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.

Comments

Consumer offerings?

[phrostie]

i was reading their webpage the other day and they only seemed to sell to large corporations or utilitiy companies. when will they start offering a consumer version.

Re:Consumer offerings?

[smilindog2000]

This is a huge milestone. However, the summary gets a couple things wrong: First, $1/watt panels aren't "cheaper than coal". Large coal consumers buy 2,000 pounds of coal for $50. Burn that in a crappy Bush-endorsed power station, and utilities can print money at $0.07/KWh. That's why coal is the #1 enemy in the global warming battle - not oil. The $1/watt goal makes solar utility power feasible in areas that currently have excellent sunshine (say southern CA), and expensive fuel (say natural gas). It's a huge step, but not the last step.

The second error in the summary is the current price. The company claims they could sell $1/watt panels, but with 100% of their production for 2008 already purchased, what are the odds they're selling their stuff 4X below market value? Not a chance. The revolution's happening, but it will take a while.

Re:Consumer offerings?

[kestasjk]

It's tricky to convert between watts and kWh, they sound the same but one is a unit of power and one is a unit of energy. Power is energy per second, so it's like comparing the cost of a gallon of water with the cost of a spring.

A kWh is like a glass of water, and a watt is like a trickle of water from a leaky tap. A 1 watt panel would take 1000 hours to make one kWh.
If a panel lasts 1000 hours then you're paying $1/kWh, which doesn't compete with $0.07/kWh. If it lasts forever you're basically paying $0/kWh in the long run, so you might as well buy ~10^12 panels and forget about energy problems.
This is why hydroelectric power is appealing: Once built they stay there generating power for only the cost of maintenance, the problem is there are only so many places where a dam can be built.

In a nutshell more info is needed to know if this even counts as progress. What about the materials? Can you get lots of whatever semiconductor they're using cheaply? Does the $1/Watt panel become $1/ 0.01 Watts when it's not facing directly at the sun on a bright day in California?

I'm not looking for any "revolution" from a small start up energy company.


By the way this is an area where nuclear power could become an even better alternative: The big cost of nuclear power is building the plant and decommissioning it afterwards, the uranium is dirt cheap. The price of a kWh from a nuclear plant is made up mostly of the price of building and decommissioning the plant. If a nuclear plant's design can be made so the life is doubled the cost will halve. If a plant that lasts as long as a hydroelectric plant could be designed we could have power too cheap to meter.

Re:Consumer offerings?

[flaming-opus]

You're forgetting two very important things. In your math you're forgetting to amortize your capital costs. Basically you're assuming that you can get a 0% loan. In reality, paying for solar up-front, instead of coal as you need it, you need to tripple the cost of the solar, because of the interest you will have to pay over the 25-year life of that "loan".

Secondly, solar provides great energy during the middle of the day. However, most residential electrical demand happens in the early evening, when people get home from work and turn everything on. Most industrial users of electricity need a constant supply, around the clock. Commercial users need electricity throughout the day, with a spike in the late afternoon as air conditioning demand increases. Solar-electricity provides for some, but not all of these needs. Storing solar energy in batteries, thermal storage systems, or mechanical storage systems doubles or tripples the cost again.

Thus, even with $1/W panels, general-purpose solar power is still 8-10X the cost of coal. I'm terribly doubtful that solar power will ever be economically competitive with coal, UNLESS you factor in the ecological costs. Unless we start taxing utilities for the carbon that they emit, we will not see solar become competitive, beyond little feel-good projects, and home-hobbyists.

Re:Consumer offerings?

[AmericanInKiev]

I think you'll find that Clinto's administration was headed towards tighten restrictions on coal plants. There were reasonable, scheduled improvements. Bush took us off the path to improvement, so basically yes - this is all Bush's fault. remember, a stronger presidency means more blame. Clinton shared power, and thus responsibility.
AIK

Eventually.

[xlsior]

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

Yahoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really know whether global warming is real and dangerous. Now just maybe I don't have to care.

Can we conver Arizona with these (and use ultracapacitors for night power)? Please?

Are they fire resistant? Toxic when burning?

[AHumbleOpinion]

Will they last, are they durable, is it flexible or rigid? Lot of questions left to answer on the solar front. However, if I can shingle my roof with these things, all the better!

If you are going to shingle your roof then "are they fire resistant" and "do they release toxic fumes when burning" should be two more explicit first questions.

Units Please! What's the cost per watt hour

[Overzeetop]

It's not just the cost of the panel that matters, but the anticipated life of the panel. Traditionally, it has taken more energy to make a panel than that panel will return to the grid. That's not as big a deal if you're truly off grid - say in the boonies, or in space - but it matters if you want to make it viable in a business sense. And it can't just be equal, it's got to be a significantly low fraction. Otherwise you're creating an energy storage medium (and a very limited one in the case of a solar panel) instead of a power generator.

Re:Units Please! What's the cost per watt hour

[Alioth]

The current generation solar panels have an energy payback time of 6 years in the real world, and typically last for at least 25 years.

Presumably, what makes this technology potentially less expensive is it requires less resources to make than silicon solar cells, so it's fairly likely that they have a faster energy payback than silicon cells.

Indium

[RikF]

This stuff is already hard to come by. We won't all be covering our houses in this stuff!