New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production
Colorado's State Univ.'s panels will cost less than $1 per watt.
Compiled By Adrienne Selko

http://www.industryweek.com/ReadArti...rticleID=14932

Sept. 10, 2007 -- Colorado State University's method for manufacturing low-cost, high-efficiency solar panels is nearing mass production. AVA Solar Inc. will start production by the end of next year on the technology developed by mechanical engineering Professor W.S. Sampath at Colorado State. The new 200-megawatt factory is expected to employ up to 500 people. Based on the average household usage, 200 megawatts will power 40,000 U.S. homes.

Produced at less than $1 per watt, the panels will dramatically reduce the cost of generating solar electricity and could power homes and businesses around the globe with clean energy for roughly the same cost as traditionally generated electricity...............

http://www.industryweek.com/ReadArti...rticleID=14932

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

This is excellent news.

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

Solar and wind will save our bacon. I'm looking forward to a much more pollution free world, with abundant energy for all.

:smokin:

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

Solar power is pretty cool. I've built my own amateur-ish solar battery charger with a 12V panel, works ok but my "GP battery" charger is much faster :)

I wonder how long lives these new solar panels have, or if the power output falls off after a couple of years.

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

I hope this is true! Some of these clean energy ideas I read about. Then I read about them again. A few years later I read about them again. After hosting the World's Fair in the early 80's with the Sunsphere and promise of clean, affordable solar energy....well you get the picture.:no_ma:

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

I read about this in the local paper up here in NoCo, and the impression I got was that this company was most interested in setting up a solar farm to sell back into the grid. I didn't really get the impression they were interested in helping those who were off the grid. I really hope they do! I hope they sell directly to the consumer, but I have a feeling that this company will go the way of big business and be more interested in servicing BIG customers...

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

</slv>Applications

The solar photovoltaic (PV) market can be divided into grid-connected and off-grid segments. Of these, grid connected is by far the largest, is growing the fastest and � in the near term � has the most potential to impact global energy consumption of non-renewable electricity.
Grid-connected applications include:

• Residential Installations
• Commercial Installations
• Utility-Scale Solar Power Plants

Residential applications are typically 3-5 kilowatts; commercial applications range from ~100 kilowatts to 1 megawatt or larger; and utility-scale applications can vary from a few to multiple hundred megawatts.

Because of the economics our modules can provide to large scale developers of solar power plants and large commercial users, our initial focus will be on these market segments.

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

Right off AVA Solor's web site......

http://www.avasolar.com/images/middleBottomBG.jpg
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=3 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top align=left>AVA Solar is a manufacturer of thin film photovoltaic (PV) modules.
AVA Solar�s proprietary technology enables the production of PV modules at a current cost below $1 / watt, significantly reducing the cost of generating solar electricity. Production capacity can be scaled rapidly to meet the fast growing demand for solar energy.
Using cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin film technology, AVA Solar has perfected a robust, industrial-scale, continuous process for producing solar PV modules. Over the past five years, AVA Solar has successfully performed testing simulating 30 years of field exposure. These tests indicate efficiency and stability performance comparable to the leading CdTe-based modules currently on the market.
AVA Solar is currently in the process of scaling up its initial production lines for a variety of grid-connected applications.

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
electric-amish

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

Read:

"HAS THE MOST POTENTIAL TO MAKE US LOTS OF $$$!"

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

FOR A PRICE... which will probably be the same as Fossil Fuel prices with bigger profit margins for big companies.

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

cadmium telluride (CdTe)

How abundant is this material?

In other thin film processes, CIGSS, Indium will become cost
prohibitive in the near future (If not already).

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

For standard solar panels I've read about 30 years plus (barring any accidents). Of course batteries and things require regular replacement.

For standard panels they lose something like 15% of their total output over that time, so about 2% a year I guess.

The newer panels might have a shorter lifespan, but they are much cheaper to mass-produce, so they are still way ahead.

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

Tellurium is apparently rare:

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

"With an abundance in the Earth's crust similar to platinum, tellurium is, apart from the precious metals, the rarest stable solid element in the earth's crust. Its abundance by mass is less than 0.001 ppm. By comparison, even the rarest of the lanthanides have crustal abundances of 0.5 ppm."

So yeah, not common at all.

Cadmium is pretty common.

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

Yep. I have no doubt that our energy costs as individual consumers won't go down. They'll probably also find some way to penalize off-grid solar users or regulate them such that they're penalized for not going with a big power company. Hey, in a country where they tax your rain barrel...
</slv>

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

Maybe selling to the pay us by the month guys was one of those offers you can't refuse, unless you want a horse head in your bed or suicide by shooting yourself 16 times in the back of the head. :wink:

Guess I'll get the other kind that regular people can buy, and get overcharged. They use the cattle prods of making you pay extra anytime you want out of the corral. Certificates, holding your own savings, whatever. The tapeworm is hard to cast out, but I'm not giving up.

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

Even so, it should drop the demand for the old technology.

These new guys will have to play both sides of the market.

Oh, ye of little capitalistic faith.

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

Some folks would bitch if you hung 'em with a new rope. Lower cost solar panels are good news no matter how you slice it.

10-20 years from now it will be more common to generate home, commercial and utility Distributed Generation with things like stationary fuel cells (as lower cost develops), solar and wind as well as other alternatives.

Some will even be generating their own hydrogen with bio-digesters. Fuel cells have the ability to co-generate the heat to speed up the digester process.

Cars will also be moving toward such devices and in particular fuel cell technology. Over the next few decades large fossil fuel developed projects will diminish and eventually the existing will be retired.

And of course the energy companies will profit, as well as some entrepreneurs. Profit drives the evolution.

Oil will continue to show a diminishing return as it increases in both recovery cost and price and other alternatives become cheaper, more environmentally sound and more attractive.

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

That's a lot better than the current low-cost cells.

[quote] "With an abundance in the Earth's crust similar to platinum, tellurium is, apart from the precious metals, the rarest stable solid element in the earth's crust. Its abundance by mass is less than 0.001 ppm. By comparison, even the rarest of the lanthanides have crustal abundances of 0.5 ppm."


So the amount of tellurium needed is quite small, and the level of toxic waste is smaller. Sounds good.

Re: New Low Cost Solar Panels Ready for Mass Production (>$1 per watt)
 

China is the big frontier.

Their government (from what I understand) is very accepting of alternative sources.

The west must provide them it (along with the copyrights), or suffer into eternity under it's slave thong.