Cheaper solar: Nanosolar’s thin-film panels.
Nanosolar
Nanosolar's new factory could help lower the price of solar power, if the market cooperates.
A promising type of solar-power technology has moved a step closer to mass production. Nanosolar, based in San Jose, CA, has opened an automated facility for manufacturing its solar panels, which are made by printing a semiconductor material called CIGS on aluminum foil. The manufacturing facility is located in Germany, where government incentives have created a large market for solar panels. Nanosolar has the potential to make 640 megawatts' worth of solar panels there every year.
Solar cells made of the CIGS semiconductor, which is composed of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium, have long been considered a potential challenger to conventional solar cells made of silicon. At least in the lab, CIGS cells have reached efficiencies comparable to silicon-based solar cells. And in theory, they could be made using inexpensive printing processes, leading to much less expensive solar power. But developing manufacturing processes that maintain the high efficiencies has proven difficult.
Nanosolar claims to have solved these problems. Its solar cells still aren't as efficient as laboratory cells--the best of them convert 16.4 percent of the energy in sunlight into electricity, as opposed to over 20 percent in the lab. And on average, the company's solar panels convert just 11 percent of that energy into electricity, says Martin Roscheisen, Nanosolar's CEO. But that's high enough to compete with conventional solar panels, he says, due to modifications that improve performance and lower installation costs. He estimates that in sunny locations, power plants made using these panels could produce electricity at five to six cents per kilowatt hour, based on Department of Energy methods for calculating the amortized cost of solar panels over their lifetimes. That's near the cost of electricity from coal and significantly less than most solar power, which costs about 18 to 22 cents per kilowatt hour.
Low efficiency is a problem because it increases the cost of installing solar-power arrays--since each panel produces less power, more solar panels have to be installed. The lower power production can also increase the cost of electronics for gathering the power the panels produce. To address the latter problem, Nanosolar has increased the current its panels can generate, in part by using large aluminum-foil sheets to collect electrons from each panel. This, together with other modifications, effectively decreases the amount of wiring per panel, simplifying installation and reducing the cost of materials. The panels are also larger than competing solar panels with similar efficiencies, and so they generate more power per panel. For example, solar panels from First Solar of Tempe, AZ, one of the largest solar-panel companies in the world, generate about 70 watts. Nanosolar's generate 160 watts.
ArrayPower says its "sequenced inverter" will cut the cost of solar by more than 10 percent.
A performance boost for "small-molecule" solar cells could make the materials more practical.
A new design has funding through a White House initiative to develop cheap solar panels.
Technology Drives Economic Viability
The magic of this story is the economic story, driven by the technology story. As companies like this drive down the cost curve toward and past grid parity to the point that solar is CHEAPER than old-school technologies, the floodgates open for the transition. And nanosolar apparently has better PV technology, better process technology, as well as good strategic thinking.
Once these players pass grid parity, then they're playing in a $4Trillion/year global electricity market. That's a $4,000 Billion per year market for the math majors!:) put that in your VC pipe and smoke it! I think this is a great technology story, a great economic story, a great national security story, and a great environmental story, for that matter.
They won't saturate this market for a long, long time.
I'm not buying the second-to-last paragraph about Nanosolar running the plant at only 1MW/month because the panels aren't "bankable". That's just not plausible.
This is a company that says that they can make and sell solar panels for less than $1/watt, while their competitors are selling for $2.75/watt or more. Given that a large number of solar projects are done without any financing at all(think about government buildings, highway signage, third-world charity projects, well-to-do businesses and individuals), Nanosolar could easily sell every panel that they make for $2.50/watt - a substantial profit margin.
I'm really cheering for Nanosolar because they seem to have a breakthrough technology that could finally provide grid parity with fossil fuels. However, in 2007 they said that they had the capability to make 430MW/year, and made next to nothing. In 2008, they showed a video saying that they could make 1000MW/year, and they made next to nothing. Now, they say that they have a plant capable of making 640MW/year, but they're only making 1MW???
I'm still holding out hope for this, but something's not right here.
Being in the industry I get at least 4-6 emails from Chinese PV manufacturers each day wanting to sell their product.
Lowest price offer so far,factory door,has been US$1.75 per watt.
Tried to see if I could purchase from Nanosolar a couple of times but was told that they weren't interested in selling into the Australian market.
Makes one wonder about their marketing strategy.
Though I've never been to Australia, and though I'm aware that most of the relatively small population is concentrated along the coasts, given the bright and sunny Outback, I would think there would be some reasonable marketing potential for a solar company there. But then, you guys have teams working at warp speed on this stuff, too, as I recall. Hell, if outsiders don't want to sell to you, but Aussie!
I know we all want to save the enviroment, but why waste you wallet? I looked at solar panels a while back and they were $1000+ each! Then I finally stumbled upon this site that shows you now only how to build your own solar panels, but wind turbines as well. It cost me just a little over $100 each per solar panel, which is more than twenty times less that some solar panels. For more info visit http://8ac8d615gjld9o63blzc8m0teg.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=EARTH4
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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jpm1u
14 Comments
go solar
It's great to see these companies come online. As they say... competition breeds success (and lowers price). I relish the day when it's affordable to put a whole slew of PV panels on my house and have an EV in the garage.
As an aside: If I was a CA legislator, I would be embarrassed by Nanosolar's factory in Germany. It's also an embarassement to the US as a whole because of all the "green jobs" talk. However, I am still delighted to see another solar company get up an running.
Reply
Guest (Bob61984)
Re: go solar
Nanosolar is manufacturing their thin film (their "cells") in San Jose and shipping rolls of the film to their German plant to assemble the panels. It's a lot more efficient that way.
Germany got on board early and contracted for Nanosolar's initial output.
Look for them to build assembly plants in other countries (including the US) as their thin film capacity increases.
Reply
kbillet
60 Comments
Re: go solar
Hum,
"It's a lot more efficient that way."
Oh, I see, you manufacture all these rolls of material. Then load them onto trucks, transport them to an Airport, load them onto Airplanes, fly them across the Atlantic Ocean to Germany, unload the Airplane and truck the rolls to the factory warehouse, and unload them to a storeroom. Then you load them and fork truck them to an assembly line for use.
Yea! That does seem a lot more efficient than setting an assemble station at the output of the material and then using just-in-time processes to Assemble panels right there.
This is what is wrong with our country.
You want to sell me the broklyn Bridge?
It's all about company loyalty to it's country and it's people. Apparently Germany has it and the US companies could care less. The real value added is in Germany where the assembly occures. We, the US citizens are probably subsidizing the research.
Best Regards,
Reply
mkogrady
425 Comments
Re: go solar
Obama, Reid and Pelosi pitched the Green Concept to get or keep their jobs, then failed to actually use our tax dollars to do anything that set the pace for the nation. Instead of TARP, they should have "ordered" 50 new Solar Plants to manufacture stuff here at home, then employed 1000's of workers putting up solar farms on Government controlled land. Once momentum had achieved criticality, then they could sell the plants at a fair market value so it could be run as a new industry. By manufacturing one single part at these locations, there would be huge volumes produced. On top of that, since all 50 states are not necessarily Union or Right to Work - we would have had competition between US workers.
They screwed up and us!
Reply
lasertekk
146 Comments
Re: go solar
Is it just me, or do other readers of TR see articles like this existing more as thinly veiled advertisements than true pieces of technical or scientific information? I can't help but think someone is getting bribed, er, payed to write them.
Reply
prlsol
3 Comments
Re: go solar
Ummm, do you mean paid?
Reply
Siphon
152 Comments
Re: go solar
Yes, a sad development. Has the Technology in Technology Review taken a long vacation? Or is TR popularizing to reach a wider public? And if it's advertising, how much are you guys getting paid? Maybe some of us want in on the deal as well. Who said solar can't be profitable ;)
And where is the market if this technology is coming to it? On this topic, NanoSolar has some red flags. Cost claims are unverifiable, there aren't a lot of installations despite GW production talk... of course that gives financing issues!
Advanced solar panels have already come to market. Thinfilm CdTe, thinfilm Si.
These guys are several steps behind other thinfilm leaders. Their technology has to be really good to catch up and grab market share. Then again as the other comment said, more competition keeps the market sharp and pressure on innovation, so I wish NanoSolar the best.
Reply
Kevin Bullis
178 Comments
Re: go solar
The decidedly critical comments on the second page of the article may explain why the check never arrived.
RE: CIGS and CdTe. CIGS is worth following because, in the lab, it's achieved significantly higher efficiencies than CdTe.
But I agree: the way the market looks now, it's very unlikely that Nanosolar, or most of the other companies developing CIGS, will be able to break into the market--at least in any big way. First Solar and the conventional silicon cell and panel makers are just too far ahead.
Reply
joezxcvbnm
1 Comment
Re: go solar
I'd like to believe in this, but I don't.
I walked through the remains of the AstroPower building in Newark Delaware. The solar panels on the face of the building were nothing more than a facade. They were not wired to anything and most likely were not capable of generating electricity. The only literature found in the building were booklets for potential investors. There was no sales literature because no products were ever produced. The company owner received millions in investment dollars and government subsidies, pocketed the money, declared bankruptcy, and lived happily ever after.
So I wouldn't invest my life savings in Nanosolar until I actually see customers using their product.
Reply
rhansing
74 Comments
Re: go solar
Why is the tiffany ad in the comment section?
Regarding being paid, the Federal Trade Commission has recently made a ruling making it illegal not to give full disclosure if bloggers are being paid.
ron hansing
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