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

Re:Two lousy links for nanosolar

[artemis67]

Are they publicly traded? Might be a good stock to short... ;-)

Re:alternative energies

[CrimsonAvenger]

you end up needing a total collector area about the size of Alaska

Let's see, the land area of Alaska is over twice that of France. Actually, Alaska is a bit larger than France, Spain, and the UK combined.

So, we're talking about covering western Europe with solar cells. Or taking the land away from someone else - that's always a good choice, right?

Now, this ignores the fact that the specified land area requires sunlight 24-7. Which it won't get. As a minimum, you have to double that.

It also ignores conversion losses (DC-AC, for long-range transmission), and transmission losses (which would be significant). So double it again.

By now, we're paving most of Europe, or say, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada...basically the southern half of CONUS.

In other words, it's not going to be a small area.

Not big compared to the size of the Earth is all well and good, but you're talking about four orders of magnitude bigger than any other engineering project in history....