Breakthrough in solar photovoltaics 676
An anonymous reader writes "The Holy Grail of researchers in the field of solar photovoltaic (SPV) electricity is to generate it at a lower cost than that of grid electricity. The goal now seems to be within reach.
A Palo Alto (California ) start-up, named Nanosolar Inc., founded in 2002, claims that it has developed a commercial scale technology that can deliver solar electricity at 5 cents per kilowatt-hour. " As always, take these claims with a dose of salt the size of the Hope Diamond.
Cost ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Could we "coat" a laptop with these in order to enhance its battery life duration ?
interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this mean I can turn my roof into one huge solar panel by "painting" solar panel on it?
Exciting.. Where Do I Sign? (Score:5, Interesting)
However if it is indeed true, it should not be a huge surprise. The cost of solar has been falling in recent years.
I did speak to a solar firm about putting in enough to run my house ( 69 kwh/month ) the cost to install was going to be around 75,000 dollars, and in my area electricity is still to cheap to justify the cost.
However if I can install at this super low 5 cents/kwh, I just might bite the bullet. That is roughly 2 cents/kwh cheaper than my utility sells juice for!
Good article!
Check out their news page (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.nanosolar.com/articles.htm [nanosolar.com]
They've got government contracts, funding out the wazoo, etc. They're not just a garage shop with fancy website.
Re:Cost ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:These are probably dye-sensitized semiconductor (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this is the main problem with solar cells. Until someone comes up with an effecient dye based on a more abundant metal there is no possible way that solar cells can become ubiquitous.
Though it is unclear from the site what sort of dyes this company is using -- perhaps they have found a new one. Though i suspect if they had it would be all over their site. I gather, rather, that they are just using the "nano" buzzword to make their stuff sound new and cool. Oh well.
OH, by the way i am not a solar cell scientist -- but i do work down the hall from a few. Cool.
Heard it all before! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I *am* a fan of nuclear energy; the economic case is only poor because the clean-up requirements are absurdly expensive - considering that coal-fired plants spew an order of magnitude more radioactive fallout across the countryside.
Still too expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
Anything much more than that without ample tax incentives (and maybe not even then) just isn't going to happen on a large scale.
Re:Two lousy links for nanosolar (Score:2, Interesting)
$30 / square meter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Cost ? (Score:2, Interesting)
I could go into all sorts of theories on how this might be done (orbital tethers, microwave transmissions, etc.), but the truth of the matter is that I propose no such thing. Space-based solar power is for space...where we ought to be by now anyway.
Re:Cost ? (Score:5, Interesting)
I doubt the power monopolies are very happy about this though. If you can buy a machine that generates power, it will eventually put them out of business.
Re:Per Square _inch_? (Score:3, Interesting)
Peak ncident solar radiation is typically ~ 1 kW per square meter. That the article claims efficiency of 12%, so the 120 watts is per square meter (under strong sun). It's interesting to me that this thing delivers at 110V.
Affordable solar has been on the horizon for a long, long time. There's a good amount of activity at present (Konarka [konarkatech.com] is another interesting company); let's hope someone is actually able to deliver soon.
Also, let me pre-emptively respond to a few posts that I know we'll see:
- solar energy is transient, but if it's cheap enough, you can (gasp!) store the energy- compress air, lift water, etc.
- if the efficiency is high enough, you can generate a significant portion of U.S. electrical demand with solar.
To wit:
Annual U.S. electrical consumption: ~ 3.6 trillion kWh (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geo
Avg. daily solar insolation, U.S.: Around 5 kWh per sq. meter (http://www.windsun.com/Solar_Basics/Solar_maps.h
Okay... 365 days in a year... 12% efficiency... that works out to 16 billion sq. meters of panels... that's 6400 sq. miles... U.S. has ~ 3.6M square miles... so you'd need to cover 0.2% of land area. So it's a matter of economics, not raw requirements.
I wonder what % of U.S. land area is rooftops & other available space.
Someone please check my math, but I've heard the '100 mi x 100 mi of panels powers the US' claim before, so I appear to be consistent with that (I arrived at 80 miles on a side).
Re:Cost ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Avg. solar radiation is surprisingly uniform. Sure, the southwest is higher, but it's at most 2x anywhere else in the U.S.
Re:Cost ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Biggest problem I can think of off the top of my head is how to get the power down to the ground and into the power grid for circulation...
Neither solar nor nuclear (Score:2, Interesting)
To put it another way, you can potentially air-condition and service large buildings with solar panels on the walls and heat sinks in the basement, but you will not solve the eventual oil crisis while people are still commuting from suburbs to those buildings. You would need a social transformation that moved the economy back to where people live, so that transport costs are minimised. The real snake oil is the so-called hydrogen economy which depends on making the centralised power available via transported hydrogen gas, supplied by the existing oil companies. It will enable the oil companies to maintain the social structures and the distribution system which enable them to make so much money - and society will have to pay the cost of conversion of the distribution system, vehicles etc. while maintaining their strangehold on the economy and the political system.
Of course, I might prove wrong and society might be prepared to change its ways in the necessary time frame - but if it does, I will be pleasantly amazed.
Mmm.. (Score:1, Interesting)
I suspect somebody has got their units mixed up somewhere....
Is single-sourcing all of our energy desirable? (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if this is part of the "most Slashdotters are Trekkies" effect which presumes that all power in THE FUTURE is generated by antimatter reactors, and so if we haven't found a power source that can replace everything, it must not be any good.
Morons.
Re:Cost ? (Score:5, Interesting)
This peak demand electricity is the costliest to produce. That's when you bust out the natural gas turbines, and start running your boilers and reactors at full tilt. A field of solar cells, at the right price, would really lower the cost of delivering electricity during these peak times.
I recall a news story a few years ago about a resident in my home town (Philly) who outfitted his roof with solar cells. All of his appliances were DC powered, and during some seasons of the year his meter flowed backward; he was producing more power than he was pulling off the grid.
Their site lacks details (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is single-sourcing all of our energy desirable? (Score:5, Interesting)
A set of Solar Panels on the roof of a house (or rather some solar thermal water heater) cannot replace all the gas that a house needs. But it CAN reduct your enegy bill considerably. My dad has a setup like that on our roof and he got a visit from the utilities who thought he has mucked around with the meter. Not so, a few simply black sets of pipies pre heated the water which helped reduce the electicity bill.
I work in a building which (admittedly with the help of a solar research institute) has reduced its energy consumption by 65% by good use of isolation and glazing. I might add that this is in Germany, not exactly the sunniest place in the world, so it works in more northern climes too.
The key here is local power generation and better isolation of the building instead of massive central power stations. For instance, the people in the previous article moans that a notebook cannot be powered by it. No, maybe not. But those cells might increase the duration of your battery by an hour or two and that is useful in itself. Because you get more out of your notebook and reduce consumption of fossil/nuclear powered electricity.
Most solar research does not deal with PV in any case, it deals with better isolation and solar thermal (concentrated rays and such) to reduce reliance on other energy sources.
Anone wants to know more about Solar please visit
ISES [ises.org].
Re:Per Square _inch_? (Score:3, Interesting)
If we assume they actually meant that the complete panel had 120W, at the size given it would make 9.2W/m^2, which would be an efficiency factor of about 1%. (10W per kW incoming sunlight). I don't know what the typical efficiency factor of other solar cells is, but I'd be surprised if they are all below 1%.
Or maybe it's actually 120 W/m^2 (which would make an efficiency of about 12%)? After all, confusion between metric and imperial units is not unheared of
Re:Cost ? (Score:3, Interesting)
I live in Portland, and, per the Insolation Map linked above, we get about 4 kWh/m^2/day on average. If you figure on using a twelve (3x4) square meter panel, that's 48 kWh/day. At 12% efficiency, you're at 5.76 kWh/day of actual generated electricity.
Since it's an average, you can figure on that output year 'round. So, 5.76 * 365 days is 2102.4 kWh/year. At $0.09 per kWh (the going rate for electricity here), that's $189.22 per year of payback if you sold every bit of generation back to the power company.
Since we don't know how much the 10x14 foot panel generates, it's hard to estimate what one might cost. But if it was REALLY CHEAP at US$2000, it would take you over ten years to pay back the cost of the panel. Ten years is (AFAIK) longer than the typical lifespan of your average solar panel.
Having said all that, there are many reasons other than direct cost to have solar power generation, such as being somewhere that grid connectivity isn't available. And, if you're somewhere that the price of electricity is higher that $0.09/kWh, that shifts the numbers, too.
It's great to see new solar technologies coming to fruition. Hopefully this is one to get excited about. It probably isn't, but one can hope.
Immediately, we need a New Rule: (Score:3, Interesting)
(which congress should pass but never will)
Oil companies should not be permitted to buy this
company, or the patents.
Guess who owns nickel-metal hydride battery patents? Yup. Exxon-Mobil. No electric cars here, move along, nothing to see.
If there is a threat to their business model, energy companies will buy out the corporation which developed the tech and drown it in the nearest toilet.
Re:Taking care of some things in one post. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it's closer to the truth to say you just aren't comprehending what I am saying. I never said solar was free. Solar's *ENERGY COST* - what you pay to get energy out of it - I set at that $.20 / kWh sort of range. None of that is fuel cost.
A solar panel, you have to buy and install the panel. You must also maintain it. That is your cost. You HAVE A CAPITAL COST. You have maintenance costs, too. You have to pay money to get solar energy. How many ways do I have to say it? But there IS NO FUEL COST. If you'd like to test this, I'll suggest an experiment! Go *buy* a solar array (note, again, i said buy, I'm not claiming the panel is free,) and then just *leave it outside*. Be sure - this is critical for the experiment - not to pay anybody any money. You will notice that it produces energy. For free. Hence no fuel cost.
Now, go buy a natural gas generator. You will, again, have to pay capital cost. (albeit much less.) Now. Leave it outside, don't pay anybody. Wait as long as you like. You will notice no energy comes out of it. You will have to go *buy fuel* to make it go. Hence, you have a fuel cost.
For both energy sources, the cost of energy produced is capital + O&M + fuel. Roughly, for a diesel generator, that works out to (very little + something substantial + quite a bit.), with a sum of maybe $.04 / kWh. For a solar array, it's (really kind of a lot + very little + zero.) fo ra sume of about $.18 / kWh.
Re:alternative energies (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure it can. The problem is that people just don't think big enough.
Generally, current solar technology can harness and deliver to the consumer about 1% of overall solar influx per square meter (this applies to photovoltaics, thermal collectors or other means). With an overall world consumption of about 5e20 Joules/year and solar intensity of 1.4kW/m^2, you end up needing a total collector area about the size of Alaska.
That sounds big, but get out a globe and look at it. Alaska isn't all that big compared to the size of the earth, and we already utilize much more than that space just to grow food. Just the amount of space we've allocated for paved roads and parking lots worldwide adds up to a noticeable fraction of this amount.
If plastic photovoltaic or photosynthesis-based solar power collection systems were deployed in small patches floating on the oceans, all energy needs for the world could be supplied without much noticeable impact on the environment or people. (I think photosynthesis makes more sense because it can generate more convenient and storable hydrocarbon fuels and it can create the plastics used to build the systems out of thin air.)
The key is to develop highly automated industrial scale deployment and maintenence methods. Just like huge cargo ships currently operate with just a couple of people on board, these huge collectors would be tended to by a few people using massive automated equipment. If deployment costs can be reduced to $30/m^2 for example, it would take about $30Trillion to build the trillion square meters of collectors required. That's less than one year of the world's gross economic output, and only equivalent to a few years of total fossil fuel expenditures.
Re:Cost ? (Score:3, Interesting)
So in northern climates or overcast areas then you look at either building a really BIG array that costs many thousands of $$$ or supplement with wind turbines (much cheaper cost/watt). Even then in the winter you may need the assistance of a gasoline or diesel generator (which is heresy to suggest in some circles). Unless you're one of those really lucky people with a spring, stream or falling water that produces enough head for microhydro, in which case you'll be selling power to the neighbors. If that article is accurate and they can deliver production systems at a dollar a watt, then happy power days are here, my friends. For about...10-15 grand, depending on where you live, you could cut your power bill to zero or near zero. For a little more the average house could bid their local power company a fond farewell. Take your electrons and shovel them!
The real interesting question will be how will the local governments and power utilities react to the sudden loss of revenue when people start dumping them? I could see protectionist regulations (all your electrons belong to us), use taxes on solar systems or very large increases on those remaining tied to the grid. Sooner or later we would reach a new production equilibrium but the infrastructure transition is going to be ugly. Lot of utilities have come to believe they have a right to exist and local government would have to replace the revenue. If these new $1/watt systems landed suddenly, you would see a lot of people cutting the cord. The rest of the technology for the home power cycle is already there.
Yee-ha.
Re:alternative energies (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm partly serious here.
Re:Cost ? (Score:4, Interesting)
The transition would be tough, but I would hope that they don't go to prtectionist. They need to switch to transmission, storage, night production, and middle man. Businesses use a lot more power than they have roof space, typically during the day when you are not home and your home system will be producing more power than you are using. So, the utilities job is to purchase that power (it can be in exchange for night power) and deliver it to businesses during the day. The utility would also provide power at night. If large scale storage is more efficient than local storage and the solar build out was big enough utilities would also become central storage such that they would store excess daytime production for delivery at night.
Likely (and it exists currently) you pay a connection fee and any excess power used. In the future, there will probably be a connection fee that encompasses storage if that is available, a rate for power to the home beyond what is generated, and perhaps the wholesale rate for when day generation exceeds night use that could defray the connection and storage charge. As businesses will be paying for that power a portion should go to the generator.
Re:Exciting.. Where Do I Sign? (Score:2, Interesting)
Your best investment would be replacing your most inefficient appliances and hvac equipment, increasing insulation and taking a look at any particularly wasteful ways in which you use energy. Doing that could probably cut that figure in half, with a modest investment and minimal changes in lifestyle. Then take a look at solar.
Optimizing for energy efficiency can be a very satisfying game to play. But unlike many such tech hobbies (hot-rodding, building game systems, etc.) it actually saves money. Try it!
Re:Cost ? (Score:2, Interesting)
I actualy found this comment intresting. The sun will heat up the roof and cause the house to get warmer right? Then to keep your house cool you have to pump more A/C to compensate and keep you house a an acceptable level, right?
If the panels are absorbing the light and sun radiation then it would seem even more effective wouldn't it? Right now it does not seem that type of senario was worked into the equation.
Maybe we are going about it the wrong way, many seem to be trying to fit a round peg into a square hole by hoisting solar as a do all technology. How about if you would have a set up that certain appliances were directly connected to the solar power intake. For example your washer / dryer and possibly AC/Heat(they wont likely be on at the same time) all powered off of solar. You lights computers, TV's etc will still run off the grid but imagine the relief by developing cells to take the biggest burdens off of you. Of course you would still be able to run these devices off of the power grid in the case of malfunctioning cells or extended periods of low sunlight.
Re:Taking care of some things in one post. (Score:4, Interesting)
Similiar to hydro, solar's cost component is primarily in the upfront cost of equipment rather then the uncertain "trailer" of fossil fuels. Coal - the dirtiest fuel you can imagine - is currently extremely available for next to nothing, however. Natural gas prices fluctuate a great deal but natural gas power plants are relatively cheap to setup and can be run at opportune times when power is extremely profitable. These plants are often called "peakers" for that reason. I mention the timing aspect because it is especially important to analyzing solar. Why you say? Because
solar's timing stinks.
Direct solar energy availabilty does not line up well with electricity consumption. This means that as solar power approaches "free" the part of the system that stores the solar energy becomes the dominant cost component. There also aren't many great ways to store energy from PV panels. Chemical batteries deteriorate, are usually toxic, heavy, expensive and space hogging. Demand forms of energy production like hydro and natural gas do not have this limitation and can be respond to customer needs rapidly. Coal is slower but can be moderated with the demand curve to an extent.
Another key point is that photovoltaic cells produce direct current and not the alternating current required for most consumer and industrial needs. A small amount of energy storage and an inverter are necessary to transform the energy from a solar panel into something useful. This becomes important again when talk turns to distributed production. The fixed cost of the electronics simply does not scale particularly well. I wish it were simpler to just hoist some PV panels on everyone's roof but it isn't.