Solar Cell @ $1/Watt

Hey I po-po most solar stuff, because a lot of it as promising as it sounds is not efficient in tying into the present infrastructure. Example is wind farms. They look great on paper, technology is proven but once you feed in the data to the economic models they don’t quite make it compared to other fuel sources. That is why Pickens gave up on the idea. But there are situations where it makes sense —

Solar cells made from cheap nanocrystal-based inks have the potential to be as efficient as the conventional inorganic cells currently used in solar panels, but can be printed less expensively. Solexant, a company in San Jose, CA, is currently manufacturing solar cells to test the technology. In order to compete with other thin-film solar companies, Solexant is banking on simpler, cheaper printing processes and materials, as well as lower initial capital costs to build its plants. The company expects to sell modules for $1 per watt, with efficiencies above 10 percent.
Nanocrystal solar: The solar cells at top were made on a roll-to-roll printer from an ink consisting of the rod-shaped inorganic semiconducting nanocrystals shown below. The cells were printed on a flexible metal foil and will be topped with a glass plate.

The company has licensed methods for growing nanocrystals and making them into inks from Paul Alivisatos, professor of nanotechnology at the University of California, Berkeley and interim director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. (Alivisatos is on Solexant’s board of directors.) Alivisatos says the advantage of these materials is their potential to combine low cost with high performance. Solar cells made from crystalline silicon are efficient at converting sunlight into electricity, but they’re expensive to manufacture. To bring down the cost, companies have been developing thin-film solar cells from semiconductors that don’t match crystalline silicon’s performance but are much less expensive to make.

When the wholesale price is under .50c per watt delivered, but not installed, then there will be some hope for the tech. At that point solar makes sense as a peak load leveler. The times that the sun shines brightest is the times peak gen load is also peaking.

And for us Geeks? Well the neat thing is we could see self charging notebooks on the horizon. That whole back bezel could be coated as a cell. The solar mfg that is coming on line use deposition techniques that would make that possible. So someday soon we might see the addition of a stat called watt-lumen charge rate on notebook tech specs.

Not a bad advancement if I say so myself.

Linky.