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Method for $1/Watt Solar Panels Will Soon See Commercial Use
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Sep 23, 2007 03:22 PM
from the i'll-take-five dept.
from the i'll-take-five dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A method developed at Colorado State University for crafting solar panels has been developed to the point where they are nearly ready for mass production. Professor W.S. Sampath's technique has resulted in a low-cost, high-efficiency process for creating the panels, which will soon be fabricated by a commercial interest. 'Produced at less than $1 per watt, the panels will dramatically reduce the cost of generating solar electricity and could power homes and businesses around the globe with clean energy for roughly the same cost as traditionally generated electricity. Sampath has developed a continuous, automated manufacturing process for solar panels using glass coating with a cadmium telluride thin film instead of the standard high-cost crystalline silicon. Because the process produces high efficiency devices (ranging from 11% to 13%) at a very high rate and yield, it can be done much more cheaply than with existing technologies.'"
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mdsolar writes "USA Today is running a pretty good article on solar power that gives an overview of the current state of the industry. Highlight include production costs of $1.19/Watt for First Solar, 40% annual cost reductions over the
last five years, revenues expected to triple in three years, and a prediction for 2014 as the year when solar photovoltaic power plants become cheaper than other forms of generation. From the piece: 'Like wind power, solar energy is spotty, working at full capacity an average 20% to 30% of the time. Solar's big advantage is that it supplies the most electricity midday, when demand peaks. And it can be located at homes and businesses, reducing the need to build pollution-belching power plants and unsightly transmission lines. In states such as California, with high electricity prices and government incentives, solar is already a bargain for some customers. Wal-Mart recently said it's putting solar panels on more than 20 of its stores in California and Hawaii. Google is blanketing its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters with 9,212 solar panels, enough to light 1,000 homes.'"
Firehose:$1/watt solar panels. by Anonymous Coward
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So, how many watts per sq. meter ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple conversion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple conversion (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Simple conversion (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh? Power = Energy / Time
1.6kW is a measure of power, not energy. You probably meant that 1 square metre receives 1.6kW hours of energy in an hour, which would give 160W hours per hour per square meter, or in power terms, 160W/m^2. That is, about the same power as would be necessary to power 3 strong light bulbs.
Somehow I think a 1m^2 window would be simpler, and if you use a triple glazed argon filled one ( as the Germans do for the passive-house standard) then you can neglect heat loss (in fact, you can get a net heat-gain ), making them considerably more efficient than chaining a 11% solar panel to an energy saving light bulb with 7%-8% efficiency (giving an overall efficiency of about 0.8% ).
No, really, in the vast majority of cases your money is better spent on insulating your house.
Re:So, how many watts per sq. meter ? (Score:5, Informative)
It did mention efficiency, so you can calculate it. Find an insolation map [wikipedia.org], find your location on it, find the average kWh/day you get, and multiply by the 11-13% figure mentioned in the article.
Cost/Benefit Analysis (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, it looks like, if they last a couple years, they would pay for themselves (166 days of full utilization, but that's not going to happen in the real world). Not bad. If they're durable (and last 5-10 years), they could really cut down on electric costs.
Oh, plus the whole saving the planet from destruction thing. I guess that might have some value.
Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
1.5 to 2 KW worth of panels is enough to run a typical house unless you have a machine room. Even if you use more power then your panels can produce, it's actually all to the good because it means the panels are recovering the highest-tier electricity costs for you, dropping you down to a lower tier with your utility company.
You don't want batteries unless you are off-grid, and most people will be on-grid. There are many grid-tie solutions available and costs have come down considerably over the years. Batteries are of course essential if you are off-grid but knowing the many hackers here I'm sure many of you would like to be able to disconnect from the utility completely, survive blackouts, and so forth... but generally speaking, the batteries and equipment required to do that adds a lot to the cost of the system and involve considerably more maintenance and worry.
A straight grid-tie system is completely maintenance free. I literally have not had to touch my system since the day it was installed. I just pop into the garage and stare at the cumulative power display every so often
http://apollo.backplane.com/Solar/ [backplane.com]
-Matt
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Like you, I have a residential grid-tied system. The panels cost roughly $5/kW, plus a similar amount for the inverter, installation, etc., and I decided it was a reasonable investment if the lifetime of the panels was 25 years. If the panels only cost $1/kW, then the whole thing would have been a reasonable investment even if the projected lifetime of the panels was 5 years. Actually I find it a little frightening to have so much of my money tied up in this physical object sitting on my roof. It's covered by insurance in case of an earthquake, etc., and by warranty under some other conditions, but in general, if someone offered me a system with much cheaper panels, and told me I might have to get them replaced more often, I would probably prefer that, because it would tie up less of my capital in the system.
This may vary from place to place. I live in Southern California, and my electric company is SCE. The way the deal here works, it's a really bad idea to pay for a system that generates more in a year than you use in a year. SCE bills me yearly. If I generate a little less than I use, they send me a small bill at the end of the year, which is fine. (If you realize you're consistently generating less than you use, you can always add more panels later, assuming you have the roof space. You've already invested in the inverter, so it's not a big deal to add more capacity.) If I generate more than I use, then they don't send me a check, they just say, "Thanks for the free electricity." If I overproduce, it means I goofed big-time, because I spent more money than I needed to on my system, and it isn't returning any more on my investment than a smaller system would. Basically if you do things right, you end up with something that almost exactly covers your yearly electricity, and that means you couldn't care less what the rates are on your schedule (schedule D, TOU, whatever) -- when you pay zero, you don't care what rate you're paying at.
May not be for real. Wait for pilot plant. (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, let's see if this is for real.
First, the "story" is a regurgitated press release. [avasolar.com] For an more critical story by a local reporter, see "AVA Solar enters crowded field", by Tom Hacker [ncbr.com].
The AVA Solar web site has almost no useful information. But they have a patent on the manufacturing process [uspto.gov], which discloses what they're trying to do. Among other things, the patent tells us that "AVA" stands for "Air-Vacuum-Air". The process is mostly conducted in a low grade vacuum, with some preprocessing in air before the vacuum chamber and some final steps after vacuum processing. The big deal is supposed to be that there's only one trip in and out of vacuum, which simplifies the production process. This patent was filed in 2000, so they've been working on this for a while now.
They're trying to make cadmium-telluride solar cells, which aren't new. The new thing is making them with a continuous process, instead of in batches.
AVA Solar has some job ads on Dice. [dice.com] They're looking for a plant manager, and on Dice they say "200+" employees, rather than the "500+" mentioned in the press release. AVA Solar doesn't seem to actually make anything yet, so they have to build and run a new kind of manufacturing plant of their own design without an organization experienced in doing that. That's hard.
They're supposedly building a pilot plant, to be running by the end of 2007. So wait a few months. If that works, it's worth looking at them again.
Re:13% is considered "high efficiency" now? (Score:5, Informative)
The trouble is cost. (Score:5, Interesting)
I too live off-grid, in a small observatory at the top of a high mountain. Even though the cost of AC mains to the site was well-beyond my means, the only reason I could afford to generate my own electricity was because I work in the electrical industry and got the batteries, heavy cable, components for regulators and inverters, etc, for free.
The only things I had to pay for was the PV array and that was not a trivial expense, at $10 per-watt, excluding taxes and shipping.
My off-grid system works very well, but it requires a lot of on-going TLC, far more than most people I know could be bothered with providing. They want systems they don't have to think about and which "just work". Few have the self-discipline and willpower required to minimise their loads, letalone perform regular maintenance checks.
I've always been a Renewable Energy geek, but if I could have got an affordable AC mains connection to my site, I would have one. As much as I love playing with windgens and solar setups, with a wife and two kids now, I simply don't have as much free time on my hands as I used to.
Re:13% is considered "high efficiency" now? (Score:5, Insightful)
On grid, every watt generated by the panels goes somewhere and does something, because you feed it back to the grid, where it reduces the demand for fuel-burning electricity.
So living off the grid can be rewarding for those who want to be very non-urban, but it should not be confused with being green, energy wise.
Re:13% is considered "high efficiency" now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Assume the panels are 1/2 the cost of the system so the total system costs $4/Watt, or $8,000 for a 2 kW system. Assuming 6 hours a day generation, that's 4380 kW-hrs a year, or at $0.10 kW/hr that's $438 worth of electricity. 438/8000 = 5.4% tax free return on investment. If you live in the US with a decent income, you would have to earn over $700 to have $438 for your power bill after taxes.
If you don't like my numbers feel free to substitute your own.
Re:13% is considered "high efficiency" now? (Score:5, Informative)
-Matt
Re:13% is considered "high efficiency" now? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would mod you up for that if I could. I try to not think about places that require AC at night
FWIW, this area has around 30 days over 100 per year. Nights are usually comfortable and the daytime humidity is low.
Shit, durring the summer in TX we're lucky if it gets below 90 at any point durring the night. Last night around 3am it got down to 87, and the AC was off for more than 15 min. AC units pretty much run 24/7 may-october here and a $350 july or august electric bill isn't at all uncommon ($.11-.13 per kw/hr here in Dallas). Temps typically only fluctuate 8-10 degrees between highs and lows here. I think solar would be a great argument here durring the summer...
Re:cadmium telluride thin film on glass... (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't need to worry about the environmental impact of cadmium, but rather the environmental impact of cadmium versus the environmental impact of current energy production from fossil fuels, etc.
Re:cadmium telluride thin film on glass... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:cadmium telluride thin film on glass... (Score:5, Funny)
Therefore, the solution to the cadium waste is obvious. Put it in the water. After all, dilution is the solution to pollution.
Re:One more question (Score:5, Insightful)
And after they place the condemnation notice on your front door, they'll kick your dog.
Seriously, what makes you think that the engineers building this thing are so incompetent that they haven't considered the possibility of hail falling on your roof? They actually do run tests like that. Second to last paragraph here [colostate.edu].
I also find it very interesting that you didn't mention the dangers of actually living in a poison-dusted home, but only the danger that the EPA might deny you your God-given right to live in said death trap.
Tell you what, when serious people who actually know about the toxicity and regulatory requirements of cadmium telluride start telling me that this solar technology may present problems, then maybe I'll start worrying.
Re:cost benefit analysis (Score:5, Informative)
Re:cost benefit analysis (Score:5, Interesting)
I run on 20 year old Solar panels here. I buy only used and discarded from solar plants out west and they look brown from the years of solar exposure but cost me far FAR less than buying new so I can afford more watts for the money. Decent used one approach $2.00 a watt but that is at higher voltages. and my panels will last another 30 years easily with care.
Re:cost benefit analysis (Score:5, Funny)
Depending on the investment in the solar panels, I might even consider setting up some sort of permanent awning to protect them from the sun at all times - protecting my investment as it were.
Back of the envelope (Score:5, Interesting)
So let's see the solar panels are 100000 cents per KiloWatt. if the last 4000 then that's breakeven. We'll assume that the power is available 10 hours per day. That's not realistic for individual use but perhaps with batteries, and selling back to the grid this could be done. So 4000 hours is 400 days. Or about 1 year. Not too bad.
Now that ignores the efficiency of either pushing back to the grid or battery storage. Let's assume 50% loss. Then this is 2 years to payback on the cells. But now we also have to payback on the batteries. Let's assume the batteries needed const aout the same as the solar cells. That would double this payback to 4 years.
Finally this is assuming capital is free. Assume one borrows at 8 % interest. Then this another 5 months to payback.
So the whole operation needs to run undegraded for 4 to 4.5 years I estimate for break even.
That figure could be cut in half if one could sell back to the grid rather than batteries. ( Fine--as long as there is a grid and every one does not do that!. )
If the cells were down to 50% effiency after 4 years then this extends out to ~7 years to payback. If one cannot get that watt for the full ten hours then this gets even longer.
It sounds to me, roughly speaking that at 1 dollar per what things are in the ballpark for breakeven.
Re:Back of the envelope (Score:5, Insightful)
Since this may seem implausible consider this. The world is on track to double its energy consumption by 2040. To reach that point in a linear fashion--not geometric one--would mean bringing on line three gigawatt class power plants every day from now until then. Right now the figure is about 10 GW plants per year because we are in early long tails of that geometric growth curve.
About now your jaw should be dropping as you ponder the implications.
Thus what has to happen, other than permanent blackouts in most of the world and carbon poisoning of the planet, is that the growth rate must be stifled. And that is going to happen when the price of electricity hits ~$10/KW-hour and all then people will economize and buy energy saving appliances.
I did not make up those numbers. read the 2030 report from the department of energy.
So I was being generous assuming 25 cents per KW-hour grid rates.
Of and by the way, note that the plant for solars cells will produce 200MW
Re:cost benefit analysis (Score:5, Informative)
--
Rent solar power for your home and save: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users-selling-solar.html [blogspot.com]