Solar breakthrough brings hope - $1.20 PER WATT

[cprise]

by Irma Venter
2004/06/11


It looks like a small piece of black-ened glass – what it can do, though, is produce 10 W of electricity. And, on top of that, it promises to do so at a cost of more than 50% less than anything else on the market.

It promises to make sun energy close to as affordable as the electricity Eskom produces at its coal-fired power stations, which is known worldwide to be dirt-cheap. It is on this technology, years in the making, that inventor RAU department of physics professor Vivian Alberts believes a brand-new industry will be established in South Africa.

snip

As it uses no silicon, costs are dramatically lower. It makes use of normal window glass as a substrate, with – and here is where it gets complex – molybdenum applied as back contact, followed by the core component being a compound semiconductor comprising five elements – copper, indium, gallium, selenium and sulphide, replacing the silicon – with cadmium sulphide as a buffer layer, followed by an intrinsic zinc oxide layer and, finally, a conductive zinc oxide layer. Alberts has registered three provisional patents on the breakthrough technology, namely the five-element compound. A pilot plant, based at RAU, is expected to produce commercial panels by July. This has been made possible by a R13,4-million grant from government’s Innovation Fund, R3,5-million from RAU and now a further R12-million from Alberts’ investor grouping. It is this investor grouping that hopes to establish a consortium with RAU to set up a large-scale commercial plant, as well as eventually a solar energy industry in South Africa. Production at the plant, of which Alberts believes construction will start in the next six months to a year, will be 60 000 to 200 000 fifty-watt panels a year. The target is to eventually ensure electrification of two-million households, schools and clinics in South Africa, as well as to replace some grid electricity with the cleaner solar energy. Alberts says his investors hope to also use the technology for their own development projects in Africa and South Africa. The long-term plan is to develop a comprehensive solar energy industry in South Africa on the back of the cheaper solar panel. This includes the large-scale production of cost-effective thin-film solar panels, the production of consumer products and systems which use the panels, nationwide distribution centres, a network ensuring installation and maintenance – all effectively ensuring that a brand-new industry is introduced to South Africa, able to literally “create hundreds of new jobs,” says Alberts.

The aim is also for the investor grouping to eventually enter the export market. The cost of silicon solar panels is about $4 a watt, which translates into R35 to R40 a watt being imported into South Africa, says Alberts. “We can manufacture our panel at R10 to R15 a watt. And, if we move on to large-scale production of about ten megawatts a year, we can do so at around R7 a watt, which comes very close to Eskom’s current generation costs,” notes Alberts. As Alberts’ innovation is completely new, the commercial-scale equipment for the pilot plant had to be designed and built from scratch.

At the moment, similar rival tech-nologies, also hoping to replace silicon, are being developed in Germany and the US.

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/components/print.asp?id=51555


ALSO...

According to the physicists' forecast cost models, the solar panels can be produced in huge commercial volumes at a cost of about R650/60 W panel. A silicon-produced panel costs about R2 100/50 W, says Alberts.

Thanks to the University of Johannesburg's pilot assembly facility, launched last November, the physicists have been able to ramp up the technology from a minimodule scale to commercially viable panels in less than six months, beating even optimistic expectations.

The pilot facility, built to demonstrate the viability of the technology, was set up with the help of a R13,2m grant awarded by the Innovation Fund in 2003 and R2m in financial aid from the university.

A typical 60 W panel, which measures 1,2 m x 0,5 m and provides enough electricity for lights, cellphone charger, television and radio, could transform the lives of the 10m-20m people who live off the Eskom grid.

"Millions of people have been waiting for electricity for decades and they will never get it if we don't supply them with solar energy," Alberts says.

The ultimate beneficiary, however, is the environment. Mechanisms such as the Kyoto protocol to limit greenhouse gas emissions are already making an impact in SA, though this country has been exempted from the first period of emissions reductions.

more http://free.financialmail.co.za/innovations/05/0603/einn.htm

With this, University of Johannesburg department of physics professor Vivian Alberts gives a bloody nose to the rumourmongers and cynics who have kept on saying (and still do) that he will not be able to produce what he reports to be thinner and cheaper solar panels than anybody else in the world. In fact, up to 50% cheaper than anything else on the market, ultimately making solar energy much more affordable.

“The technology has proved itself in the pilot-plant phase, without a doubt,” says Alberts.

“We have already completed the designs of all critical indus- trial equipment as well as the detailed cost models of industrial production lines up to 25 MW a year.” Alberts has some big guns in his corner, with a South African consortium, including some well-known international companies, as well as two of the world’s largest producers of silicon solar panels (German companies), funding the development. The Australians are also showing acute interest.

more http://www.eskom.co.za/live/content.php?Item_ID=702

[NMDemDist2]

1. excellent news! hopefully I can get some in a couple years ya think?

my new place in NM is ideal for solar and i really want to add some soon

[cprise]

4. Perhaps!

But it looks like the S. African power utility has dibs on the PV output for now. The Eskom press release mentions building a 100MW facility for the domestic grid.

But try not to be disappointed if these first CIGS panels are larger than the Silicon variety (not that it would keep people from paneling entire roofs at such a price).

[NMDemDist2]

10. i've got an acre of land with a 80' southern exposure on the house

and a 20x30 foot shed. I bet I could find room somewhere :rofl:

[benburch]

2. Just in the nick of time, too.

Likely will be outlawed in the USA by Bush, though...

[ThomCat]

3. This is friggin awesome.

Cheap reliable solar power could change the world.

[robinlynne]

5. lovely news!

[flamin lib]

6. Great news except that we were once the cauldron that produced

that sort of inventiveness. But no, we have to give billions in tax breaks to the oil companies so there isn't enough left to invest in innovation.

Bush's budget for such technology study is about $900 mil.

Good for Africa--they need the jobs and economy boost to, but DAMMIT why aren't we in that game?

[cprise]

7. "Solar energy revolution beckons"

http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20060505113812723C845208

[MelissaB]

13. Great article!

Thanks for the link.

[NNadir]

15. I am especially thrilled by the production capacity described in this link

Alberts said 30 person of the e25 million technology development costs of the German company, which will produce 400 000 of the 60-watt panels to make up a production capacity of 25 MW a year, were being subsidised by the German government.

Hopefully they're being produced for use in a desert, where the capacity loading is a high 30%, as opposed to the 20% capacity loading in Germany.

With this BREAKTHROUGH they should be able to manufacture in this plant the equivalent of 1 small coal fired power plant every 60 years at 30% of capacity, OK, a little less if we have to charge and discharge batteries every night.

As I see it, the global warming climate crisis is completely solved by this OUTSTANDING TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGH, the greatest invention since fire.

And, for those of us who insist on using units of energy rather than units of peak power at noon on a cloudless day, this BREAKTHROUGH yields a kilowatt-hour at what cost?

[cprise]

16. Well

They did state an expectation that each new plant would produce 60MW/year by 2009.

Cheap PVs will also go a long way toward staving-off an apetite for new grid infrastructure in developing countries because the PV solution is already so much cheaper for them in every sense. Not everyone needs a home theater system and an 23 cuFt art-nuveaux refrigerator with near-nonexistant insulation.

And why should every community expect to have the same power availability right through to midnight?

And speaking of temporal difficulties-- Waiting 15-20 years for new nuclear energy to come online I'm SURE doesn't seem as attractive to the worlds poor as getting a water pump, communal refrigerator, cellphones, TV and some small lamps within a space of 6-24 months. I think most would be quite happy to pass up the nuclear-driven suburbanized glory. Especially if that means they can avoid uprooting to the megacity shantytowns that are metastasizing uncontrollably.

(I'll add that once energy pricess get really high in a few years, what is being adopted now by the rural poor will seem quite nice to N. Americans trying to hang on in the exurbs.)

There is also that nuclear problem of emitting GHGs at the worst possible time (now) and having to wait decades for the emissions savings. And you know this is an inertial problem, that the earliest changes are going to make the biggest difference in the severity of global warming.


Getting back to the topic (solar): At least a couple of the articles about this S. African / German venture state that an energy storage solution has been developed along with the new PV process. So reserve some of your derogatory sarcasm until the other shoe drops and we see the solution they will have on offer.

[NNadir]

21. I'm not discussing nuclear energy. I'm discussing the breakthrough.

It's big news. A headline. A fantastic program.

I'm cheering. Enthusiastically.

It's the best thing I've ever seen.

It solves global warming.

All I want is an answer to the question - before I cheer about the great success for poor people who will be saved by this greatest invention since fire is - what is the cost in terms of energy.

I, of course, know why every fucking conversation about the grand solar success - which keeps having breakthroughs year after year after year after year (and has been doing so almost since I was born), has to revert to a discussion of nuclear energy (Busbar cost per kilowatt-hour typically below six cents per kilowatt hour) even though nuclear energy is a competitor to coal. It's because some people can't understand the fucking difference between constant load sources and peak load sources of energy and so insist solar energy competes with nuclear.

Look, everybody wants solar energy to work. But the fact is that it still doesn't produce an exajoule of energy on the planet. Another fact is that each time a proponent screams about a breakthrough that doesn't match a single natural gas plant, they are making the technology seem more and more absurd.

Heralding a system that cost thousands of dollars to produce a single kilowatt-hour a day does not involve poor people. Poor people do not own solar systems, except for a few donated by rich people trying to assuage their guilt. The solar conceit is very, very, very, very, very middle class. This isn't shit for people with no water supply - whatever the marketing - this is still stuff for rich people, rich people being that small subset of the earth's population that makes more than ten thousand dollars a year. I've been to Mumbai, Bub, and I saw shantytowns that stretched as far as the eye can see. I didn't see any big solar installations there. Here's what people do in Mumbai for power. The climb the power poles and they steal it. If they get electrocuted in the act, someone takes the body away and someone else climbs the pole. That's poverty, Bub, just in case you haven't seen it. So offer your marketing about cheap solar industry somewhere else. If you've been to Mumbai, you can tell exactly how accurate this "cheap solar energy" marketing is. George W. Bush and crew doesn't hold the patent rights on doublespeak.

By the way, I'm sure you didn't notice this since you have been focusing on breakthroughs - vast ones at that, a description from a professor of his patent that has been piloted: The nuclear power plant at Hamoaka was constructed in less than five years from the pouring of concrete until it went critical. Kashiwazaki Kariwa-6 & 7 were each built in less than 3 years, and combined with Hamoaka produce as much energy (in energy units) as almost all the earths' solar PV cells combined. Oh, and I can give their production costs in units of energy, not peak power. About 7 cents per kilowatt-hour. http://www.uic.com.au/nip16.htm. This means that a 60 kw-hr three hundred liter vaccine freezer can be operated when nuclear powered for $4.20/month, according to this site http://www.eurorex.com/ugtoges/cool.htm on third-world power demand for freezers. According to your (breathless) numbers this same $4.20 buys three peak watts, not counting the batteries.

Note too that these Japanese nuclear plants are not plants that someone is promising to build if everything works out. These are plants that already have been built and operate. Now. While the climate is changing, catastrophically. These three new nuclear power plants eliminate the emission of over 25 million tons of carbon dioxide per year - in their sixty year lifetime they will prevent the release of more than 1.5 billion tons - one third of annual US emmissions - but you are opposed to them, since you, you say, give a shit about poor people. Don't make me vomit.

I note that everything in Japan costs more. The Catawba nuclear station in South Carolina produces power for less than $0.02/kw-hr, less than a third of the nuclear power station in Japan.

http://www.hitachi.com/ICSFiles/afieldfile/2005/08/03/r2005_technology_ps.pdf I guess if you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, make stuff up: Announce that nuclear plants all take 15 years to build. That will make the solar promises more palatable - even though there's 50 years of useless solar promises, including oodles of "breakthroughs" already unmet. As far as I can tell, it takes 50 years at least to build a single exajoule of solar capacity, so, to avoid discussing that let's change the subject to invented numbers about nuclear stations.

Hamoaka was not the only AWBR to come on line in under 5 years in Japan, it's just the one that came on line last year, another bit from the "dying" nuclear industry, since, as we all know, the nuclear industry being driven out of business by solar and wind power.

Of course, nobody needs breathless websites about the nuclear "breakthrough" since the plant, producing 1380 MWe of power continuously 24/7 is rather ordinary technology at 90% or better capacity loading. Lets see, 1380 MWe continuously vs 25 MW "peak noon," um, hmmm, let's see if we can do the numbers. We can't? What a surprise.

I suppose that in some circles the proposed response to the crisis in global climate change is this: Pray for the sun god to descend from heaven, loaded with ethanol, biodiesel, and solar cells.

So it is that to divert attention, folks substitute some wrong platitudes about nuclear energy - claim that nuclear power plants require 15 years to build for instance - for discussing the reality of the grand breakthrough of the secretly piloted patented professors promising breakthrough of $1.20 per peak watt, bright sunny day. That's not a surprise, not to me at least. I've been fielding grand commentary on grand solar breakthroughs for decades. I still can't find a single such commentator - especially among those who berate my pronuclear stance - who can show an exajoule of solar energy produced in a single year anywhere on earth.

I guess too, I won't get an answer to the question of the price of energy from the grand piloted patented proposed promised solar plant. I mean, if we refuse to answer the question (because we can't) we can always couch our evasion by suggesting that the question must be sarcastic. And why is the question sarcastic? Because it's asked.

The fact is that if solar power were real, as in significant, it could really help, since it would certainly compete with natural gas although it is not suited to compete with coal, a constant base load fuel. I have no objection to it. I have never called for the phasing out of solar power, even though there really isn't all that much to phase out. Solar power would be welcome, and although I won't believe it until I see it, one hopes this shit is real this time. But the fact must be faced that anyone who has held his or her breath waiting for these solar breakthroughs to become real energy has long ago suffocated, been buried, and decomposed. To someone like me, who has been hearing this stuff for over 30 years, it may seem that the solar people are being resurrected after losing all the oxygen in their brains, but actually I think the true situation is more like P.T. Barnum's line about a type of person who is born every minute.

Just one exajoule, that's all I ask. Got it? We'd all love to hear about it. Until you can show that, don't pretend that you have a solution to global climate change. You don't.

[cprise]

22. The U.S. average for nuclear construction is more like 12 years

And that is using a figure from professional nuclear proponents arguing against 'over-regulation'. That Japan has managed to build a plant in under 5 years is terrific; They are energy-hungry so they need it.

As for how developing nations manage, it doesn't look too good if Iran becomes an example of that industry. I know that Nuclear Calvinism isn't a topic you're willing to addres, but I thought that what amounts to diplomatic disaster in the making warrants some mention here.

Rural solar power doesn't have to match the magnitude of centralized power generation; They are used in different contexts. If you don't think that RURAL villages (with their low power demands) are an acceptable way of life then that's your misapprehension to struggle with. Its a shame that having the rural poor move into megaslums attached to an electric grid and struggle for an American suburban lifestyle is the most positive vision you can evoke for a place like India; a recipie for change modeled after the ecological oblitteration underway in China, only larger. And the implication that for these people solar is even nearly as expensive (or moreso) than new generator/grid projects could not be more false or inappropriate. In the meantime, with India the #4 consumer of PV capacity (again, not in mega-slums) you may want to educate yourself more http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=43569">about the situation.

I am not wading through the rest of your bile.

[NNadir]

23. Your link, like solar electricity on an exajoule scale, doesn't work.

Actually I have seen rural India as well as Mumbai, I drove from Mumbai to Hydrabad in fact. By the way, I didn't ask the Indians living in the slums of Mumbai to move where they live. I'm sure it has more to do with factors like the imposition of western ideologies - many of them like the "solar is the only acceptable form of energy." I also took rails through India.

Here is the number of solar cells I saw in two full days of traveling through the Indian countryside: Zero.

So now, are you claiming that India has a huge solar energy commitment, and in response offering a link that doesn't work. (Apparently DU's spell checker doesn't work either, but that's another matter.)



I would love to see your link about the 4th largest consumer of solar PV power, which I'm sure is very impressive on an exajoule scale, so hopefully

I note that if you had waded through the "rest of my bile," you would again find the question you avoid by not "wading through bile," or changing the subject to nuclear energy which is, in response to the "breakthrough" claim, this question:

What is the cost of solar PV cells rated not in PEAK!!!! watts but in units of energy. Here are some units of energy: The Megawatt-hour, the megawatt-day, the joule, the megajoule, the exajoule, the kilowatt-hour. Unless units of energy are used, statements about cost are meaningless.

Like most ideological imperialistic Americans, you seem to think that conditions in the United States define the world. You say it takes 12 years to build a nuclear power plant, but I'm guessing that you're one of the very same people who claims that "nuclear power is dead," and often announces that one reason you know it's dead (and why you so need to beat a dead horse) is because no new nuclear power plants have been built in the United States for decades. So your claim about nuclear building is at best dated if not wholly irrelevant. In fact the argument is circular reasoning. I leave it to the readers imagination to speculate why you make a firm pronouncement about the time line of events that do not occur.

The first commercial reactor in the United States had a ground-breaking in 1954 and went into operation in 1957 with a construction period of 32 months.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shippingport_Reactor

And the difference between 1957 and 2006 is what? We are not as technologically advanced as people in 1957 were?

Once again, if you don't know what you're talking about, make stuff up.

Maybe your claim is that the United States can never do what the Japanese do. And the reason for this spectacular claim is what? No matter what you claim, the construction of a nuclear power plant, your bizarre implication aside, is a physical event. Nuclear power plants built in this century in less than 5 years time operate quite nicely, each producing an appreciable fraction of an exajoule (about 5% of an exajoule) per year. That these reactors do not operate in the United States says something about the United States and nothing at all about what is required to build a nuclear reactor.

I note that we have all waited, 50 years in fact, for the first annual exajoule of solar PV to be constructed. We're still waiting, even after the latest "breakthrough."

Of course you will not answer this question either, because, like the question of what is the cost of solar PV energy in energy units, contradicts your spin.

[Geoff R. Casavant]

8. Help me out here

Possibly this is just a case of using the same word to refer to two different measurements, like "calorie" (or "billion" in the UK), but $1.20 a watt seems prohibitively expensive. Seventy-odd bucks to run a 60-watt lightbulb is insane.

Someone tell me what crucial piece of information I lack.

[cprise]

9. Comparison with or without CO2 emission fees?

I think "prohibitive" is kindof a strong word when almost everyone in the US inhales electricity as if it were air.

But to get back to numbers, I think we are looking at just under 10 cents/kwh for CIGS PV, versus 3 cents/kwh for non CO2-restricted coal (meaning coal plants with no significant carbon-control measures or fees attached).

[skids]

14. No, $1/Watt is about where PV needs to be.

In other words, each dollar spent on a PV panel, should they ever reach this price, assuming an average of 5 hours of direct sunlight per day, and you have a use for it right then, or a way to store it, or a way to sell it back to the power grid, and electricity prices stay the same, each $1 invested will generate about two cents worth of electricity every month. That's an annual yield on investment of 24%. Much better than most other investments.

[cprise]

17. That is not including subsidies

...which have already kicked-in in Germany, but not in S. Africa. Andrews is lobbying the ZA government to shift subsidies away from fossil fuels and toward renewables.

[Ready4Change]

19. Ok, how does $70 to run a 60w bulb for 20 years sound?

That's what solar does. You pay once, they deliver for decades, under warranty in most cases.

[phantom power]

11. So, they think they can, but they haven't *actually* achieved that cost.

[cprise]

12. This is what the Eskom press release says:

“The pilot plant has shown the production cost per watt to be €0,95, verified for a 25-MW production facility, assuming a 10% efficiency and average production yield of 85%,” says Alberts.

So 0.95 Euros is the verified cost from the pilot plant, from what Alberts is saying. Eskom is a business partner here (a public utility, no less) and for them to repeat it lends significant weight to the claim. As it is, they seem to be using conservative figures (only 10% efficiency).


This press release from Germany says they expect upto 16% efficiency for this new low-cost process which could translate into the PV film being 60% cheaper per watt than the above figure.
http://www.german-renewable-energy.com/Renewables/Navigation/Englisch/root,did=138260.html


This blog describes a similar technology and plans to produce at under $1/watt by 2009:
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2005/08/thin_film_pv_so.html#more

[skids]

18. Estimates from other producers...

All of these contingent on a signifigant economy of scale:

HelioVolt (CIS)



MiaSole (CIGS)

"less than $1.00 per Watt"

I couldn't find estimates for HONDA or Shell Solar

[Ready4Change]

20. This sounds promisings, but...

This sounds promisings, but until it is a purchasable consumer product that performs as they claim, at the price they state, it is only a promise.

Cold fusion showed promise, for example.

Some technologies come through. Some don't. This one would be great, but I refuse to hold my breath.