http://blog.maxdunn.com/articles/2008/05/01/nanosolar-the-company-that-might-save-the-world en-us 40 Max Dunn's Personal Blog <p>Yesterday, I shook the hand of the man whose company might just save the world.</p> <p>He is Martin Roscheisen, <span class="caps">CEO</span> 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!</p> <p>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 <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=IBCJNmvWWMQC&#38;pg=PA36&#38;lpg=PA36&#38;dq=coal-fired+power+plant+construction+time&#38;source=web&#38;ots=giJjAF-5aZ&#38;sig=_UZSGpfV-8wgsJof0VwixRcFrLg&#38;hl=en#PPA37,M1">4 years or more to build</a>.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>Just think &#8211; instead of building more coal plants we can start building clean solar power systems at about the same cost!</p> Thu, 01 May 2008 07:44:00 -0700 urn:uuid:95abe60e-df1b-44d5-b063-6cbcd3fe66e3 Max Dunn http://blog.maxdunn.com/articles/2008/05/01/nanosolar-the-company-that-might-save-the-world Global Warming Peak Oil