthrough in solar photovoltaics

An anonymous reader writes "The Holy Grail of researchers in the field of solar photovoltaic (SPV) electricity is to generate it at a lower cost than that of grid electricity. The goal now seems to be within reach. A Palo Alto (California ) start-up, named Nanosolar Inc., founded in 2002, claims that it has developed a commercial scale technology that can deliver solar electricity at 5 cents per kilowatt-hour. " As always, take these claims with a dose of salt the size of the Hope Diamond.

Comments

Cost ?

[mirko]

What about the cells themselves, the life duration ?
Could we "coat" a laptop with these in order to enhance its battery life duration ?

Re:Cost ?

[Etherael]

How about the top of the stratosphere, supported by a helium floatation device? easier to reach than orbit, closer to the surface, below the mesosphere where the microasteroids typically burn up... still above the ozone layer where the majority of UV light is absorbed?

Re:Cost ?

[justin12345]

I imagine that as the efficiency increases, the areas where it becomes feasible increase as well. Even in the short term, as a supplement to the existing power grid it would really decrease costs, both monetarily speaking and in terms of pollution.

I doubt the power monopolies are very happy about this though. If you can buy a machine that generates power, it will eventually put them out of business.

Re:Cost ?

[syphax]

Solar Insolation Maps

Avg. solar radiation is surprisingly uniform. Sure, the southwest is higher, but it's at most 2x anywhere else in the U.S.

Re:Cost ?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I am a resident of the "North East." Our peak electricity usage is on sunny days during the summer. That's when everybody cranks up their air conditioning to dump the energy the sun delivered to their roof out into the outside air through the miracle of air conditioning.

This peak demand electricity is the costliest to produce. That's when you bust out the natural gas turbines, and start running your boilers and reactors at full tilt. A field of solar cells, at the right price, would really lower the cost of delivering electricity during these peak times.

I recall a news story a few years ago about a resident in my home town (Philly) who outfitted his roof with solar cells. All of his appliances were DC powered, and during some seasons of the year his meter flowed backward; he was producing more power than he was pulling off the grid.

Re:Cost ?

[Dastardly]

The real interesting question will be how will the local governments and power utilities react to the sudden loss of revenue when people start dumping them? I could see protectionist regulations (all your electrons belong to us), use taxes on solar systems or very large increases on those remaining tied to the grid. Sooner or later we would reach a new production equilibrium but the infrastructure transition is going to be ugly. Lot of utilities have come to believe they have a right to exist and local government would have to replace the revenue. If these new $1/watt systems landed suddenly, you would see a lot of people cutting the cord. The rest of the technology for the home power cycle is already there.

The transition would be tough, but I would hope that they don't go to prtectionist. They need to switch to transmission, storage, night production, and middle man. Businesses use a lot more power than they have roof space, typically during the day when you are not home and your home system will be producing more power than you are using. So, the utilities job is to purchase that power (it can be in exchange for night power) and deliver it to businesses during the day. The utility would also provide power at night. If large scale storage is more efficient than local storage and the solar build out was big enough utilities would also become central storage such that they would store excess daytime production for delivery at night.

Likely (and it exists currently) you pay a connection fee and any excess power used. In the future, there will probably be a connection fee that encompasses storage if that is available, a rate for power to the home beyond what is generated, and perhaps the wholesale rate for when day generation exceeds night use that could defray the connection and storage charge. As businesses will be paying for that power a portion should go to the generator.

interesting

[slobber]

The semiconductor paint can be applied to a flexible substrate , such as a polymer sheet , through a simple web printing process, to create an array of ultra-thin solar cells.

Does this mean I can turn my roof into one huge solar panel by "painting" solar panel on it?

Exciting.. Where Do I Sign?

[tetrahedrassface]

Big claims require big evidence. I surely hope that the price can be set at at the 5 cents/kwh, but something nagging in the back of my mind says not yet.

However if it is indeed true, it should not be a huge surprise. The cost of solar has been falling in recent years.

I did speak to a solar firm about putting in enough to run my house ( 69 kwh/month ) the cost to install was going to be around 75,000 dollars, and in my area electricity is still to cheap to justify the cost.

However if I can install at this super low 5 cents/kwh, I just might bite the bullet. That is roughly 2 cents/kwh cheaper than my utility sells juice for!

Good article!

Check out their news page

[qwasty]

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.

Re:These are probably dye-sensitized semiconductor

[VendingMenace]

Actually, i don't think that the glass was the most expensive. Most of the cells used ruthenium dyes for their light absorbing dyes. Ruthenium is not exactly cheap. Moreover, it is not even all that plentiful. I remember hearing once at a conference that the amount of ruthenium expected to be in the earth's crust is only enough to make enough solar cells to cover the state of north dakota or something like that.

I think this is the main problem with solar cells. Until someone comes up with an effecient dye based on a more abundant metal there is no possible way that solar cells can become ubiquitous.

Though it is unclear from the site what sort of dyes this company is using -- perhaps they have found a new one. Though i suspect if they had it would be all over their site. I gather, rather, that they are just using the "nano" buzzword to make their stuff sound new and cool. Oh well.

OH, by the way i am not a solar cell scientist -- but i do work down the hall from a few. Cool.

Heard it all before!

[Zog The Undeniable]

Nuclear energy was, we were told, going to be too cheap to meter when the UK Calder Hall reactor was opened in the 1950s. Now the industry is propped up by government subsidies.

Actually, I *am* a fan of nuclear energy; the economic case is only poor because the clean-up requirements are absurdly expensive - considering that coal-fired plants spew an order of magnitude more radioactive fallout across the countryside.

Still too expensive

[Martin Blank]

Even at five cents per kWh, it's more than 40% more than the target cost for other methods, which is around 3.5 cents per kWh. That's the range where gas, coal, and oil plants live, and where nuclear is striving to be (Westinghouse's 1000MW AP1000 reactor design is the only approved one that may reach that, and it came about because the AP600 wasn't efficient enough).

Anything much more than that without ample tax incentives (and maybe not even then) just isn't going to happen on a large scale.

$30 / square meter?

[frosh]

If this cost # is true, then the cost of this solar panel is approximately the same as the cost of ashphalt shingles. And if *that* is true, there would be no reason to put any sort of roof on a house except for a roof made of this stuff...

Is single-sourcing all of our energy desirable?

[StarKruzr]

Absolutely not, and I would mod you up if I could.

I wonder if this is part of the "most Slashdotters are Trekkies" effect which presumes that all power in THE FUTURE is generated by antimatter reactors, and so if we haven't found a power source that can replace everything, it must not be any good.

Morons.

Re:Is single-sourcing all of our energy desirable?

[tigersha]

The other not-so-good meme is that solar energy has to replace everything that is available already immediately.

A set of Solar Panels on the roof of a house (or rather some solar thermal water heater) cannot replace all the gas that a house needs. But it CAN reduct your enegy bill considerably. My dad has a setup like that on our roof and he got a visit from the utilities who thought he has mucked around with the meter. Not so, a few simply black sets of pipies pre heated the water which helped reduce the electicity bill.

I work in a building which (admittedly with the help of a solar research institute) has reduced its energy consumption by 65% by good use of isolation and glazing. I might add that this is in Germany, not exactly the sunniest place in the world, so it works in more northern climes too.

The key here is local power generation and better isolation of the building instead of massive central power stations. For instance, the people in the previous article moans that a notebook cannot be powered by it. No, maybe not. But those cells might increase the duration of your battery by an hour or two and that is useful in itself. Because you get more out of your notebook and reduce consumption of fossil/nuclear powered electricity.

Most solar research does not deal with PV in any case, it deals with better isolation and solar thermal (concentrated rays and such) to reduce reliance on other energy sources.

Anone wants to know more about Solar please visit
ISES.

Re:Taking care of some things in one post.

[Big_Breaker]

Lots of great points. I work for one of the largest renewable energy companies in North America, and I'd like to mention a couple of things you touched on that are worth some extra mention.

Similiar to hydro, solar's cost component is primarily in the upfront cost of equipment rather then the uncertain "trailer" of fossil fuels. Coal - the dirtiest fuel you can imagine - is currently extremely available for next to nothing, however. Natural gas prices fluctuate a great deal but natural gas power plants are relatively cheap to setup and can be run at opportune times when power is extremely profitable. These plants are often called "peakers" for that reason. I mention the timing aspect because it is especially important to analyzing solar. Why you say? Because
solar's timing stinks.

Direct solar energy availabilty does not line up well with electricity consumption. This means that as solar power approaches "free" the part of the system that stores the solar energy becomes the dominant cost component. There also aren't many great ways to store energy from PV panels. Chemical batteries deteriorate, are usually toxic, heavy, expensive and space hogging. Demand forms of energy production like hydro and natural gas do not have this limitation and can be respond to customer needs rapidly. Coal is slower but can be moderated with the demand curve to an extent.

Another key point is that photovoltaic cells produce direct current and not the alternating current required for most consumer and industrial needs. A small amount of energy storage and an inverter are necessary to transform the energy from a solar panel into something useful. This becomes important again when talk turns to distributed production. The fixed cost of the electronics simply does not scale particularly well. I wish it were simpler to just hoist some PV panels on everyone's roof but it isn't.