US Funds Consortium to Explore Cheaper, More Efficienct CdTe Solar Cells (energy.gov) 39
The largest funder of clean energy in America is its federal Department of Energy. And the second-most common photovoltaic technology in the world (after silicon) is cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar cells. So this week the U.S. Department of Energy announced an initiative to improve them, aspiring to make CdTe cells "less expensive, more efficient and develop new markets for solar cell products."
Without strengthened domestic manufacturing capacity, the U.S. will continue to rely on clean energy imports, exposing the nation to supply chain vulnerabilities while simultaneously losing out on the enormous job opportunities associated with the energy transition. The Cadmium Telluride Accelerator Consortium's efforts to spur technological advancements will increase America's competitiveness, bolster domestic innovation, and support clean electricity deployment supporting President Biden's goal of achieving a net-zero economy by 2050....
To achieve these goals, the team has a broad research plan that includes CdTe doping strategies, characterizing and exploring new CdTe contacting materials, and work to enable a bifacial CdTe module that absorbs light from the front and back of the module. DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will administer the consortium, whose leaders were chosen through a competitive solicitation NREL released last year. The consortium will be led by the University of Toledo, First Solar, Colorado State University, Toledo Solar Inc., and Sivananthan Laboratories, Inc. NREL will serve as a resource, support, and technical analysis center as the consortium develops a technology roadmap, conducts research to meet targets set within the roadmap, and regularly assesses the domestic CdTe supply chain for challenges and opportunities.
Specific goals on the consoritum's web site include:
To achieve these goals, the team has a broad research plan that includes CdTe doping strategies, characterizing and exploring new CdTe contacting materials, and work to enable a bifacial CdTe module that absorbs light from the front and back of the module. DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) will administer the consortium, whose leaders were chosen through a competitive solicitation NREL released last year. The consortium will be led by the University of Toledo, First Solar, Colorado State University, Toledo Solar Inc., and Sivananthan Laboratories, Inc. NREL will serve as a resource, support, and technical analysis center as the consortium develops a technology roadmap, conducts research to meet targets set within the roadmap, and regularly assesses the domestic CdTe supply chain for challenges and opportunities.
Specific goals on the consoritum's web site include:
- Enable cell efficiencies above 24% and module costs below $0.20/W by 2025
- Enable cell efficiencies above 26% and module costs below $0.15/W by 2030
- Maintain or increase domestic CdTe PV material and module production through 2030.
The problem with CdTe (Score:1)
Re:The problem with CdTe (Score:5, Informative)
You could have spent at least a minute researching this... but I know it must be hard for you to use your brain.
https://www.firstsolar.com/en/... [firstsolar.com]
First Solar’s state-of-the-art recycling facilities are operational in the U.S., Germany and Malaysia, with a scalable capacity to accommodate high volume recycling as more modules reach the end of their 25+ year life. Our proven recycling process achieves high recovery rates. Up to 90 percent of the semiconductor material can be reused in new modules and 90 percent of the glass can be reused in new glass products.
Re:The problem with CdTe (Score:4, Insightful)
"Up to 90 percent of the semiconductor material"
"Up to" is code for "we managed this 1 time under very specific circumstances"
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You're right. Into the landfill they go then!
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That's a really nice ad. Including the most important number being "up to", which means any number between 0-90%.
Fine print is ignored as usual:
>Cadmium and tellurium separation and refining are conducted by a third-party. For pre-2013 sales customers, First Solar implements an unconditional prefunded Collection and Recycling Program for end-of-life modules. With the sale of each module, First Solar historically set aside sufficient funds to meet the estimated future collection and recycling costs of its
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First Solar’s state-of-the-art recycling facilities are operational in the U.S., Germany and Malaysia, with a scalable capacity to accommodate high volume recycling as more modules reach the end of their 25+ year life.
So now US, Germany and Malaysia are "third world" countries?
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That's not where recycling takes place, as the quote from the small print from the very page being cited says.
How did you manage to ignore the small print even after posted it in normal sized font for you?
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First Solar’s state-of-the-art recycling facilities are operational in the U.S., Germany and Malaysia, with a scalable capacity to accommodate high volume recycling as more modules reach the end of their 25+ year life.
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>Cadmium and tellurium separation and refining are conducted by a third-party.
BY A THIRD PARTY. In their own words. What the fuck is wrong with you?
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Those facilities are "operational", but are they actually used for any significant fraction of the solar cells? I think the argument is that many of the old cells are sent to third parties (in those Third World nations) rather than going through the facilities you keep copy-and-pasting about.
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As long as they don't something truly stupid like cut them up and throw them in a landfill, it doesn't really matter if they are being recycled. Just stack them and store them, you can do it without a roof if you really want. It's not like they are going to leech. You could stack millions of panels on a tiny lot pretty much indefinitely waiting for technology and material prices to make recycling interesting.
"most likely" [Re:The problem with CdTe] (Score:2)
because they're mostly likely just basic collect and sort facilities before being shipped out to Third World for dumping.
I read the text. That is not what the text says. That is something you made up.
if you want to lecture people about phraseology, let's look at your phrase "mostly likely". As you use is, "most likely" means "in my opinion", but that means "I totally made this up, but since it's my opinion, it can't be argue with."
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That is something for which "recyclers" have been condemned so many times, that we have laws against some of the worst excesses of Third World dumping of the most toxic things in EU.
Spent last decade under a rock? Just google "recycling of electronics, dumping third world" to find out what typical "third party recycler" means in world of electronics.
Want to still pretend that this is not a real problem and just don't give a fuck about people in third world getting poisoned by heavy metals because of this in
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Is that like broadband speeds which advertise "up to 50mbps" and you are lucky to get 15mbps actual speeds?
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If you're worried about Cd in the environment, you'd be more effective if you gathered up and recycled all of the old cadmium painted surfaces-- Cadmium red, cadmium yellow, and cadmium orange-- that were ubiquitous in the 20th century.
Shhh! (Score:4, Insightful)
There is feck all tellurium around
It's a trick. When the DoE identifies this as a critical technology, the Chinese will steal it. They will go into high volume, low cost production and deplete their tellurium reserves.
Re:The problem with CdTe (Score:5, Interesting)
Cadmium is a waste byproduct of zinc production, so it's going to be produced anyway. Combining it with Te in a more stable crystal form is actually a good way to sequester it.
Even if they don't actually get around to recycling it as they plan, they can just take a cue from the nuclear power industry: Stack 'em up on site and wait for future generations to figure it out.
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Cadmium is a waste byproduct of zinc production, so it's going to be produced anyway. Combining it with Te in a more stable crystal form is actually a good way to sequester it.
Even if they don't actually get around to recycling it as they plan, they can just take a cue from the nuclear power industry: Stack 'em up on site and wait for future generations to figure it out.
at barely 3kg produced per ton of refined zinc, a LOT more zinc will have to be dug up to get appreciable amounts of cadmium for the scale of solar production that will be required. And to get tellurium, you need to refine a LOT of copper....and lead.
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At less than 10g per m2, you don't need a whole lot of it.
There's probably a lot of old nicad batteries sitting around in stockpiles waiting to be recycled when the price and technology gets right.
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at barely 3kg produced per ton of refined zinc, a LOT more zinc will have to be dug up to get appreciable amounts of cadmium for the scale of solar production that will be required. And to get tellurium, you need to refine a LOT of copper....and lead.
I forgot that we are only allowed to have one technology to solve any problem. Thanks for reminding me. (This being /. I should add /s).
Normally the nay-sayers are arguing against solar energy entirely on the grounds that it is impractical for this to be the entire solution for all electrical production needs, but now you are arguing that Cd-Te technology is impractical because it will fall short of what is "required". Required for what? All solar power needs?
Cd-Te is 5% of the market right now, which is fi
Re: The problem with CdTe (Score:2)
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NiCad was replaced with NiMH not Lithium.
NiCads were replaced with both techologies, depending on application, but for the largest markets (consumer devices, primarily cell phones and laptops and the like), lithium ion eventually won out.
https://www.techusers.dev/evol... [techusers.dev]
https://medium.com/@diamondlit... [medium.com]
Re: The problem with CdTe (Score:2)
Re:The problem with CdTe (Score:5, Informative)
> at barely 3kg produced per ton of refined zinc
Well we produce >13 million tons of zinc annually. We use that shit for practically everything. So 39 thousand tons of cadmium per year.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy03... [nrel.gov]
At approximately 70 grams of cadmium per kw of CdTe solar panel (for 10% efficient panels mind you), that's uh... about 557 gigawatts worth of PV panels.... per year. For comparison, 2021 saw the commissioning of ~290 GW of Solar PV globally. I don't think cadmium is gonna be a limiting factor, especially if they realize their efficiency targets of 24%+
Tellurium might be a bit more of an issue, but I'm not able to find good data in a timely manner; Apparently CdTe photovoltaics use cadmium sulfide as well so that tells us they use significantly less tellurium; perhaps about half? (Te and Cd are close in atomic weight and if we assume equal amounts of CdTe and CdS that'd be about half as much Te as Cd right?)
Looks like global production is on the order of 500-ish tons per year?
https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodic... [usgs.gov]
Of course if copper production increases to support expanding renewable energy and electrical grid expansion that might help, and a market demand for Te might drive better recovery efficiency.
Might be better putting that cadmium into batteries, to be honest.
=Smidge=
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Increase the value of Tellerium by a 100x and they will find a way to recycle it. The concentration in a thin film solar panelis a million times that of anything else, no way that's uneconomical to recycle. Even at a 100x the current cost it would still amount to a buck or so per m2 of PV. Thin films are thin.
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Perovskite cells also have lead. I still think the best is monocrystaline silicon wafers. Maybe with a nitride layer.
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Lead has lead, we still put that on roofs too. Less area, but 1000x the thickness.
It's such a silly thing to worry about.
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cadmium is highly toxic.
And sodium will blow up if you get it wet, yet most of us keep sodium chloride on our tables.
You may well be right in the point you’re trying to get at, but these sorts of arguments that act as if molecules don’t have different properties than their component atoms is dated, disingenuous, and possibly dangerous if they mislead someone into thinking something is safe when it actually isn’t.
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There is feck all tellurium around
Does "feck" mean "incredibly rare"? Like as rare as platinum? Compared to silicon, it's hard to compete with the cost/W performance of silicon solar cells. And given they're 20+% efficient (bi-surface) and those sell new in quantity for $0.20 to 0.40 per watt, it's hard to beat. And recycling is mostly grabbing the aluminum used for the frames, grind the rest down and melt it to slag.
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Te is 0.000004900 ; Pt is 0.000001340 ; Cd 0.000001600 ; Al 0.085000000 (number of atoms normalised to each atom of silicon ; estimated over the whole Solar system.)
So about 4 time as much tellurium as platinum. (Source : National Physical Laboratory, Kaye and Laby Tables of Physical & Chemical Constants (2005). Section 3.1.3, Abundances of the elements)
That's still pretty rare. Absolute resources are li
First Solar (Score:4, Interesting)
https://www.firstsolar.com/en/... [firstsolar.com]
Factory-rated power doesn’t always equate to performance in the field. First Solar’s Series 6 modules generate more energy for your solar plant with a module proven to deliver significantly more usable energy per nameplate watt than competing technologies.
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More "up to" bullshit , https://www.firstsolar.com/en/... [firstsolar.com]
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All solar panels are rated as "up to".
In case you didn't know, the sun is not always optimally bright and the panel angle is not usually optimum.
How about your car... "up to" 20 MPG?