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Solyndra's Thin-Film Solar Cells Draw $1.2 Billion In Orders
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."
Look like fluorescent lights? Great, just install one next to each lamp and it can power itself. Oh, hang on, that won't work, will it? DOH!
Smivs on the intertubes!
So a good hailstorm will demolish your solar array?
It's good to see that people still invest in alternative sources of energy. $1.2B in pre-orders can't be bad and (I think) shows a great sign of faith in these technologies.
"What Gronet envisions is solar panels installed on your average Home Depot or Ikea, generating a substantial percentage of the company's power needs right on site."
This is the best possible outcome of the energy crisis: an efficient, sustainable, and most importantly decentralized power infrastructure. Let's hope these technologies really do take hold.
Obligatory link to manufacturer.
"He may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot." - Duck Soup
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.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I don't know the answer. But I am certain that such questions never occurred to the two Stanford engineering PhDs who founded the company, or the tens more they have subsequently hired to do R&D.
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.
It may be that the tubes are used with concentrating reflectors, so that the back side is in fact the highest output and the front side is just a little extra from the direct illumination. The tube design would also allow a fluid to be circulated to pick up any heat gain that would go along with the concentrating reflectors.
There has to be some way to tie together "Solyndra" and "green" and "is people". Step up the puns here, people.
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
In essence, solar costs about $.30/kwh. http://www.solarbuzz.com/SolarPrices.htm Location is important. Costs more in Germany, less in California. http://www.solarbuzz.com/statsCosts.htm. This competes against under $.10/kwh in the US for other sources. But there are variations around the world and even within the US http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html
The world is made by those who show up for the job.