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Tuesday, October 02, 2007 Display Technology Promises Cheaper SolarLarge-scale manufacturing techniques used to build LCDs could make solar power far more competitive. By Kevin Bullis
The big manufacturing equipment that has helped bring down costs for flat-screen TVs based on liquid-crystal-display (LCD) technology may soon bring prices for solar electricity more in line with prices for electricity from the grid. Applied Materials, a company based in Santa Clara, CA, that supplies manufacturing equipment to LCD makers, as well as to major microchip makers, has converted its equipment to produce thin-film silicon solar cells that are cheap enough to compete with more conventional solar cells. This may eventually lead to much cheaper solar power. Applied Materials first announced its intent to produce equipment for the solar industry last year. Since then, it has sold equipment to several solar-cell manufacturers, including Germany's Q-Cell, one of the largest solar-cell makers in the world. Last month, Applied Materials announced a new production line that further automates the process. The equipment manufactures solar cells from thin films of amorphous silicon, a material that's cheaper and more readily available than the crystalline silicon used in most solar cells. Applied Materials had considered entering the solar market for more than 15 years, says Craig Hunter, the company's general manager for thin-film products. The processes used to make liquid-crystal displays, which involve depositing extremely thin yet uniform layers of silicon and other materials on large pieces of glass, are nearly identical to those required to produce solar cells made of thin films of silicon. Applied Materials' machines handle glass sheets that are thin but cover 5.7 square meters--about the size of a single-car-garage door. "Just by moving huge pieces of sheet glass, you get big economies of scale," says Howard Branz, principal scientist and a research supervisor for silicon materials and devices at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Golden, CO. But whereas LCD makers can afford to buy such large equipment because there is an enormous market for flat-screen TVs, until recently, there wasn't enough demand for thin-film silicon solar panels to justify the investment in the manufacturing tools. One of Applied Materials' new production lines can make enough solar modules each year to generate 50 to 75 megawatts of electricity--more than the entire market for thin-film silicon just a few years ago, Hunter says. "Today there's an enormous hunger for that volume of product, and people are excited about being able to build one factory that can produce that much product," he says. Two things have happened to make the market bigger. The solar market as a whole has been growing, helped by rising energy prices and government incentives. At the same time, a shortage of the crystalline-silicon material used for conventional solar cells has increased interest in thin-film cells, which use amorphous rather than crystalline silicon. "There's no shortage of the precursors to amorphous silicon, and there probably never will be," Branz says. |
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A Price Drop for Solar Panels
05/01/2008
Comments
nekote on 10/02/2007 at 8:52 AM
98
Page 2: "In just the next few years, says Hunter, solar modules made with Applied equipment could produce electricity at a cost similar to the price of electricity in some parts of the United States--15 to 20 cents per kilowatt hour."
"next few years"
"cost similar"
"some parts of US"
"15 to 20 ¢/KWH"
I certainly hope it comes to fruition.
But, same old, same old - in a few years and still not really competitive pricing / cost.
:(
Kevin Bullis on 10/02/2007 at 3:20 PM
Nanotechnology and Materials Science Editor
22
mhiraoka on 10/05/2007 at 6:40 PM
1
eak on 10/03/2007 at 6:46 PM
8
(a) High retail electricity rates
(e.g. California and Japan, maybe Germany)
(b) Rebates (e.g. California, maybe Germany)
(c) Time of Use (TOU) net metering available
(e.g. California, probably others)
(d) High insolation (e.g. California, but definitely not Germany)
For non-TOU, my PG&E (California) rates start at $0.126/kWh, but there are 5 tiers based on daily usage, so the rates go up from there. That may sound high, but Californians pay about the same as others on average because they used only 6,732 kWh per capita (2003 data), whereas the U.S. average was 11,997 kWh per capita. So $0.126/kWh is like $0.071/kWh is other parts of the country.
For PV, TOU makes a big difference: from solar noon to six I pay/receive $0.294/kWh and other times I pay/receive $0.087/kWh. Since noon to six is great for PV, the meter is essentially always running backward at $0.294. It generally only runs forward at the $0.087 rate. That 3.4 difference makes an enormous difference in PV break-even calculations, which I wouldn't expect to find in the cited article. Here one needs about half as much PV as ones own usage to drive your bill to zero. Adding all the California pieces, PV is cost-effective. One can take out a home equity loan to install a system, and have the monthly payments be less than your monthly electric bill (this is the right way to think about it: years to break-even is a bad way).
These rates sound bad for PG&E, but they aren't. Peaking power plants cost quite a bit to run, and PV is generating strongly when peaking power plants would otherwise be turning on (e.g. maximum AC load).
The point of the above is that $0.294 is a much more favorable rate for PV than $0.126 or $0.08 (I think the national average is around $0.08 or $0.09).
nekote on 10/07/2007 at 8:50 AM
98
A very lovely explanation for the ignorant, like me, why / where such pricing could make sense, at least from an individuals financial point of view!
Thanks for a clear explanation without any vitriol!
Does that make PV the most net cost effective thing for a homeowner to borrow money for?
Or is some sort of super-insulation (or other choices), first, an even better initial investment (reduced AC / heating load) ?
killian on 10/09/2007 at 10:23 PM
54
That's an excellent question. I believe your intuition is correct: investments in things like insulation have greater payoff, but I don't have the data to cite. I remember reading that energy efficiency improvements are like generating electricity at $0.02/kWh: nothing else even comes close, but I don't have a specific reference for you.
phoenix on 10/02/2007 at 10:10 AM
63
urian1975 on 10/02/2007 at 5:27 PM
15
DougDante on 10/04/2007 at 11:00 PM
2
From:
http://www.squidoo.com/nerdanomics#module3921558
The amazing things are the numbers. One line can produce 50-75MWatts of electricity. Most US Nuclear Power Plants run at around or under 1200 MW.
If, starting in 2008, these guys have one line producing 50MW, and double the lines each subsequent year, they'll be making 1 Nuclear Power plant equivalent (1200MW) of PV every year in 2013 (requires 24 lines - they'd have 32). The US nuclear industry probably won't be able to work through the red tape of and bring another reactor online in that time frame.
And they're just one PV company among many. It seems that we're on the cusp of a solar revolution.
TimG on 10/07/2007 at 10:29 PM
8
So, I only need to know three things about a PV system. First, what is the bottom-line, installed cost. Second, how often will it have to be serviced and how much will that be? Last, how long will the system last? These things will tell me whether I can amortize the cost by reducing or eliminating my electric bill.
Tim G...
mwsmike02 on 10/12/2007 at 12:46 PM
1
Someone needs to find a contractor.
What happened to the joint venture
between MIT and Rice on solar driven
nano engines that can be infused in
paint and sprayed on?