New Solar Panel Technology Gaining Momentum

jessiej writes, "Even though copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS), a newer type of solar panel, is less efficient than its silicon counterpart, millions are being invested in manufacturing. From the article: 'CIGS panels use far less raw material than silicon solar panels and the factories themselves cost less to build,' $25 million compared to $230 million in one example. These types of panels could even be made into a t-shirt logo."

Comments

But can you make roads with it?

[gsyswerda]

What we need is a solar panel technology that we can pave roads with. There would be many advantages:

- The land is already available

- An industry already exists for keeping it cleared

- Roads already extend to most places where people need power

- Electric cars could be charged, and "gas" stations could service them. Same for electric trains.

- Roads would become revenue producing

Finally, a solar article about something real

[starseeker]

I used to know one of the guys who went to work at Miasolé. He was a sharp guy with a lot of experience in CIGS and related materials.

Slashdot has had a habit of posting the "next big solar breakthrough" which, in the fine print, is not so big yet but will be RSN. CuInGaSe2, on the other hand, has a long track record and previous commercial attempts have produced some solar panels with usable efficiencies (not great, but usable).

CIGS has the advantage of being a direct band gap material, but there are some limits to how far you can push it in efficiency as a single layer device that have not been overcome. One serious advantage is that this material has a fairly wide tolerance on relative elemental composition - different ratios of material in the film will still produce a working cell within a fairly wide range. This is important because industrial process control has tolerances, and wider tolerances mean less expensive production. CuInSe2 and related compositions have some rather interesting electrical properties with respect to defect behavior that allow them to work in this fashion. Anyone with a real interest in this should look at some dense but extremely interesting work by Zunger at NREL.

The biggest problem with CIGS as a production material is probably that it can't "piggyback" on the industry built up for the computer industry. I know that sounds strange, since its lack of reliance on that source of material is also its advantage, but tools to work with CIGS have to be developed more or less from scratch. That's expensive, and the reason that these initial investments are important. The process must be bootstrapped.

CIGS of course doesn't address other problems with solar adoption, such as durability over time, public acceptance and investment, etc. But CIGS is a real material with real potential, and not simply IPO vaporware.

Also of longer term interest is the idea of multijunction solar cells, which use different wavelengths of light on each layer and thus can push efficiencies much higher. Unfortunately they are also an EXTREMELY difficult practical challenge for production. However, there is a lot that can still be done. We REALLY need more funding for solar research in this country, and more basic research in general, but that's another post.

Good luck to the Miasolé team!