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Solyndra's Thin-Film Solar Cells Draw $1.2 Billion In Orders

Posted by timothy on from the beaming-down-upon-them dept.

SolarSells writes "Solyndra makes funky-looking cylindrical solar cells that resemble compact fluorescent lightbulbs. Their products are meant for office buildings, and are made from a thin coating of copper indium gallium diselenide on glass tubes. Although they might not be able to fill them till 2012, the company has already received $1.2 billion in orders. Their manufacturing tricks make the cells so cheap that they may be competitive with other forms of power even after solar subsidies are phased out."

5 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Glass tubes? by bdenton42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So a good hailstorm will demolish your solar array?

  2. Nanosolar by scorp1us · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While were slashvertising, let's not forget Nanodsolar which also does thin-film copper indium gallium diselenide trick. But it seems that instead of tubes, you can just get a sheet (on what appears to be a Mylar substrate).

    I wonder about the cylindrical shape, this would seem to block 50% of the surface area, where the sides and underside would produce less electricity than a flat sheet of the same area.

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    1. Re:Nanosolar by Jeanius · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This link says the cylindrical shape contributes to better solar absorption throughout the day, and offer less wind resistance. Looking at the picture in the article, they seem to be more like half-cylinders. That'd make sense, that while geometrically they don't have their face optimally pointed towards the sun at some optimal point during the day, they're continually pointed at the sun with some constant exposed amount of surface area.

  3. Is this for real? by Animats · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Solyndra tubes have me puzzled.

    First, they're round, with the active surface uniform around the tube. So only a fraction of the active surface is doing much. Unless they can make active surface far cheaper than anybody else, this is a lose.

    The claimed advantage of this approach is supposed to be that the units can be mounted flat to the roof. But you can do that with flat solar panels; it just costs you about 30% of the output because you're not getting max sun input per unit area. Solyndra is paying a bigger oblique penalty than that; they're probably losing 60% over a flat panel pointed roughly at the sun.

    Their web site has no numbers on prices, costs, efficiency, output per unit area, or third party test results. That's a bad sign.

    1. Re:Is this for real? by smellsofbikes · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Since mirrors are cheap compared to solar cells, wouldn't it make more sense to mount these tubes at the focal point of a linear/parabolic mirror? That really seems exactly what these were designed for, not just harvesting off-axis light.
      What am I missing here? Doesn't it seem like this is the perfect answer to a question they don't seem to have asked?

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