NanoSolar: The Company That Might Save the World
Posted by Max Dunn Thu, 01 May 2008 14:44:00 GMT
Yesterday, I shook the hand of the man whose company might just save the world.
He is Martin Roscheisen, CEO of NanoSolar. He alluded that they are producing solar panels at about $1 per watt with a complete system cost of $2 watt when installed in municipal scale of 1MW to 50MW. This is about the same cost as a coal-fired power plant!
Furthermore, their panels can be installed at the rate of 1MW per day, and need 5 acres per MW, which means a municipal sized system of 50MW can be installed in about two months. This contrasts with coal-fired plants that can take 4 years or more to build.
Drawbacks? Their German plant is producing only about 420 MW of solar capacity per year and their San Jose plant which will open in 2009 will produce about the same. While this is very high by normal PV standards, it would help the world greatly if this went up by several orders of magnitude.
Just think – instead of building more coal plants we can start building clean solar power systems at about the same cost!
Here are the notes I took during Martin’s presentation:
- 1.3x time-of-day benefit for electrical rates
- 1.35x location benefit
- 1-50MW level can connect directly to the distribution grid (rather than the long-haul grid)
- Can put together solar farms at the rate of 1MW per day
- Need about 5 acres per MW
- 10 acres will produce 2MW and handle about 1000 homes
- Their PVs are basically 3 layers: two electrodes and a silicon layer
- Bottom layer is aluminum foil which is highly conductive and also the next layer can be very thin
- Seminconductor is CiGs nano-particles which is copper based and dispersed into an ink that can be printed on the foil
- Can produce 100 to 200 feet a minute
- Their cells are 14%to 15% efficient
- This technology has produced 20% efficient cells
- Panel efficiencies are 10% to 15%.
- Can push efficiency higher, but cost is also higher, so they maximized cost per watt
- First installation was Dec 2007
- Cells put it in a standard glass panels in order to alleviate concerns about durability
- They assemble smaller cells into a panel to match cell output
- Cells themselves about 1/2 of the assembled panel cost
- First year or two of installations will be free-field utility installations, not consumer
- Expected 25 year life
- CiGS is stable so there is no intrinsic degradation
- Thin film is sensitive to moisture
- San Jose plant will open in 2009 and produce 430MW per year, plant in Germany produces almost the same
- Solar thermal plants not efficient below 50MW and need 100s of acres, so PV will dominate smaller sizes
- Solar thermal (and concentrating collectors) are affected highly by cloudy conditions, which don’t affect flat-panels as much
- The inverter in PV systems can help smooth out power supplies, so they provide a lot of value to the electric grid
- They can be profitable at a sales price of $1 watt for complete panels
- Should be able to put together a complete system including installation and inverter for about $2/watt