Dye sensitized solar cells to begin commercial production.

[skids]

Not yet to the level of a "disruptive" technology, but interesting... this is sort of a come-from-behind move from this technology branch, plopping them into the competitive market alongside CIGS and other thin films.

The solar cells, coated with a common ingredient used in toothpaste and suntan lotion, will be four to five times cheaper than silicon. Manufactured with a process similar to inkjet printing, the cells will be able to produce electricity from direct sunlight as well as low-light and indoor lighting.

<...>

At the end of April, the factory will begin production of the cells -- which were invented in 1988 by Michael Grätzel of the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne in Switzerland.


<...>

Dye-sensitized cells are made from lower cost materials and rely on recent advances in nanotechnology to make them competitive with silicon. For example, the light harvesting is made possible not just by a layer of dye, but by hundreds of nano-sized particles coated in the dye and stacked up on top of each other.

According to Betzel, G24i will begin rolling out solar cell films 36-inches-wide and any length.


http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/04/13/solarcells_tec.html?category=technology&guid=20070413090000&dcitc=w19-502-ak-0000

Initial target market will be in cheap, small cells for portable devices. Cell efficiency seems to be at 11% or a bit higher from what I glean from a bit of research. Advantages over Si include no efficiency falloff at higher temperatures and less selective wavelength absorption; likely they also have less angle of incidence restrictions. So basically these cells work better with cloudy days and with indoor light.

Initial annual production capacity coming online will be 30MWp. They plan to scale to 200MWp in under two years.

DSSC cells have historically had a lower lifetime as the die bleaches out over time. Some work has been done to allow the cells to be recharged by exposing them to chemicals that reactivate the dyes. Whether this set of technology has the same drawback or utilizes the "recharging" technology I guess we will see when the products start shipping, from the specs. It could be they have figured out how to improve their stability.

Other links:

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2007/February/MakingLightWork.asp

http://konarka.com/news_and_events/press_releases/2006/7_july/0731_renewable.php

[LiberalFighter]

1. Self Delete

[skids]

2. Thanks. Fixed. n/t

[wakeme2008]

3. It is getting better and better...

In about a year I will be buying my "retirement" home and by then I plan to get most of my electric from wind or solar or BOTH. By then I would expect the choices to be many and the price down from a couple years ago. :)

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Thanks, missed this when it was first posted. nt

[NNadir]

5. Wow. Two hundred megawatts peak? All in one year? It will only take two years?

Even if we do have to haul them off the roof and have them "resensitized" I feel like our problems are solved.

Here I was thinking that solar energy was insignificant.

How commercial is "commercial?"