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Silicon Valley Startup Prints $1/watt Solar Panels
GWBasic writes "A Silicon Valley start-up called Nanosolar has shipped its first solar panels — priced at $1 a watt. That's the price at which solar energy gets cheaper than coal. While other companies have been focusing their efforts on increasing the efficiency of solar panels, Nanosolar took a different approach. It focused on manufacturing. 'The company [has developed] a process to print solar cells made out of CIGS, or copper indium gallium selenide, a combination of elements that many companies are pursuing as an alternative to silicon.'" The outfit also happens to be backed by Google, a fact that's getting some attention at tech media sites.
From the article: "Roscheisen said the manufacturing process the company has developed will enable it to eventually deliver solar electricity for less than a dollar per watt"
Nowhere in the article does it mention the price of the first run of panels. I'd imagine they are much more expensive than $1/watt.
They have a 25 year warranty, so hopefully they'll last at least that long.
They are printed on aluminum instead of glass so yes, they are flexible.
It is a rather safe formulation. That's one of the reasons why it's more popular among new companies than cadmium telluride cells.
Nobody can "put their money where their mouth is" and "snatch these up", because all of their capacity is currently being eaten up by a 1MW german PV installation. And, one correction to the article: they're not being sold for $0.99. The company has stated that they can turn a profit on them selling them at $0.99. But as long as there's a glut of demand and shortage of cells, it seems unlikely that they'll hit that price. What it *does* mean is that Nanosolar never has to worry about money again. Venture capitalists will be throwing money at them if only Nanosolar lets them. They'll have no problem scaling up production; we just need to be patient.
We should start dealing in those black-market beagles.
The article says "will enable it to eventually deliver solar electricity for less than a dollar per watt." I think the summary is misinformation. You can't buy them, and if you could, they couldn't make them for that price.
You were right the first time: 220V * 100A = 22000W = $22000 @ $1/W.
Of course, most designs would require a much smaller up-front investment, because you'll run off the grid when you are using the dryer/stove/ironing/AC, but take advantage of cheaper power for the base load (lights, computer, fridge).
You have to clear the snow off of it, it only works when the sun is out so you need a crap-load of batteries or $15-20k worth of automated switching equipment which allows you to be simultaneously connected to the grid without electrocuting the lineman who is working on your pole and thinks the power is off, you probably need to multiply your number by at least 4, because you need to generate power for the 75% of the time you're not getting good sun in the 25% of the time that you are, and you need some pricey inverters if you want to run devices designed for 110V AC...
Additionally, they're not actually $1/watt. That's the theoretical cost if they are able to ramp up production as planned. If you had $1 for every startup that failed in that phase, you wouldn't care how much your solar panels cost.
Watt is a unit of power, not energy. So its watts (presumably, in some specified lighting conditions), not "watt/hour".
Assuming it was average output per 6 hours of usable time a day (which its probably not, its more likely the peak at the best conditions), and presuming also that surface area limits are not an issue (which they may well be), and that $1/watt was the current cost, rather than an estimate of what the technology would eventually provide, yes, $1000 would get you panels that would produce ~$180 kW-h (not kW/h) per month.
In hotter climates people use solar roofings already, especially for electric water boilers. But with sufficiently cheap and available coating, people could make entire roofs covered with solar panels. You'd also of course have to think about things like durability and waterproofing.
/. troll will point out), it'll grow on its own.
(Up front, I apologize to all the yanks for being an insensitive clod that doesn't use imperial measurements).
Earth's surface is absorbing ~90 petawatts of electricity any give time (Wikipedia), and with 510 million square kilometers of surface area, an incredibly rough generalized calculation says that each square meter absorbs 175 watts (this is a 24-hour average, even though obviously it's all absorbed during daytime). Of course, not all or even most of it can be converted to electricity, but still, that's a huge resource tap. I'd estimate an average home to have a roof surface area of about 50 square meters, which means that on average the sun sends 8kW on your roof. Next, the average American household uses 8900 kWh/year, which produces, again, an average usage of about 1 kilowatt per household. If you tile your entire roof with solar panels, you'd need to be able to convert 12% of heat/light energy to electricity in order to be fully self-sufficient.
An extra bonus is that the more you absorb the sun's energy as electricity, the less of it is converted to heat which dissipates around the planet, and that in and of itself reduces the effect global warming. So you are being twice as productive - not rely on heat-trapping coal, and reduce the amount of heat that saturates on the planet in the first place.
Of course, this would have to be done on a truly massive scale to have any effect, but every bit helps, and if the industry can make it profitable to the consumer (and of course overcome the interests of evil megalomaniac neofascistliberal Big Oil corporations, as any
We have lots of people here in South Park (no, not a joke) that run solar; but none run solar exclusively (that's impossible). In order to do things like laundry or the dishes, most of them have to fire up the generator. And, during the winter, peak solar hours are shorter, and weaker, so the batteries start to sulfate from over-discharge if you don't keep them topped off -- more generator time. During some months we have a regular parade of people bringing their generators in to town for service.
Also understand that this special class of individualist burns wood for heat, and owns no air conditioner. The solar powers the well and the freezer, and not much else. Most of the power they use is delivered in the form of wood and propane.
Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
Quite a few problems with that. :)
For one, I can't picture production capacity catching up with demand enough to lower prices to that level for at least a decade, and even that would take a trenemdous expansion rate. There's no way Nanosolar is going to *sell* at $0.99/W when the current market price if $5.80/W and they don't have enough production capacity to meet supply. They stated that they can *turn a profit* selling at $0.99/W. They'll sell for $5.70/W, $5.60/W, or whatnot -- whatever's the most they can charge and move all their capacity. They're not idiots. They're going to earn every last dollar they can, and pump it into new production facilities. Only as the market becomes saturated will prices drop.
Secondly, global warming is going to happen even if all killed ourselves today. There's too much inertia behind the problem. What we effect today is what things are going to be like in 2050, 2100, not the next decade or two.
Third, this doesn't address vehicles. Still have to take care of that gorilla in the corner. It also doesn't address industry CO2 pollution unrelated to power demand, such as steel production. Still, it's a great start.
Fourth, you don't need to cover a big expanse of desert at all. There's more than enough rooftop space in the world to meet demand. Example: China has 32521 square kilometers of urban area. Assuming 11% efficiency on these cells and 25% of that urban area being able to be coated in cells, and assuming an average insolation of 200W/m^2, we get a total power production of about 180 terrawatts. Current *world* demand is only 10 terrawatts. See where I'm going with this?
Fifth, ultracapacitors are too expensive for power storage currently. We're still going to need baseload power production until a cheaper method of storing power can be found. One concept that I find interesting relates to electric cars. To charge a car quickly in your garage, you're going to need a home charging unit. Your house just can't deliver power nearly fast enough for a five to ten minute charge. The idea I read is to use those for power balancing: have them charge themselves when there's a glut of electricity and discharge into the grid when there's a shortage. In exchange, utilities would give consumers a significant discount on their power bill.
We should start dealing in those black-market beagles.
Yes, it is cheaper than coal power, almost everywhere in the US. You can run the numbers for yourself. The problem with coal is that once you burn it, it's gone. The problem with traditional solar is that the capital costs are so high, you'll never catch up with the interest. When you cut the capital costs on solar significantly, it wins hands-down.
We should start dealing in those black-market beagles.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
I think we'll see studies as soon as we have the capacity for economically feasible distributed energy production (such as the solar cells mentioned here ramped up in scale). I think feasibility studies will be happening in the next fifty years. Decentralized power production is really what the power companies fear.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
1 kWh = 3.61 x 10^6 J
$0.07/kWh = 14.3 kWh/$ = 51.6 x 10^6 J/$
solar panel = $1/W = $1/(J/s)
3600 s/h, 24 h/d, 365 d/year --> 31.5 x 10^6 s
51.6 x 10^6 (J/$) / 31.5 x 10^6 (J/year/$) --> 1.64 years (producing at full capacity) makes it cheaper than coal. Even if you only run at 25% capacity on average, taking into account varying daily solar intensity, the investment pays for itself in 6.5 years.
Of course, your other points are valid; burning coal is bad, at least using the current technology. And that $1/W number is still theoretical, so if they're selling at $4/W, then it would take 26 years to be as cost-effective as coal (given constant energy costs; but that time would be much shorter if we have an energy crunch and prices spike--or another Enron-style price-gouging scam, for that matter).
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Traditionally, it has taken more energy to make a panel than that panel will return to the grid.
That's actually incorrect. The average till a couple of years ago used to be 1:4, that is, the total production energy was about 1/4 of the energy the panels would generate in their lifetime.
But I guess mods can't be bothered to check facts.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
You're right. All of the world's climate scientists are idiots, and didn't figure out this obvious thing which you did. Right? Because that's the implications of what you're saying: you think essentially all of the world's climate scientists are complete and utter idiots.
Of course, what you said is completely untrue, but hey, who cares? Like most anti-global warming arguments, they sound good to someone who knows absolutely nothing about the subject.
We should start dealing in those black-market beagles.
However, that is no longer the case. I quote Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#Solar_cells_and_energy_payback
So, if you take a solar cell and stick it into an underground cave, it probably won't be producing more energy than it took to manufacture. But for typical uses a solar cell will be a net energy producer.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Thanks for the web site. It computes the break-even point for installing solar panels at home, and plugging in $1/watt makes it all work out quite well. I'll have to keep track of this link. However, from what I read, coal is still cheaper to burn for power in utility plants. I read that it costs utilities between $0.01 and $0.02 per KWh to produce when burning coal, even when taking the cost of the plant into account.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
"It is estimated that, at current consumption rates, there is only 13 years' supply of indium left."
This according to New Scientist which is quoted in the Wikipedia Article on Indium.
The calculations are a lot more complicated than that. You can check the source for the calculator (linked earlier) to get an idea of all that needs to be taken into account.
The reported wattage of a panel is typically the amount of power it will produce when given 1000W/m^2 of sunlight and with the panel maintaining a constant temperature of 25C. 1000W/m^2 is basically your best-case situation here on the surface -- bright, crystal-clear sky on a summer day with the panel facing straight at the sun. Overall, the panel will average produce far less than its rating, but the exact amount is very complex to determine and depends on where you are and what your setup is like, so panels are rated in standard terms. Beyond that, there's also the "derate factor", which is the losses in your system apart from the panels -- wiring, terminals, etc, but most importantly, the losses in your inverter. 0.77 is a good derate factor. The derate factor drops with age. Panels also produce less power with age, but this effect is often overemphasized.
Secondly, you're confusing watts and watt hours. Watts are a unit of power, while watt hours are a unit of energy (a Joule, another common unit of energy, is a watt second). If your panel is producing 1W, then it's producing 1 Wh every hour -- i.e., 8.8 kWh/year. But if it's simply a panel that's rated for 1W, and isn't on a heliostat, you'll probably get something like 0.5 to 1.5kWh/year, depending on where you are.
We should start dealing in those black-market beagles.
If the fiscal emergency starting on 01 Jan 2008 gets ugly enough (and there are a lot of people who think it will) we may well see solar subsidies get shelved, at least for a couple years. If to keep daily operations going the state government is pulling budget money from schools, do you think they'll still be helping homeowners buy solar panels?
....
In a way, this is come full-circle hasn't it?
People in california getting government subsidies to buy solar systems that aren't really economical, and the subsidies were based on property tax rates that were based on inflated property values, driven by speculators with bad loans--that were not really economical either.
~
Actually, you'd be surprised. They have a patent on their *specific* process, but they don't have a patent on CIGS cells in general, and there are quite a few companies pursuing them. I doubt anyone will be able to hit Nanosolar's price point because not only is Nanosolar ahead in terms of commercialization, but I think their tech is the most promising CIGS cell tech. Even still, the competitors should be able to at least approach Nanosolar's prices, and -- here's the big deal -- since it'd be a decade at best before Nanosolar could sate the market's demand enough to lower prices to that $1/W level, its competitors production should help the prices fall faster.
We should start dealing in those black-market beagles.
My apologies. But after the first thousand people who've never read a single peer-reviewed paper on the subject who think that they've figured out some obvious thing that defeats global warming that everyone else mysteriously missed, you start to lose patience. I half expect to hear the "sensors are only measuring a heat island effect" one trotted out any minute now.
We should start dealing in those black-market beagles.
No. my syncing inverter cost me $3500.00 it doesn't do the FUD of "electrocuting the lineman" like people enjoy using out there. No Line tied inverters were capable of doing that for over 15 years now.
$3500 syncing inverter + $2000.00 of PV array at those prices = a significant savings and almost ZERO maintaince costs or time. Washing them off twice a year with a hose is plenty. and my array never had to have the snow removed. what idiot leaves the PV array tilted that high in winter?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Your ideas about the environmental impact of coal are better suited for the 19th century, not the 21st. Coal is cleaner than ever and if Clinton had not shut off America's source to the cleanest available sources in Utah, it would be cleaner still.
I'm not a greeny either, I just don't like the cost. I long for the day when I don't have to worry about this anymore and I can run whatever appliances I want, whenever I want. As it is now I try to run my vacuum cleaner and laundry on weekend only when the power rate is lower. I would very much like to do things on my schedule and not the power company schedule.
If that's your goal then you can pretty much scratch solar off you list. One of the first things people learn when they start to look into solar is that it's much cheaper to reduce your consumption (effecient appliances, better insulation, reduction in phantom loads, cfls etc.) and then buy a smallar solar system then it is to try to buy a system that will meet their current usage. If you don't like doing laundry on weekends when power is cheaper you're really going to hate coming home to do laundry during lunch because that's when the sun is the strongest or putting it off a day or two because it's cloudy. At least weekends are 100% predictable.
How do you explain the cooling trend in the 70s? You guys are the same tossers who were out there in the 70s claiming the Ice Age was coming,
Not really.
the same alarmists who were warning that everyone would soon burn up because of the ozone hole (which is now smaller, but the hole has always been there) in the 80s
Not really.
But, hey:
Don't try to educate me on the science
Finding the sand comfortable around your head, eh?
We should start dealing in those black-market beagles.
You read wrong. Those are the first three panels that they consider to be part of their full production run, so they're being treated as having historic value and are not just being sold along with the others. The first they're keeping, the second is being auctioned for charity, and the third was donated to a tech museum. After that, panels have been going to Germany, and they just got their first check for them. Before that, they had been producing panels on their line, but it was an incomplete line and the panels were being used for testing.
We should start dealing in those black-market beagles.
As chance would have it, I came across this very informative chart from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I am astounded at the amount of loss (transmission being a major factor).
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
Wow, can I call it or what? :) No, that's wrong also.
We should start dealing in those black-market beagles.
Indeed. I'm not bothered by what you think of my conclusions. So if that means I have my head in the sand by your standards, then it's a damn good thing that what you say doesn't matter.
;-)
You're obviously in the majority here as I get modded flamebait and you're modded informative which is group think for others agree with you and disagree with me. Again, not bothered by this. Neither is science and fortunately it never will be.
Also, your link proves my point. It supports what I'm saying. Why did you link with "Not Really"? Why do you say my head is in the sand?
Let me get this straight. You link to something that supports my points, then you imply that what I say is not true which is not what your links indicate, and then you also think I've got my head in the sand? Only on Slashdot. You get modded up for implying you disagree with me, but you don't. I get modded down because I'm in your face about it.
This is a fun place
Generation does lose a lot from any heat engine (which is currently a required step for anything that generates electricity by making something hot: coal, oil, nuclear, geothermal, biomass, and natural gas). Wikipedia's combined cycle gas turbine article lists 59% efficiency as state of the art. The theoretical limit is not 100% efficiency - it is the Carnot Limit defined by the ratio of the high and low temperatures (natural gas burns at 1600K, the coldest you'll get the exhaust is 400K, so your absolute max is 75% efficiency).
Mechanical-electrical conversion (hydro, wind) is much more efficient. Electric generators are basically motors, and the large ones are commonly 95% efficient. The Francis turbines in use at hydro plants are upwards of 80% efficient at converting water pressure to rotor power. I don't know what the numbers are like for the wind turbines - probably much worse, since the goal isn't to make the turbine blades stop the air entirely.
Photovoltaic solar generation is the worst of them all. The most expensive cells that they put on space satellites are just over 40% efficient. The more cost-practical silicon-based cells are more like 12% efficient. As a result, a new development in large-scale solar is using a bunch of mirrors to focus the light into heat which can then spin a turbine (which may be 35-40% efficient).