Solar Panels Reach $1 a Watt 381
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."
thats nice (Score:1, Insightful)
get back to me when a individual can buy them for $1/watt.
Re:Chilling effects. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tellurium (Score:5, Insightful)
Cadmium Telluride? How green (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cadmium Telluride? How green (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like the classic solar is not a renewable energy source [what-is-what.com] 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.
Re:So tell me where i can buy it. (Score:3, Insightful)
This site is news for nerds, no 'news for consumers'.
Re:TCO (Score:3, Insightful)
Well it is getting to be a DIY field, with controllers and isolators being available off the shelf as well as hundreds of how-to sites springing up all over the web concerning wind, micro-hydro and solar augmentation.
But its no surprise that installation costs more than the pieces, that's sort of true about just about anything other than plug-it-in-turn-it-on appliances.
Still there is no reason to assume that the basic modules coming out of FirstSolar's plant are anywhere near ready for Joe Sixpack, and TFA is pretty vague.
The real problem is one of durability and upgrade-ability. The payout period for materials and installation of off the shelf kits to date exceeds the life expectancy of the parts, making this sort of thing only suitable for areas where there are no grid alternatives.
Re:Tellurium (Score:5, Insightful)
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*.
The fatal flaw with Grid Tied PV systems (Score:1, Insightful)
The power companies aren't stupid.
As more and more systems are installed, the first thing which will happen is the implemetation of time of use metering on residential customers.
Once time of use metering is implemented, two things will happen: Either you will be forced to sell your PV produced power at a wholesale rate
(a fraction of retail), or the power companies will move peak rates to nighttime, or both.
Your investment in a grid tied system will then be rendered practically worthless.
Re:Cadmium Telluride? How green (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate to break it to you, but nearly everything is toxic at some level. The ugly truth is that we're not going to get to a green utopia without some exotic materials that'll probably kill you if you look at them funny. Coal and oil are very safe, non-toxic materials - as is any reasonable concentration of CO2 - but the reality is that they're not green overall. The "green-ness" of a material is in its overall impact, not in its intrinsic properties. We can engineer around the fact that handling them is toxic - it's just a process and plant design question.
We aren't going to build a completely renewable energy infrastucture out of rainbows and ponies. It's going to take some very strange stuff, much of it not good for you. We just have to manage it well.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
It also won't help if your phone is disconnected or your house catches fire - what's your point?
The question was whether it makes economic sense, not if it's better than the power grid.
Re:thats nice (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org].
Re:1W/$ (Score:1, Insightful)
No, you're just insane.
They just dropped in cost and reached the level of $1/W. "Reached" doesn't necessarily imply an increase.
Thermal Solar (Score:5, Insightful)
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. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:thats nice (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, one pound on the whole Earth?
That's pretty much not existent.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
The 7805 isn't a switch-mode power supply, it's a simple series regulator. The voltage that appears across it x the current through it equals its power dissipation, i.e. the power it is merely wasting as heat in order to drop the voltage to 5V. That can be quite considerable - if it's handling 1A and dropping from 12V, it's wasting 12-5 X 1 = 7W, while delivering only 5 X 1 = 5W to the load. That's only 41% efficient. You don't want that sort of figure when your power source is solar.
A true SMPS will do much better, but unfortunately is more complicated than one three-legged IC and a few caps.
Re:TCO (Score:1, Insightful)
I have never ever heard of a government employee who would rather have people dependent on the government. It makes sense in conservative land but it's not true in reality.
Re:It's cost per watt hour, not cost per watt (Score:2, Insightful)
Solar panels will have different outputs depending on the weather and latitude where they are installed. Quoting the price per watt under idealized conditions isn't propaganda, it provides a reasonable basis for comparison.
Though if some salesman comes to your house and quotes the price per watt, you should probably get all reactionary (unless he is comparing two different systems).
Re:So tell me where i can buy it. (Score:3, Insightful)
I voraciously read all that, and I don't own anything Apple, or buy that many games, etc.
The fact that they sell the technology doesn't mean that the technology is not interesting per se.
That's the irony (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, one pound on the whole Earth?
That's pretty much not existent.
It doesn't matter if you can make juice at a buck a watt if your panels are made of unobtainium.