Nanotech PV cells ($2/Watt) 5 years out in product pipeline.

[skids]

Three week old article, but it was news to me that these had progressed as far as they already have.

Solar energy ranges between $4 and $5 per watt. The report suggests market expansion will require $2 to $2.50. If the price breakthrough occurs, says Wooley, the report's assumed price structure represents a $6.6 billion annual market opportunity.

Oh and did I mention they are flexible?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/11/BUG7IDL1AF1.DTL
(EDIT: Whoopsie, had forgotten the link.)

[Tace]

1. Groovy -- I'll Be Buying Nanotech PV Cell T-Shirts At The Gap...

to power my cell phone and stuff.

[skids]

4. Well, not quite that flexible.

More on the level of a peice of photographic film.

[tridim]

2. Got Link?

[skids]

3. Whoops... added link n/t

[kestrel91316]

9. Google "nanosolar"

[seriousstan]

5. Your link is Novak.

[skids]

6. Ugh. Fixed. Past bedtime.

:blush:

What do you call a window shuffle typo, a wypo?

[firefox]

7. From January

There was another article on cheaper solar in January- http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0114_050114_solarplastic.html

[seriousstan]

8. It looks more like 25-35 years. They need to get down to 1.00/watt

[kestrel91316]

10. Nah, our energy costs are going to skyrocket soon ...............

with Peak Oil on the horizon. My money is on 5 years to competitiveness.

[Old and In the Way]

11. That seems cheap.

I have a quote for a 2V/120ma cell @ $1.68. I figure 1000sf would deliver 60AMP @ 120V (DC) .....at $50,000.00. That's about $7.00/watt without hook-up cost/storage batteries/inverters, etc. I'm sure I'm missing something in the calsulation here, though.

[skids]

14. You should be able to get lower.

You should be able to get $5/Watt with a larger panel if you shop.

[NNadir]

12. $2/watt or $2/peak "watt"?

Typical solar facilities have a capacity loading of 0.15 compared to their peak "rating," this works out to more like $13-14/"watt" depending on the weather. Then too, even this high cost ignores the necessity of calculating the high economic and environmental cost for storing the energy if that it desired.

This is not cheap at all.

I say this frequently, but to be honest about its potential, the solar PV industry needs to rate itself in units of energy, not of power at noon on a sunny day.

[skids]

13. Think air conditioning.

...That load peaks when solar output does.

[NNadir]

15. I agree. An excellent application, the best in fact.

There's still everything else, though.

[skids]

16. Yeah, that's why I'm a bit more exited about thermo.

Just heat a large tank, and cycle the water through a TEG array.
Those cost about $8/W but if you have enough hot water storage
capacity and solar collection capacity you can run them 24/7.
That's a 6-year payback at current costs, if you can keep the cells running at peak, and then there are uses for the waste heat which should offset the cost of the storage tank (batch water heating alone when done on the cheap has a one year payback.)

[dcfirefighter]

17. I was thinking about solar a/c

at peak ambient heat (daytime), you take a 10% efficient PV cell, and run an a/c unit with a COP of 12, and get slightly better cooling watts than you get in insolation...but, on hot days PV performance degrades, as does your a/c performance - it's pushing against a higher gradient.

You could do better with using a ground source heat pump powered by PV.

Then I got to thinking, why use PV at all. It seems to me that it's quite a bit more efficient to use solar to heat water (folks here have quoted 75-80% efficiencies). Solar hot water becomes more efficient as it gets hotter outside. Use this hot water coupled with an absorptive cooler (with a COP of 3-4), and you get a cooling wattage 2-3 times insolation. I think you could do even better if the 'cold' side heat sink of the absorptive cooler were coupled with earth mass a la a GSHP.

Now, if you live on the east coast, or in the south, you want a/c at night too (in fact, you might want it even more). My best guess at this point is to incorporate high thermal mass within the living area of your home, such as to maintain a fairly constant temperature. Humidity could then be removed by a dehumidifier rather than an a/c unit. Or you could oversize your solar hw array and store hw for a/c at night.