Large-Scale, Cheap Solar Electricity

[IChing]

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


good news

[Ilsa]

1. We could probably have successful solar farms in South

Texas for most of the year. But isntead we are getting an additional two nuclear reactors at the Bay City South Texas Nuclear Project.

[IChing]

2. If the cost go down enough the homeowner could

place these on his roof and be a part of the grid rather than spend his tax monies on a corporate boondoggle such as nuclear power-plants that cost billions and have a questionable payback time,

[IChing]

5. More from the article

Meanwhile, Andrew Gabor, senior engineer at Evergreen Solar, a silicon solar-cell developer
and manufacturer in Marlboro, MA, says current supply problems related to conventional solar cells
are easing as more production capacity is coming on line. This could mean that prices for silicon cells start dropping again,
eventually becoming competitive with grid electricity.
He suggests that in the future solar electricity supply will likely be met by a mix of technologies.

[skids]

6. It's too soon to tell...

...because it's only one monthly data point, but it appears the peak of the silicon crunch may have arrived at the retail level -- prices leveled from this month to last, at least when denomonated in euros rather than the collapsing U.S. dollar...

The June survey results carried a different mood to those of recent months.

Through the whole of 2005 and early 2006, there has been significant price activity and the ratio of increases to decreases has typically been strongly in favor of the former.

There was one result in February 2006, which this month's survey result mirrors. This month, the survey outcome was within a whisker of the first result for over two years where the number of price decreases exceeded increases.

For a single month result, this is simply an observation of note. It is unwise to conclude too much from any single result, and trends are created over multiple month results. Even though the February 2006 survey showed a slow down in the rate of increases, this was followed by a three month spell where there was one of the strongest price run ups seen over the last two years.

http://www.solarbuzz.com/Moduleprices.htm

More. Faster. Cheaper. :-)

(P.S. did anyone see the David Spade show last night? He had a pretty funny "where's my jet pack" rant.)

[Redstone]

3. If they get the price down to $1.00 per watt, I'm in.

Redstone

[RufusEarl]

4. This is great news,

it's what the world has been waiting for imho. Inexpensive solar energy just think about it, we can get off the grid if we choose.

The next thing is the electric car, once we get that and get all these technologies in the hands of our citizens we can really start cleaning up our planet.

I suggest we start on clean water, it's not discussed much but it needs to be. I know it will be years before these technologies get in the hands of consumers, but it gives me hope and i can use a little hope right now.