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The first new process developed by 1366 Technologies produces grooved busbars that prevent light from being reflected out of a solar panel. Instead, the grooves cause light to be redirected along the glass on top of solar panels. That light can then be absorbed by unshaded areas of the solar cell.
The second process improves the cell's electron-conducting fingers. Although these silver lines are much narrower than the busbars, there are many more of them on a solar cell, and together they shade a significant portion of the silicon. Sachs developed a process for making much narrower lines without sacrificing their conductivity. Instead of using conventional screen-printing technology, his process involves etching troughs into the surface of the silicon and depositing silver particles into the troughs. Metal is then added to these particles via electroplating to build up the fingers. The trough keeps the lines narrow but allows the silver to be stacked relatively high, maintaining conductivity. Typically busbars and fingers shade 9 percent of a cell surface, 1366 Technologies says, but with the company's new processes, this shading can be reduced to 2 percent. Others have developed techniques for reducing shading, but these have been expensive.
The third process decreases the amount of light reflected off the surface of the cell's silicon by texturing its surface. This is an approach that's been taken by others, but the texturing is done in a very regular pattern that creates less surface area than other approaches. Surface area is a problem in solar cells, because electrons are often trapped at the surface of materials, Sachs says.
Because 1366 Technologies's processes can be incorporated into existing manufacturing lines, they could be adopted by solar cell manufacturers quickly and inexpensively, Sachs says. The company is working to further decrease the width of the silver fingers and improve the texturing, with the goal of reaching an efficiency of 19 percent.
1366 Technologies hopes to cut the cost of solar with cheaper manufacturing.
The company says its future is in energy products for the Chinese market.
GO, GO, GO!
Getting there.
Solar doesn't work at night.
It requires about 4x the kW *and* storage. (Solar only gets, at best, ~2000 hours of operating time out of the 8760 hours per year).
But doesn't beat coal, yet. :(
(~@$2.20/W; ~5¢/kWh, 24x365)
Solar needs to get to ~50¢/W.
***Including*** the inverter. :(
Which would mean the panels have to get to under ~25¢/W?
At least, to replace coal. :)
It's not just about the bean counting. Given the choice between solar or coal, people would opt for solar if the price was similar. I don't think that solar has to significantly undercut coal for it to take off. But when the price does finally undercut it, that will be a great day for humanity.
In the USA the average KHW cost is 9.3c so there are very few people paying 5c...
Secondly the 5 hour figure you are quoting is the average number of Suns for the USA. Which is the amoung of 1000w falling on one square metre of surface averaged over a year.
Now I have a 2.1kw system at home and it runs at 3kwh a day in the winter months and 14kwh in the summer months so I get about 7.5kwh a day on average.
The drop mentioned in the article was to push the price down to 80c a watt. My understanding is that Solar PV becomes viable at around a dollar a watt for competing against coal.
I purchased my panels at around the $10 a watt. The price has dropped and is around $6 a watt. That's local prices.
I havent had a power bill in some time and on the whole I think its working nicely. As for coal, if the true price comes into play then start looking at rapid increases in the cost of power.
The years of wasting energy are drawing to an end.
Solar thermal and using reverse water storage pumping to store peak solar power for 24 by 7 use is all possible.
Coal wont go over night but more of the power requirements will be met by other means and a reduction in energy use as the costs go up for carbon based power.
Of course, $/W is only an approximation. Different types of solar cells vary widely in their installation costs and generate different amounts of kWh for their ratings (thin film does better in the heat, for example).
We've a long way to go before solar has to start displacing coal at night. When we get to that point, the big challenge will be energy storage--we may need some fundamental breakthroughs to make that cheap enough for us to rely on solar. It could be we need to keep burning coal, while capturing the carbon dioxide. Or use more nuclear and geothermal.
Check the third video above for Sachs take on this issue.
good article and good interviews with the 1366 tech guys, thanks.
We do not need more foclear (FOssil fuel + nuCLEAR) energy, only renewables. Regards.
Best way to go. There are lots of ways to improve 3-D nanopillar photovoltaics for higher performance, and ways to simplify the fabrication process as well. This is promissing.
Halftone photo resist to print hexagonal anti-reflection surface?
Dr. Sachs was coy during the interview regarding the mask process used to etch out the honeycomb anti-reflection pattern; however, halftone masks would probably work fine. See for instance "Fabrication of complex micro-optic components using photo-sculpting through halftone transmission masks", D R Purdy, Pure Appl. Opt. 3 (1994) 167-175.
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1 Comment
Cheaper solar panels
This is quite an achievement if the panels perform as presented. I cannot wait to see photovoltaic solar panels drop in price to compete with current forms of energy without rebates. With research and investment such as this, the day is coming.
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