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.

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.

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...

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.