Large-Scale, Cheap Solar Electricity

[IChing]

Friday, June 23, 2006
Large-Scale, Cheap Solar Electricity
A well-financed California startup is promising to build a solar-cell factory that could finally make solar power affordable.
By Kevin Bullis



This week, Nanosolar, a startup in Palo Alto, CA, announced plans to build a production facility with the capacity to make enough solar cells annually to generate 430 megawatts. This output would represent a substantial portion of the worldwide production of solar energy.

According to Nanosolar's CEO Martin Roscheisen, the company will be able to produce solar cells much less expensively than is done with existing photovoltaics because its new method allows for the mass-production of the devices. In fact, maintains Roscheisen, the company's technology will eventually make solar power cost-competitive with electricity on the power grid.

Nanosolar also announced this week more than $100 million in funding from various sources, including venture firms and government grants. The company was founded in 2001 and first received seed money in 2003 from Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Experts say Nanosolar’s ambitious plans for such a large factory are surprising. "It's an extraordinary number,” says Ken Zweibel, who heads up thin-film research at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. Most groups building new solar technologies “add maybe 25 or 50 megawatts," he says. "The biggest numbers are closer to 100. So it's a huge number, and it's a huge number in a new technology, so it's doubly unusual. All the in the world is 1,700 megawatts.">>>snip

http://www.techreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17025&ch=biztech

[benburch]

1. Hope it works.

Right now, I am pinning my hopes on the new generation of small gas cooled nuclear power plants to keep the lights on after oil. But I'd be happy to see solar surge ahead.

[w4rma]

6. Is the explosion and fallout from a small meltdown any less destructive

than a big one? :nuke:

[benburch]

18. They literally cannot melt down. nt

[immoderate]

22. Where does the nuclear waste go?

--IMM

[benburch]

23. It gets reprocessed into more fuel.

And when the fuel is finally spent, it spends a few decades in a cooling facility where the heat it generates powers a stirling cycle engine that create electricity. Finally, it is virtified, and put into a long term buried storage facility. The total quantity of such waste is quite small, especially compared, for example, to the huge quantity of very toxic waste produced by the coal industry, and an amazingly small facility can store all we would use in a century.

[kestrel91316]

32. That's VERY cool about the waste heat used to generate more power!

[mistertrickster]

44. Right . . . and if the US would ever develop fusion, it could just burn

up all the leftover waste lying around.

On edit--I used to be really anti-nuclear power, but acid rain from coal and global warming from oil have become such immediate problems, I see the nuclear waste issue as a much smaller threat, and manageable if we have the will.

[AndyTiedye]

53. I Think I Prefer Solar to Plutonium

[daleo]

61. Is this really happening, or is it just on some drawing board?

Nuclear plants generate lots of low level waste as well as the fuel. You need fairly high temperature differentials to get much useful power out of a process, so I don't know about the waste heat power generation idea. Is this actually being done anywhere?

[Dems Will Win]

35. Actually they can

And pebble nukes can also catch fire, as the one built in Germany did in 1986. Plus they want to build these new nukes WITHOUT containment buildings because the the air cooled design needs convection and lots of air flow.

They also make 10 times the amount of radioactive waste, while we have no place to put the current 80,000 tons of fuel rods and waste.

Finally if you build the thousands of nukes needed to replace fossil fuel we would run out of high-grade uranium in less than a decade. Not a good idea as the low-grade ore needs 5 times the mining, transportation, milling and processing during the nuclear fuel cycle. That, plus plant constructions burns so much fossil fuel, nukes are just as carbon-dirty as natural gas plants!

[w4rma]

36. Hmmm, that rings false to me. How is it impossible for them to melt down?

And isn't it possible for them to leak radiation, even if they don't undergo a full meltdown? (Or are radiation leaks essentially small meltdowns?)

[Dems Will Win]

38. It is false. They have caught fire--and then a meltdown is a possibility

Pebble reactors work by harnessing the heat released by radioactive pebbles the size of tennis balls, which move slowly through the reactor core. It’s true they are harder to go into meltdown, but pebble bed nuclear reactors can erupt in a graphite fire. David Lochbaum of The Union of Concerned Scientists explains:

“There is no free lunch. While it may not melt down, it could catch on fire. The pebble bed is like the Chernobyl reactor in that it uses an awful lot of graphite. None of our reactors operating in the United States use graphite in the core. Graphite is just carbon. If the carbon catches on fire, it's pretty hard to put out. It's particularly hard if you're using airflow to cool the reactor, which the pebble bed does. If you have a fire and you stop the airflow, you also stop the heat removal. So you may stop the fire and start the meltdown. You may not be able to get `fireproof' and `meltdown proof’, you may have to pick one or the other.”

Unfortunately, pebble bed reactors also generate 10 times the waste for the same amount of electricity. When Stewart Brand was informed of this, he replied: “It may well be true about the pebble bed and waste. But then, okay, back to the old drawing board!" Yet Brand went right back to touting pebble reactors at the industry events he is hired to speak at.

Worst of all, the corporations and the government have convinced themselves that pebble nuclear reactors are “inherently safe”. So they plan to build each one without containment buildings--allowing them to add reactor module after reactor module. The truth is that PBMRs are air-cooled, so they need convection--which a containment building would hinder. The industry continues to tell the public the pebble reactors are “inherently safe”.

Yet as Edward Teller, the father of the H-bomb said, "Sooner or later a fool will prove greater than the proof even in a foolproof system."

When the Germans built a working 300 MW pebble reactor, the lack of a containment building proved to be a real mistake on May 4, 1986, when a defective fuel pebble got stuck in the feeder tube and caught fire. It is in the end impossible to assure that every nuclear pebble is perfect, with no defects, and that’s what they need to be.

The resulting graphite inferno contaminated a 2-kilometer area around the plant on the Ruhr River in Hamm-Uentrop. Germany shut the plant down permanently, citing it as “unsafe”. Pebble reactor manufacturers have yet to address the possibility of graphite fires in any of their proposals to governments. They simply ignore it.

Don't trust the nuclear industry or the pro-nuke trolls here on DU about pebble nukes or breeder reactors. There is even a company called Netvocates that is hired by industry to patrol blogs and make entries on things like the pebble nuke PR campaign.

[w4rma]

41. Thanks! That was alot of detail and a very logical analysis. (nt)

[mike_c]

56. why not use inert gas for cooling, i.e. nitrogen in a closed cycle...?

Mind you, I agree with your post and am not a fission advocate. Nor is atomic engineering my field. It just seems to me that the conflict between cooling and fire prevention in gasflow reactors could be resolved by using an inert gas. Is there a reason this would not address the problem?

on reflection-- is the problem that heat dissipation in a closed cycle gas system might be too inefficient? Certainly, using the atmosphere as a heat sink is cheaper and easier....

[Endangered Specie]

39. Intersting... curious what you think about the larger...

more conventional Generation 3 ones that are being looked at...
such as ABWR and EPR...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Boiling_Water_Reactor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Pressurized_Reactor

any advancement in reactor design I would be for, I have not read up much on what I assume you are talking about is a more exotic generation 4 design.

[roody]

42. I'm not waiting for anything. I've been getting my electricity

from the sun for 3 years, with a grid tie system. Electric bill? Oh, here's a refund. No radioactive waste from me.

[calimary]

51. Excellent! For those who lament at how expensive it might be, NOW,

I always like to remind them that I can remember when the average pocket calculator cost 350 bucks. Wasn't all that long ago, either. When we were just out of college in the mid-'70's, I remember when that was the "BIG" Christmas gift my soon-to-be father-in-law gave all the kids. The more of this we see, the more affordable it will become.

[Secret Agent]

59. Does your system use lead acid batteries?

[roody]

72. It has no storage capacity. My excess goes to my

neighbors and I rack up a credit in the summer. Then I begin to eat into the credit in the winter months. Inland N. California has a lot of sun, but it is practical in many climates. The grid is my storage.

[Secret Agent]

76. Interesting--you backfeed the grid during the summer and then consume the

power company's electricity during the winter. Is the switching automatic?

I have a small solar system that I utilize for powering my mountain cabin, but since I'm not connected to the grid, I must use batteries for storage. They are a bit troublesome, but they are capable of running the lights and the electronics for a long weekend.

Since batteries are the only means for storing solar power, there will need to be some improvements for solar to become more practical.

[roody]

77. The grid inter tie is the cheapest and simplest

for those on the grid. I would like to do a separate system with batteries for emergencies. If the grid is down, I have to be down for the safety of the electrical workers.

[trogdor]

2. awesome

interesting piece.

[movonne]

3. Hope the oil companies don't put a stop to this....

[katty]

12. they've been stopping/suppressing this for decades-but their

days are numbered that's the real war that's going on-bush & co let's keep ourselves and the Saudi Kings flowing in billions until 2030, I doubt it. That's why they call Global Warming a fantasy, they want keep the slaves in ginormous cars paying buckets of money (and old paradigm industry)for their saudi-texas tea.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

34. Ergo the gouging. Getting the last blood from the turnip.

Thom Hartmann had a guy on who claimed the the Oil Co.'s generate $25,000 for every barrel of $70 crude. Plastics and synthetics are the money makers. Gasoline is the waste product of the barrel, comprising only a third of it's volume. That was an eye-opener.
:wow:

[pinto]

4. Ambitious, well funded, based on creative uses of existing tech.

Good enviro/energy news.

The company's web site has more background:

http://www.nanosolar.com/index.html

[Gregorian]

5. No wonder they locked their doors.

They wouldn't let us in when we were in Palo Alto. Knocking on the door only brought a guy out to tell us they weren't allowing visitors. This was a year ago. But their website shows what they do. It's an interesting process by which the "cells" are printed. They're printing solar arrays.

Very cool. I'm looking forward to installing one of these systems soon. Hopefully.

[RawMaterials]

7. Looks like the google boys are investors

http://www.nanosolar.com/investors.htm


Individual investors including Martin Roscheisen, Sergey Brin, Carl & Larry Page, Jeff Skoll (via Capricorn Management), Klaus Tschira (via FirstVentury), Dietmar Hopp, and Christian Reitberger.

[Gregorian]

15. I'd love to know what their share is in the profits.

Those guys at Google are trying to stay on top. This is great. It sure beats the good old boy method of cheat and threaten.

I'm not sure how this printing thing works. They have to put electrical connectors somewhere. Probably the different layers. But it's a guess at this point.

[jrandom421]

17. Just like printed circuits

Except, instead of printing up the mask, and then using photosensitive chemicals and acids to etch conductor clad circuit boards, you use conductive inks to print the circuits directly on a plastic sheet. Phillips is using a similar technology for "electronic paper", LCD displays you can roll up or fold up and put in your pocket and use a button cell to power.

[Gregorian]

19. Oh. Good one.

It's special conductive inks combined with layers of different materials.

I'd love to be in on this stuff. Hey, I've had my fun in Silicon Valley. Those days are over for me.

[jrandom421]

24. With the right inks,

and plastic, you could print your own on your inkjet printer. CNET had a video of a couple of Philips engineers printing up a prototype on a HP Deskjet 540.

[Hestia]

50. Do you have the link for the CNET video link?

I'm interesting in view it. Thanks!

[kestrel91316]

33. They wouldn't be building a production facility if the technology

didn't actually work.

We hope.

[robcon]

45. Although I'd like that to be true....

... there are production facilities all over the world that were built for technologies that never panned out.

I wish them luck, but they are developing a pilot plant because the tecnology is not proven. Yet.

[VegasWolf]

8. In other news, a small startup firm in Palo Alto was raided by Bush

federal agents accusing the small solar company executives of terrorism. Many small bombs were found. The FBI says these executives were planning to blow up the Sears tower in Chicago.

[paparush]

9. You are obviously a Home Grown Terrahist, with aims to undermine

our benevolent, minimum wage denying, Petro-Chemical Overlords.

[katty]

10. CA w/be doing even more of this...screw big oil dinosaurs

[Endangered Specie]

30. Dont forget the potential vast source Nuclear offers.

:)

[IChing]

37. Tell that to the Navajo nation because of your uranium mining.

wouldn't want to spoil it for your boondoggle corporate nuclear energy companies.
Pay back on a nuclear power plant hasn't ever been achieved if you include the hidden costs
such as mining, cleanup on mining, transportation, disposal, security, health-costs, terrorism etc.

Seems like you have an axe to grind against solar breakthroughs.

[Endangered Specie]

40. Id be curious to see some evidence for the claim...

that nuclear plants do not pay for themselves... I cant imagine too many companies (boondoggle or not) willing to work at a loss.

Obviously mining and long term waste disposal are nuclear powers biggest sticking points, course you will get those with coal and oil as well, here is to hoping that the mining industry cleans itself up, or that reprocessing technology becomes more economic.

[wordpix2]

69. mining, waste disposal, terrorist targets---anything else about nukes that

makes them attractive? Oh, yes, I forgot human error, meltdowns and transporting the waste all over the country on our highways through cities, towns and farmland.

Yes, nuclear energy is the answer. :sarcasm:

[Endangered Specie]

71. Well, to address some of your issues...

Currently waste isnt mass transported cross country yet, when a permanent site IS proposed and built it will still be likely that the waste will be kept onsite for a few years to cool down anyways, assuming it isnt used for reprocessing by then.
(if you are so worried about dangerous crap being moved everywhere, take issue with your local railroad, bet youd be suprised what they transport routinely on them).

Thankfully with current and new designs, meltdown are pratically (and in some cases, physically) impossible, Nuclear power is so heavily regulated, and with good reason, our reactors are QUITE safe. Some new designs that may be deveoped here are commercial airliner proof too. Need I point out in this country has suffered a complete meltdown, and even if it did, unlike the Soviets, we have containment buildings meant to handle just such a catasrophe.


Nothing is perfect of course, but the thing about energy is, there is simply no free lunch, you are going to have to make tradeoffs somewhere.

[phusion]

11. this is so cool...

but what about battery technology? Can I buy batteries for my solar film rooftop that will last 100 years or more?

[skids]

13. It's in the pipeline...

This is the future of stationary energy storage:

http://www.beaconpower.com

[Gregorian]

16. Weird.

I had this concept when I was a child.

One idea I still think is viable is to lift heavy weights. That's it. You use wind or solar to life a big block of concrete that's poured on site, and when you need electricity, you just let the weights turn a generator.

Lots of cool ideas.

[IChing]

14. Battery technology has accelerated

with new breakthroughs. The Russian Academy of Science have announced they have improved battery technology 10 fold in a recent research project.
I posted that article last month, and can't find it right now.

[mom cat]

20. I want one! Check out this great article on nanotechnology in the

National Geographic.
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0606/feature4/

[silverweb]

21. Wonderful news.

I hope the project progresses smoothly and quickly!

[screembloodymurder]

25. I've been following this company for years.

Imagine our highways covered with a thin-film photovoltaic embedded in a clear, fade resistent topping. We would solve the power problem. I just hope this company goes public.

[IChing]

26. Me too, I look on their website and they no longer take investment

capital or has it gone public.
This is the kind of energy stocks that Americans should be investing in.

[screembloodymurder]

27. It's private.

If we had a democracy instead of an oiligarchy, we would have this technology on every roof in America.

[wordpix2]

64. go public---sounds good .I looked into alternative energy investments

and there is no index fund of this type and very few companies that are pure alt energy stock plays.

[pinto]

28. Kick.

[Endangered Specie]

29. Will these solar panels make the sun shine 24/7?

:shrug: :sarcasm:

Its a nice idea, especially for small and maybe medium scale work but I wouldnt want to rely on it too heavily for large base load generation.

Im also curious if these "new" ones last any longer and or are more environmentally friendly than the "old" ones.

Keep in mind, they said 1700 MWe is the current world solar production, that is about 2 typical nuclear plants worth.

[w4rma]

43. One word: Batteries. (nt)

[robcon]

46. Two words

nighttime

clouds

[w4rma]

47. My point still stands. (nt)

[rman]

49. Well, that's the whole point of batteries, isn't it.

[stepnw1f]

60. One Word

batteries


Awwwwwww... schucks.

[reprobate]

54. It's meant for distributed energy generation. Where everyone generates

their own power, bringing the need for large scale generation down far below todays needs.

As for cloudy days photovoltaics will still generate a smaller amount of power on cloudy days.

But cloudy days and nights are what the batteries and power inverters are for. You charge the batteries with the output of the solar cells you aren't actually using, and then at night the inverters convert the DC from the batteries to AC for your home.

It's a proven technology being used around the world in small scale applications for homes. As the technology improves and becomes more efficient it will become less expensive and I believe will eventually become as ubiqutous as refrigeration and air conditioning.

[Endangered Specie]

67. As I said, small scale it works well...

when I say large scale I mean things like large cities with heavy industry, drawing humongous amounts of power, I do not think solar could reliablly handle those, and, even on the small scale, you still need some source of energy that is independent of the weather, battery or no battery.

[undergroundpanther]

31. wow..

Cool..Can I get it put on my house? Can it power a car yet?

I so hope this works!!!And I hope even people on minimum wage and SSI Can afford it! I wonder will they give grants for poor folks?
Hmm could they adapt the technology to make it portable?
No more poisonous throwaway batteries?

Oh I so hope it's true!

[Cybergata]

55. Luckily our state...

is giving tax credit for buying solar panels and we are planning on taking advantage of that. The U.S. did the same when Carter was president. I think that is a tradition that the U.S. should take up again. Oh yes, I forgot, they are controlled by the Oil Companies. :grr:

[screembloodymurder]

58. One square meter of panel in direct sunlight equals approximately

1 kwh or roughly 1 hph. The car would have to be very light indeed. You need large areas to produce enough power. However, our rooftops would produce vast amounts of power which could recharge our batteries.

[skids]

73. However....

All things totalled up, the electric accessory load in a vehicle these days can be above 1KW, and with current alternators an ICE only converts gas top electricity with an efficiency of about 20%. As such, solar electricity onboard a vehicle is about three times more valuable than it is coming out of a wall socket, at current gas prices.

FWIW, friend of mine claims he knows someone who has a not-so-lightweight standard diesel/electric/solar hybrid custom job he put together. It can cruise at moderate highway speeds on the (flat) desert highway entirely on solar. Accelerating or decelerating of course requires fuel.

[wordpix2]

65. Hi, underground. I am looking into solar installation for my condo village

maybe this is the ticket

[skids]

74. These panels...

...are actually very well suited to automotive applications -- they are flexible and very thin.

For automotive uses though you want panels that are as efficient as can be. I don't know if nanosolar's panels are going to be as efficient as, say, DayStar or HelioVolt's (two other companies pursuing roll-to-roll CIGS fabrication.)

For accessory loads, there are also panels by various companies that are built into windows, and double as tinting. So far they have only been made for BIPV use, not for cars, though.

[truth2power]

48. That's great! Waiting for the Bush cabal

to drop a "smart bomb" on that factory. Oops! Terrible mistake, don'tcha know. :eyes:

[wordpix2]

68. "Energy independence is going too far"---John Hofmeister, Shell Oil

President on Meet the Press June 11,2006

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13296235/page/5/

[Copperred]

75. No shit right....

too funny.

[LeftHander]

52. Demand Solar Panels on all new home construction...

This IS the future people. All homes will have solar panels someday.

All NEW homes will soon require Grid Tied solar panels...

In fact local zoning boards should start demanding that as soon as these new solar panel manufacturers are rolling.

[mike_c]

57. grid tie is also part of the answer to the insolation variation problem...

The sun is always out somewhere. or usually out somewhere. If all homes generated excess capacity (including their night use) and had onsite storage, the grid system would act like a big capacitor, smoothing out the load by distributing power to areas that were drawing more than they were generating. Add a few coal or nat gas fired on-demand generators spread around the grid and this could be a very workable system.

[truthisfreedom]

62. place your home pre-order now, on the website!

i did. i want to be first in line.

http://www.nanosolar.com/orderform.htm

[wordpix2]

66. "Our mission is very simple: A Solar Panel on Every Building® " Love it!

[DavidMS]

63. For years, people have made claims

about printed solar cells being just around the corner. I am still waiting. I hope nanosolar is sucessfull but won't hold my breath.

[stepnw1f]

70. Nice... Every Bit Forward Will Help

List of Investors:

Benchmark Capital -- the venture firm behind such franchise companies as eBay, Handspring, Juniper Networks and Red Hat Software;

MDV - Mohr Davidow Ventures -- the venture firm behind such leading companies as Rambus, Epigram, FormFactor, and Agile Software;

SAC Capital -- one of the world's leading public/private investment funds;

GLG Partners -- one of the world's leading public/private investment funds;

Swiss Re -- the world's leading and most diversified reinsurer;

Grazia Equity -- the original backer of Conergy AG, the world's largest PV system integrator;

Mitsui & Co., Ltd. -- Japan's oldest and largest international trading company with over 300 years of business presence in the world and more than $100 billion in annual business;

OnPoint Technologies -- the US Army's private equity fund;

Stanford University -- the place where many of our team members received their education;

Individual investors including Martin Roscheisen, Sergey Brin, Carl & Larry Page, Jeff Skoll (via Capricorn Management), Klaus Tschira (via FirstVentury), Dietmar Hopp, and Christian Reitberger.

*not accepting new capital..