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Nanopillar Solar May Cost 10x Less Than Silicon
Al writes "A team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new kind of flexible solar cell that could be far cheaper to make than conventional silicon photovoltaics. The cells consist of an array of 500-nanometer-high cadmium sulfide pillars printed on top of an aluminum foil — the material surrounding the pillars absorbs light and releases electrons, while the pillars themselves transport the electrons to an electrical circuit. The closely packed pillars trap light between them, helping the surrounding material absorb more. This means the electrons also have a very short distance to travel through the pillars, so there are fewer chances of their getting trapped at defects and its possible to use low-quality, less expensive materials. '"You won't know the cost until you do this using a roll-to-roll process," says lead researchers Ali Javey. "But if you can do it, the cost could be 10 times less than what's used to make [crystalline] silicon panels."'"
"10x Less"? Is that like "twice as cold"?
Another major breakthrough for solar power. Especially if they can mass produce it, but even if not, I'm sure this sort of thing will just lead to further developments down the line. In addition to making it easier for a home user to purchase and have installed, think of a reduced cost for mass deployments either in power plants, or in space exploration uses such as on a permanent moon base.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
for last 5 years same shit gets posted over and over again - Cheap solar panals
5 years later - in some cases panels went up in price
Look at the toxicity of cadmium and all the environmental regulations that come with it. It's regulated to 1/10th the level of mercury in the EU RoHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances in Electronics) legislation.
"the material surrounding the pillars absorbs light and creates electrons."
Wow, creation Ex Nihilo or from other subatomic particles? That is powerful technology.
Don't tell me. It'll be ready for mass production in 3 to 5 years. Somehow, I seem to remember stories like this from more than five years ago, and still, nothing happens and the solar cells are more or less the same as always.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Once you install these on your roof you will only need to wear your tinfoil hat when you are outdoors.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I've got a nanopillar for you that costs... no wait, that sounded much better in my head. Um, nevermind.
God, I hope so. Sometimes I feel like I subsist entirely on fiscal conservative bitching. It's cheaper than food and far easier to harvest.
I deliminate with tabs. Get used to it.
Nanopillar Solar May Cost 10x Less Than Silicon
...and then, it may not.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Come on do they really think we'll fall for printing solar cells on aluminium so we use them as tin-foil hats? We all know that in reality this is just a government plot to subvert the tin-foil hat movement and convert the hats into powerful mind-reading devices powered by the rays of the sun.
Evil I tell you, evil.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
This may have made it cheaper with this innovation, but what if no one wants it because power from coal is cheaper, more reliable, plentiful, and so on? Cap 'n Trade would change the market (not technology) to make this new technology (and others) more competitive in the marketplace. That's the idea anyway.
It would seem 1.7 million people on the internet would disagree with you.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1T5GGLL_enUS269US269&q=%22times+less%22&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g2/
Even more if you include other phrases such as "times lower" (3.8 million results), "times smaller" (800k), "times slower" 350k.
If it really was that good, then why would they talk about it after they prove the concept first...
You're absolutely right. From now on, all scientific research should be kept completely confidential until they have developed a product that is ready to ship. After all, there's no value to scientific knowledge; the only things worth talking about are consumer products.
Stupid git.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
It's 3rd arm, second head, and a space ship that looks like a shoe.
We are the Borg...
Thats right folks - for every time you see the words "May", "Might Somday", "Could eventually", you get to cover a number.
Bonus if you get to catch one or more instances of "In 5 years", "with continued funding", or "commercial quantities"
It seems the only people making flexibles these days are also selling them for a huge markup, and the technology is a lot less efficient than the monocrystal cells. But at least you can buy it. Today.
I used to actually follow up these articles by contacting the companies involved, and asking when they would be able to sell to me as a consumer. I still cant buy any of their products. Any of them.
How plentiful is cadmium relative to silicon? Not so much, right? Isn't cadmium already pretty much spoken-for in other industrial and consumer electronics applications?
Leave it to engineers not to consider the ugly realities of supply-and-demand economics.
I would assume that they'd have to pay you 9 times the cost of the silicon product.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
This is an example of competition due to innovation. Cap and Trade is competition through breaking-your-competitors'-kneecaps.
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
There is a massive world-wide technology complex driving the optimization of silicon based manufacturing technology. The amount of capital invested into silicon manufacturing process and tools is measured in tens of billions of dollars per year, if not hundreds of billions. If the conventional process improvements is able to achieve 20-25% cost improvement per year, in five years, the cost of panels based on conventional panels would be down to 25-30% of today's cost. A few hickups in the development of the new technology like yield or reliability issues can easily delay the mass deployment by a few years which will negate all cost benefits. Not to mention the possibility of cadmium prices going up if the volumes are picking up...
And don't forget the cost of capital investment, which is already funded due to other "useful" applications in the silicon case. Most other technologies that tried to compete against silicon lost so far, not because of fundamental technical issues but because of the economics involved.
I am not against developing new innovative technologies to achieve substantial improvements in the solar power area. However, it is best to keep the optimism about new and unproven technologies in control until they reach at least beta production stage...
the only things worth talking about are consumer products
You forgot about celebrity antics.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Is it cheaper or not? Make up your mind.
If it's cheaper, it's more competitive. No communist-like government price controls needed.
LehiNephi is right on.
The cost of solars cell is low enough that infrastruture costs are a significant portion of the total installed cost. The quoted efficiency, 6%, implies that these cells would take up more area than silicon cells, and structiral support costs are proporional to area (I did see the text about possible doubling of efficiency). Another disadvantage to low efficiency cells is increased thermal loading.
What they're announcing is that in the lab, they HAVE produced solar cells in which the raw materials for the process cost 10x less than silicon. They've already proven it. They aren't addressing economic viability, if they were, it would be a company's press release.
You're tired of researchers saying these things that may never work in the consumer market. The reason they keep saying these things is because it's their fucking job, you twit.
Ten times less than the cost of silicon. The article says it in the headline.
And you do know what "ten times less" means, since you remarked that it should have read "one tenth as much"
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for proper grammar, but this one isn't a real serious infraction. What the speaker means is incredibly easy to derive.
Most of our electricity is used for the creation or movement of heat. Which is spectacularly dumb and inefficient.
e.g.
http://ducts.lbl.gov/calducts.htm
Solar thermal panels can be up to 90% efficient. The vacuum tubes work in cold and cloudy climates. The energy they displace will directly reduce electricity generation costs, reduce CO2 emmissions and they are far far far cheaper than photovoltaics.
For cooling look at evaporative cooling or simply pumping the heat into a local river or ocean... Most of California's cities are sited near the Pacific... Yet air conditioning is the single largest consumer of electricity, by far.
Deleted
The idea behind Cap n' Trade is not to break the coal-gen industry's knee-caps. Rather, it is to make the price of energy (generated from sources & processes that pollute more) reflect the cost to the environment and the commons. How can we measure this price? We don't know, but we can let the market decide the net price for the costs vs the convenience/availability/advantages of whichever generation method.
The assumption here is that the market is capable of doing this, that is, the instruments being traded are liquid, there is demand & supply, it can be monitored for fraud, etc.
Is it cheaper or not? Make up your mind.
If it's cheaper, it's more competitive. No communist-like government price controls needed.
Depends what you mean by "cheaper." The total costs of existing silicon-based solar panels are FAR lower than the costs of fossil fuel generation. However, the out-of-pocket costs are not, at least not in the short run. Those costs don't take into account the environmental damage of mining/drilling required to collect fossil fuels, the pollution they engender, or the eventual "cost" to society of being dependent on exhaustible resources.
Unfortunately, people (and the corporations that they make) are notoriously bad at accounting for these types of external costs. Cap & trade converts external costs to internal costs, and, unlike command and control regulation, it incentivizes exceeding standards. That way, one company can "go green" and reduce themselves well below the cap, then trade their credits to some other company that has no desire to change what they're doing. It gives people choice, creates competition, and captures external costs.
But I guess some people just HAVE to complain about them pesky humans who want to preserve their habitat. I mean, those environmentalists act like they own the world... or at least are responsible for it.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
If you don't like cap and trade, then what would you suggest should replace it?
The problem is that even though unregulated free markets are good in many situations, there are some situations where they make things worse, not better. Situations such as the Tragedy of the Commons where individuals are sharing a limited resource. Some argue (correctly, I believe) that the reason free markets fail in these situations is that the cost of depleting the shared resource is not correctly accounted for. IMO the obvious solution is to tax the use of the shared resource in order to give it a realistic cost. But I suspect you would find taxation even more onerous than cap and trade.
So how do you propose we deal with the problem of limited shared resources? We will be facing more and more of these situations as long as we are stuck on this planet and if we simply ignore the problem and give free markets free rein then we will be no better than a bunch of lemmings rushing towards the cliff to their doom.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
"Times less" is marketing speak. It is used because "Ten times as efficient!" sounds better than "Uses 1/10th the energy!" It's a backwards way of describing a fraction. Sure it still works, but English would still work if I artedstay alkingtay ikelay isthay.
You can start ridding yourself of the marketing speak that's crept into the language by not using it.
Also, using your metric for validating language, 'I can haz' is now acceptable. 12.6 million results confirm it. http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=I+can+haz
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Does anyone know how I can contact this company? I am a collector of solar power patents and I simply MUST have this one! = )
3A 4E 22 05 C1 83 0B 7A
It's random, but my posting it here is probably considered illegal to someone.
"Hey baby, who needs cheap nanopillars when you can have my megapillar for free?"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you don't like cap and trade, then what would you suggest should replace it?
Nothing.
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money
Than silicon, duh
Not dealing with the limited resources problem == suicide. If you don't want to intelligently deal with survival issues, fine. I have no problem with you taking your own life. But if you want to continue to deplete our limited resources at an insane rate don't be surprised if you run into severe conflicts with those of us who would prefer to have our species continue.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
There is demand for them. In colorado someone stole them off a public building near aspen.
I would say that the markets do correctly account for the total current, local cost. The issue is that the realization of the "total" cost is so far in the future (or so far away geographically) that the discounted present,local cost is not very high. The market appears to be operating with the assessment that the rate of return for not spending to "fix it" now and having to pay in the future is better than spending now to avoid having to "fix it" in the future.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Since the 10x is a BS estimate anyway, why not just go for a total Spinatap'escue title?
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Is cost represented on a linear scale? What does cost really represent? Would the cost vary by nation of manufacture? What point in time was the cost estimation created?
Maybe a more accurate title would be:
As of the writing of this article, the monetary manufacturing cost in the US, including labor and materials, of Nanopillar Solar may be lower by a factor of 10 than that of current Silicon based solar technologies.
Too bad the title line is only 50 characters. And I still made a lot of assumptions even there, there are still a lot of leaps to be made regarding cost.
Maybe you just don't realize how many assumptions you are making even by saying "1/10 the cost". That one more assumption to say "10x less" isn't really that much of a leap. Or better yet, maybe the title of an article isn't supposed to explain the entire article, it's just supposed to tell you what it's about and get you to read it.
Cadmium is one of the "toxic heavy metals" {insert music pun here} and because of this, no matter what amount is used and to any degree of value, it will be shot down by the enviro-namby-pambys who took lead outta my solder.
Sure. Ridiculous.
Ridiculous, like covering 40% of your average city with ugly, black, heat-island-creating road tar? (Which, btw, could conceivably eliminate your "ugly solar farm" argument entirely)
You don't realize just how much of a city is parking lot until you see it from the air at low altitudes. Google maps helps, but it's just not close because you don't really get the sense of scale. So it's a double-benefit: Parking lots create power, and by putting solar panels above them, keep your car at a comfortable 80-90 instead of an energy-sapping 140.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
If I own a solar panel on earth I can decide what to do with the power. It it's in space I can have little or no say.
If 'the people' in Amendment 2 are 'the state' then Amendments 1, 2, 4, 9, and 10 benefit the state, not you.
But the market doesn't decide the price, the government does. A government that just happens to be starving for money. Hmm, a potentially unlimited, ill-defined tax on something that everyone uses, but is considered "evil". Surely they wouldn't abuse their unlimited authority to get cash money from those evil people who are polluting (ie everyone).
There is a very simple way to deal with it. Private ownership. When someone owns it, they will protect it, and will keep it clean. If you want to sue someone for pollution, all you have to do is make your case in court. In the case of global warming, you would make a case in court, prove damages, show that the defendant in question contributed to those damages, and if your claims didn't hold up, then your case would get thrown out. If it did, then you get your money.
Understand that a tax on carbon emissions is a tax on life itself. People make carbon dioxide just from living. I don't think it's fair to tax people for living.
Jeff Goldblum's estate?
Did he die again?.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
A direct CO2 tax.
There's no need for all this pussyfooting around with setting up an artificial market to please the everything-must-be-a-market fetishists -- and enable the corporations to collect the revenues instead of the people. It's all intended to be Goldman Sachs's next bubble, anyway.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/28816321/the_great_american_bubble_machine/print
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
As far as I have understood the problem with Solar ( and Wind ) is not so much the cost of the generation itself, but rather the costs associated with storing the energy to account for varying production and demand. At the moment there are only two options that are even remotely close to being economical and that is pumped hydroelectric storage or simply keeping a traditional power plant ( typically hydroelectric or natural gas ) on standby and ready to go when the renewable one does not produce. The problem with the former approach is partially cost and also a limited number of locations where you can do it. The problem with the second approach is that if you are going to build a whole second powerplant to allow for redundancy during periods of low wind / insolation then you might just as well use it all the time and save the cost of building the renewable one (this is less true for plants where fuel costs are significant , like gas, and more so for plants where it is a small fraction of the energy price, as it is for nuclear and hydro ).
Basically with capacity factors around 30% at best ( for wind ) the renewable energy sources would have to be substantially cheaper than nuclear, hydroelectrics and coal before it would make economic sense to use them. You could tax the other forms of energy generation to level the playing field but it is hardly an ideal solution. Basically barring dramatic improvements in energy storage technology I don't think renewables will be able to dent our fossil fuel use unless their price per kwh drops to at least half that of traditional energy sources. Parity on per kwh of generation is not enough unless you can overcome the variability.
PS: No in most areas thermal solar is not good enough because even if it takes weeks for the output to drop you would still need other plants as backup just in case the insolation goes low for a month ( as can very well happen ). Note that thermal solar ( in contrast to photovoltaic ) is very sensitive to clouds, and that it is not practical to store thermal energy for much longer than a few days at most (especially not at several hundred degrees). Also it is not necessary for output to drop to 0 for the variability to be a problem. A powerplant losing half its output in a few days will also require some sort of buffering to keep a stable supply.
If the old method costs 1 dollar to make per unit.
And, the new method only cost one tenth as much.
Does to new method cost
A. 10 cents
B. 0.10 dollars
C. 0.10 cents
D. A and B
E. B and C
F. None of the above.
Tim S.
Anyone with half a brain or two times your brain capacity should know that saying "B is ten times less than the cost of A" means "B is one tenth the cost of A"!
Just like someone says "A is ten times more than B" you know they mean "A := B * 10".
Your just too literal minded ScanMan/RainMan ScentCone dude. English is a flexible language. Take you math nerd hat off for a change and a challenge in comprehening what others are saying to you rather than imposing your New World Order unto them.
Now all you need to do is to ask a clarifying question to make sure your "translation" into your narrowly focused math-nerd version of English meets your perfect way of talking. If they go yeah, that's what they meant then you've passed the primary Powel Janulus [who spoke over 80 human languages and was fluent in 50+ of them] test of communication, understanding others need not require perfect speach! You then become less of a math nerd to the outside world ScanMan/RainMan ScentCone. Good luck learning your new found social skills.
I have a problem with people who act like they own the world.
And the things every one of you green people don't understand are economics and history.
Economics - what you want is a price difference to incentivize green technology and practices. What you fail to see is that making energy more expensive raises the prices of everything but this could be done just as easily by cutting or eliminating taxes on green technology, without hurting the economy at large.
History - you think unbridled capitalism allows evil corporations to plunder and abuse the environment. Let's look at how we take care of the environment here, vs. China or Russia or Cuba etc. The rich guy wants a beautiful backyard full of nature and has the means to defend it. The poor guy doesn't have the time or money to lobby the government or corporations to protect nature.
I have a problem with people who act like they own the world.
I have a problem with all those people who don't own the world and also act like they don't.
What you fail to see is that making energy more expensive raises the prices of everything but this could be done just as easily by cutting or eliminating taxes on green technology,
Subsidising or taxing are the two ways of dealing with externalities. Subsidising is always the wrong way as it doesn't aim to represent the price of the externalty. With subsidies you simply get overproduction of the subsidised goods.
without hurting the economy at large.
Subsidies hurts the economy atleast as much as taxes. And usually more.
History - you think unbridled capitalism allows evil corporations to plunder and abuse the environment
No. That would be greed and power. And you can find greed equally well among communists, capitalists or whatever.
The rich guy wants a beautiful backyard full of nature and has the means to defend it. The poor guy doesn't have the time or money to lobby the government or corporations to protect nature.
Of course, that just proves that you have learned nothing from the current economic crisis, which is that rich guys aren't logical, just like poor guys aren't logical.
The rich guy will gladly dump tons of shit on his neighbours background when the neighbour isn't watching. And his neighbour will do the same. And they both end up with shitty backyards because most of their lobbying will go towards preventing laws forbidding shit dumping.
I have a problem with all those people who don't own the world and also act like they don't.
Was this supposed to be a wisecrack? Because it wasn't wise, and you sound like you're on crack. No one owns the world. So sane people don't act like they own it.
Subsidising or taxing are the two ways of dealing with externalities.
No, neither of these are good ways. We write laws to deal with them. If a company is dumping crap in the river, you outlaw it, and if they keep doing it, people go to jail.
Subsidies hurts the economy atleast as much as taxes. And usually more.
You give no example of how "Subsidies hurts", and moreover a tax break is not a subsidy.
That would be greed and power. And you can find greed equally well among communists, capitalists or whatever.
I won't argue that, but again, look at history. The US is the most powerful nation on earth, but we do more than almost any other to take care of the environment. Look at China and Russia. Both among the most powerful. China has perpetual smog such that people wear masks, and Russia has drained the Aral Sea and turned large swaths of central Asia into desert - both causing untold human death and misery I might add.
The rich guy will gladly dump tons of shit on his neighbours background when the neighbour isn't watching. And his neighbour will do the same. And they both end up with shitty backyards because most of their lobbying will go towards preventing laws forbidding shit dumping.
I never claimed anyone was logical. But I think self-interest is stronger than revenge- I don't see people going to town hall to fight for their right to get back at their neighbor with further property destruction.
... it has been banned from electronics in the European Union. Solar panels go onto roofs. One nasty hail storm and you potential have a cadmium contaminated yard. Thanks but no thanks.
Was this supposed to be a wisecrack? Because it wasn't wise, and you sound like you're on crack. No one owns the world. So sane people don't act like they own it.
Yes,noone owns the world. But we would be better of if more people acted like they did. Because then they wouldn't go around polluting it like they do.
No, neither of these are good ways. We write laws to deal with them. If a company is dumping crap in the river, you outlaw it, and if they keep doing it, people go to jail.
So you are saying that we should send people producing/using cars to jail because they produce an externalty?
You give no example of how "Subsidies hurts", and moreover a tax break is not a subsidy.
Sigh. Wasn't "overproduction of the subsidised goods" clear enough? Like ethanol corn for example. Or food in general for that matter (although food is subsidised exactly because the goverment wants overproduction).
Also, subsidies usually enumerate the subsidised products and therefore fail to include alternative products and new inventions, all-in-all causing stagnation on the market. Finally, my personal opinion is that subsidies are easier to corrupt, but I have nothing concrete on that one.
But I think self-interest is stronger than revenge- I don't see people going to town hall to fight for their right to get back at their neighbor with further property destruction.
It isn't revenge. It is just that they need somewhere to dump their own garbage that isn't their own backyard. It is pure destructive self-interest.
Yes,noone owns the world. But we would be better of if more people acted like they did.
I think what you mean to say is people should act more responsibly and be environmentally conscious. You can own something and still treat it like crap. What I'm making my point about is the conceit that's inherent in most proponents of anthropogenic global warming. "Humans rule Earth but most are bad and pollute, not like me, and so I can feel good about myself when I buy this poison-filled lightbulb."
So you are saying that we should send people producing/using cars to jail because they produce an externalty?
No. We should send people who hurt other people to jail. A company can use toxic chemicals in production and dispose of them safely- we jail the ones that dump it and poison people. People can drive cars responsibly. We jail the people that drive drunk or otherwise recklessly such that they harm people. It's pretty simple.
Good explanation on subsidies. I agree 100%. Only problem is the second half of my point, which is "a tax break is not a subsidy"
It isn't revenge.
The way you wrote it it was. Neighbors don't dump on each others' lawns, we have garbage trucks that take it away for us. A landfill isn't really destructive, and we have plenty of space for them. Then after a few decades you can build a school on top of it like my town did.