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Solar Panels Reach $1 a Watt
ZosX writes "An article over at Popular Mechanics announces that, for the first time, solar cells have been manufactured for the much sought-after figure of $1/Watt. They also talk about a new study of the cost of the particular raw materials used in different manufacturing processes. The conclusion is that the company that just achieved the $1/W milestone, using cadmium telluride technology, may not prove to be the long-term winner capable of meeting demand when it rises into the terawatt range."
I'm not sure what my peak load is at home, but at $1/Watt I imagine I could generate all my own electricity for less than $10,000. Assuming my roof has sufficient room for it, that's really awesome. My current electric bill is around $65/mo. which means that in 153 months this would be paying for itself, or about 12 years. Of course, figuring in things like maintenance, repairs, and so forth makes this harder to gauge, but that's pretty good. Now the consumer electronics industry just needs to convert everything over to run on DC and I'm all set. How soon can I put in an order?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Here's something for you, that I didn't realize: apparently it costs MORE to install and set up a set of solar panels on your home than it does to manufacture them. It made me think, "wow, I'm going to install those myself for half the price!" but attaching stuff like that to the power grid is probably not a DIY project. And it isn't just a day labor job either. It's going to take a trained electrician, at $30-$60 an hour putting that stuff in.
So, their goal is to get the cost of manufacturing down to about 60-70 cents a watt, and the cost of installation down to $1 a watt. I didn't realize the hidden cost of installation was so high.
Qxe4
This is something we are told about just about any mineral resource, and usually once it gets short, we manage to find a new resource, obviously this cant happen forever, but running out mightnt be an issue for a while. Also it means this technology isnt going to be cost effective for long using the current materials.
This sounds like the classic solar is not a renewable energy source tale because of the non-renewable materials in solar cells. You do realize that once the cells are built, that they continue to work until damaged or otherwise decommissioned, and that the nonrenewables are not consumed in the process? Also, there are alternative materials to use, and alternative places to mine what there is.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Mod parent up - the mining industry typically just isn't wandering around prospecting for new ore veins unless they a) don't have enough reserves to meet projected demand or b) the price is high enough to justify opening new mines. When the price gets high enough or the reserves get low enough, they go looking and they usually find something. Most of these alarmist "we're out of element X" projections are based on proved reserve numbers, which are just what the mining companies know about *right now* and can extract.
It won't last forever, but there's a lot of ground out there to be dug up yet. I can't promise it'll be as economical to extract as current reserves and prices may fluctuate accordingly, but there *IS MORE OUT THERE*.
Well as long as they're using rare earth metals, they will never become available. Their supply is much too limited.
Cadmium may not be that expensive, and not that super-rare (though calling the supply abundant would be a stretch), there is barely any tellurium supply.
From the wikipedia page :
Tellurium is extremely rare, one of the nine rarest metallic elements on Earth. It is in the same chemical family as oxygen, sulfur, selenium, and polonium (the chalcogens).
And the reality is ... of all the atoms in the universe (and "more or less" on earth) you have the following relation, for every ton of gold in existence (on earth), there's about 100 grams of Tellurium available.
It's not expensive, because no-one's using it. But if you start mass-producing anything with tellurium in it that cheapness will disappear sooner than you can say "exhausted supply".
It would probably be a very good investment to buy (right now) a ton or so of tellurium and put in your basement. Perhaps a bit unorthodox an investment, but before 20 years pass it will be many times more valuable than gold or platinum. Right now it costs between $70 and $100 per pound. You can reasonably expect that to become at least several thousand within the next ten years.
None of the elements being discussed are rare earth elements (which are indeed all metals). Cadmium and tellurium are not, and neither are copper, indium, gallium or selenium. This is too bad actually, since despite their name none of the rare earths, except of course for promethium, is very rare.
Tellurium is fairly common for an element of its atomic weight in the Universe. On Earth it is quite rare, but instead of 1/10,000 as common as gold as you would have it, tellurium has about one fourth the abundance of gold in the Earth's crust. See this abundance table.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
It's not too much of a worry. Concentrating solar power costs have been falling quickly as well, and they require nothing more exotic than reflective surfaces and mineral oil.
Also from the Wikipedia page: "Recently, researchers have added an unusual twist - astrophysicists identify tellurium as the most abundant element in the universe with an atomic number over 40." Which disagrees with the thrust of your objections, but hey, it's Wikipedia. Who knows if it's thinking straight today. The tellurium page also says that cosmic abundance is far higher than terrestrial.
Another thing to keep in mind: one of the reasons so little tellurium is mined is because nobody has had much use for it before. Also, if tellurium becomes a limiting factor, we should be able to get more energy out of each ton by using concentrating reflectors.
As for the "put a ton in your basement" strategy, it may be sound. But Wikipedia advises that it is mildly toxic and should be handled with care.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
There is a lot going on in Thermal Solar right now as it has the greatest potential to meet base load power needs when coupled with molten salt storage.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
What do you mean - Promethium very rare? Wikipedia says: "It was calculated that the equilibrium mass of promethium in the earth's crust is about 560 g due to uranium fission and about 12 g due to the recently observed alpha decay of europium-151"
So, not only is there a pound of that stuff in the earth, but it is ALWAYS there. As soon as you take it away - BAM - another pound.
"So, not only is there a pound of that stuff in the earth, but it is ALWAYS there. As soon as you take it away - BAM - another pound."
What you are implying is that promethium is the result of a process subject to equilibrium processes. Radioactive decay is not an equilibrium process.
I have no idea the natural abundance of promethium, but if you take away a pound of promethium, there is no "BAM - another pound".
I have decided, for the purposes of acquiring tellurium, that there should really be more of it available on the Earth. I have updated the Wikipedia article to reflect this. Hopefully this update gets pushed to the Earth so we can get some cheap solar panels.