Cost has always been one of solar’s biggest problems. Traditional solar cells require silicon, and silicon is an expensive commodity (exacerbated currently by a global silicon shortage). What’s more, says Peter Harrop, chairman of electronics consulting firm IDTechEx, “it has to be put on glass, so it’s heavy, dangerous, expensive to ship and expensive to install because it has to be mounted.” And up to 70 percent of the silicon gets wasted in the manufacturing process. That means even the cheapest solar panels cost about $3 per watt of energy they go on to produce. To compete with coal, that figure has to shrink to just $1 per watt.
Nanosolar’s cells use no silicon, and the company’s manufacturing process allows it to create cells that are as efficient as most commercial cells for as little as 30 cents a watt. “You’re talking about printing rolls of the stuff—printing it on the roofs of 18-wheeler trailers, printing it on garages, printing it wherever you want it,” says Dan Kammen, founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. “It really is quite a big deal in terms of altering the way we think about solar and in inherently altering the economics of solar.”
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2007/green/item_59.html
Christian,
You keep posting this sort of stuff and you will make me want to leave this country….. in dispair.
Christian, I passed the link onto an American friend of mine last night (I am trying to get friends of mine to get involved in this stuff more) and he came back with the comment that this looks like an example of a disruptive technology
What is a disruptive technology?
Do you mean like a paradigm changer?
It might change paradigms. You might say the internet was a disruptive technology because of what it did to the telecoms industry (like all those telecoms guys started thinking they were cool rather than being close cousins to accountants)
I’m still trying to find out what kind of surface area is required here. I also suspect there may well be issues with durability in a thin-film photovoltaic system - but then, no doubt it works best at certain specific wavelengths, so if you could apply a protective coating which was transparent at those wavelengths… yeah, probably something they could iron out.
Nice to have some idea what the photovoltaic nano-substrate is composed of. But the very fact that they’re racing to build factories is extremely encouraging. Disruptive technology? Oh, definitely. If you can get it to 30c a watt and distribute it effectively to the consumer, you’re looking at a complete redesign and restructuring of the electricity industry right there.
Christian, Further to my throw-away on the meaning of disruptive technology to expand it on it disruptive technology is when something is introduced that disrupts the way things are done both socially and technically e.g. the Luddites in the UK rebelled because they knew the introduction of technology into their industry would see them unemployed, not because they were enemies of modernity… and the were right they did lose their jobs.
Well, I don’t think Nanosolar will kill the baseload powerplant but it might help us become less reliant on it.
Dirk brings up an interesting point. I had a look at Nanosolars website and could not see efficiency listed anywhere. It may cost less per watt to produce but if you need a massive surface area of the stuff its likely to restrict its applications.
I really wish to see the circuit …..
remember in our lab practicle, some cells were in series even if only some cell wont recieve direct sunlight, the whole cluster of 1X1 in that array of 8X8 was getting affected….
if something similar is the case with this birds can cause a real danger to efficiency….
Since it is a thin film, there is chance of it getting tore/broken due to different factors…. how will this affect the system ….
and lastly … how will be wiring take place ….. and what if there isshort circuit in the system ……
phew …. too many questions…..