A guest post by John Goetz
Anthony has mentioned previously that he installed solar panels on his roof and, when he was a Trustee for Chico Unified School District, he spearheaded their first ever solar power installation at Little Chico Creek Elementary School.
For years I have wanted to do the same thing. That is, install solar on my home. I am motivated not by a desire to reduce my carbon footprint (which I view as nothing more than a size 10), but more by a desire to lessen my personal use of non-renewable energy sources.
Unlike Anthony, however, I’m cheap. Current technology in silicon solar cells costs about $9/watt. Based on where I live and the sizing of the system, I would be looking at a payback period of 20 years or more on a photovoltaic system, even after tax credits. I have not been able to rationalize the economics around a solution that won’t pay for itself within a few years. Up to this point the longest I have lived in any single home is four years, and I plan to retire and move further south in another five years. So I will never see the economic payback at my current residence. On top of that (pun intended), the shingles on my roof stand a good chance of needing replacement in the next 20 years. I can imagine the cost of re-roofing a home with panels on it will significantly add to the payback time.
The good news is that The silicon shortage that has kept solar electricity expensive is ending. This could mean prices will get down to $5 to $7 per watt in a few years, although that may increase demand enough to drive another shortage, thereby raising prices.
Even better news is an email I received from a company I have been watching for a while: Nanosolar. (Full disclosure – they are privately held and I am not, unfortunately, an investor.) Nanosolar has developed a proprietary ink that allows them to deposit their photovoltaic thin-film semiconductor (copper, indium, gallium, di-selenide, or CIGS) a highly conductive, low-cost foil substrate. This allows them to avoid the need to separately deposit an expensive bottom electrode layer as is required for a non-conductive glass substrate.
Much of the news around breakthrough alternative-energy technologies seems to be followed with statements like “hope to have manufacturing capability in 7 years.” However, the reason Nanosolar sent out their email was to provide a link to a video demonstrating their newly installed manufacturing tool. Here is their email:
Dear Nanosolar friend:
We wanted to let you know of a major milestone in solar energy technology we have now achieved: The solar industry’s first 1GW production tool.
Yes, that’s 1GW of capacity from a single production tool!
You can see it yourself in action in a video we have decided to release and share with you.
Most production tools in the solar industry tend to have 10-30MW in annual production capacity. So how is it possible to have a single tool with Gigawatt throughput?
This feat is fundamentally enabled through the proprietary nanoparticle ink we have invested so many years developing. It allows us to deliver efficient solar cells (presently up to more than 14%) that are simply printed.
Printing is a simple, fast, and robust coating process that in particular eliminates the need for expensive high-vacuum chambers as traditionally used to deposit thin films.
Our 1GW CIGS coater cost $1.65 million. At the 100 feet-per-minute speed shown in the video, that’s an astonishing two orders of magnitude more capital efficient than a high-vacuum process: a twenty times slower high-vacuum tool would have cost about ten times as much per tool.
There’s still a lot of hard work to be done for us to bring solar power everywhere. But at this time we wanted to share with you our excitement about transformational progress happening.
Thank you for your continued support of Nanosolar. While deployment of our product will focus over the next 12 months on installations with our wholesale customers (which includes the world’s largest utility), we are looking forward to making our products more broadly available to everyone in 2009.
Martin Roscheisen
CEO, Nanosolar Inc.
One of Nanosolar’s goals is to bring down the cost of solar power down to $1 per watt. At that level the technology becomes a very attractive option, particularly in new construction. If their company does indeed ramp manufacturing fast enough to serve a broader market in 2009, it should be very interesting to see how rapidly adoption occurs.
I, for one, will be standing in line to install their product.
Ditto that- I want solar on my business – Anthony
Robert: “convicts…”
Just spit my Miller on my monitor. Still laughing.
I talked to a guy who works at a company that trucks food all around this region. They have lowered the maximum speed on their trucks a few mph. This is done electronically by the management to save fuel.
Let me say a few words on cold fusion, as I worked at a nuclear physics center at the time and followed the process through the rise and fall.
It is unfair to say mainstream research suppressed cold fusion and that it is similar to the present AGW monopoly of resources.
Everybody was very excited in the beginning. People started thinking and setting up experiments about it. Of course there was a reaction, but it would not have been enough to suppress the young bushy tailed researchers (they do exist) if the results were positive. People trying to reproduce the results slowly became disillusioned, the data did not add up, and the total energy produced was of the same order of magnitude as the chemical energy used to create the palladium matrix, i.e. chemical. Nuclear is orders of magnitude over chemical.
I am ever optimistic and wish luck to this new set up. After all once you take away the electrons and bring them close D2 +D2 do make He.
The theory does NOT say that the age of oil is though, but simply that our rate of production has peaked and from now on, the rate of new discoveries will never do more than equal the decline rate in old discovered fields.
Yes, i know. (It was supposed to happen 30 years ago.)
The numbers support that idea.
The numbers always have supported that. But the numbers (or more precisely), the projected numbers have been wrong. Every time. Since before 1859. According to the numbers we have been going to run out of oil in 30 years (or much sooner) for the past 140 years.
However, with enough exploration (like the oil shales) then levels near current production can be maintained for many years.
I predict that with greatly increased demand, there will be a great amount more exploration and refinery capacity. More discovery, more ability to use previously uneconomical sources. More resources will be devoted to it and greater return will be realized.
Supply and Demand. It’s not just a good idea, it’s the Law.
To your list of resources, you forgot to add coal.
Yes, I left out gassification of coal. (I didn’t forget, I just left it out.)
I was told in 3rd grade that the world would be out of coal by 2025. And iron. (5% of the earth’s crust is iron.)
The experts and agencies are great for predicting next year’s production. they are–horrible–at predicting next decade’s production.
I agree there will be political obstacles, but $5 a gallon oil carries a “crude” political weight all its own. Even McCain is waffling on the issue now.
And if the US blocks itself, you can bet other countries won’t.
But I still support and encourage any form of power that is profitable. If a great solar solution can be found, I’m fine with that. Get rid of unreasonable obstacles and all perks for oil and its competitors and let the market and individual genius decide.
Ain’t it great
there is no world state?
I’d be irate
If I couldn’t leave this place.
Less efficient fuel mixtures may be being used;
Ding, Ding, Ding!!!!
That, and EPA emmissions regulations. Why is a 4 cyl Chevy Malibu today getting worse mileage than my v-6 did in 2000? Why is an over the road truck getting LESS mileage today than one built 15 years ago???? Emmission regulations. We’ve forced the manufacturers down the rathole of meeting emmissions standards, instead of developing for fuel efficiency, less maintenance, etc, etc. Costs of running the new tier 3 diesels is astronomical.
As this stack of comments has roamed all over the place, here’s my contribution. It’s a Wikipedia link, but Google EEStor anyway for many other links. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EEstor
If really practical, electrically propelled vehicles, do become viable, then I predict that buying the electricity at a fuel station will cost more than electricity for the house as governments will want to maintain their revenue flow. Recharging at home will also be taxed. Lest anybody jest, read about the complications in the UK over red diesel for pleasure boating. The RYA and BMF (British Marine Federation) can now confirm that the key features of the new scheme for charging duty on marine diesel to be introduced by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) with effect from 1 November 2008 will be:
• Private users can continue to use marked fuel (red diesel) providing they make a simple declaration to the supplier and pay the full duty rate for heavy oil;
• Registered Dealers in Controlled Oils (RDCOs) will be responsible for declaring the duty collected to HMRC; and,
• Fuel purchased for domestic use (i.e. not for propulsion of the craft) can continue to be purchased at the rebated rate.
HMRC have yet to issue a public statement but have released to the RYA its Impact Assessment which is available in related links above.
Under the new scheme, HMRC envisage that boaters will ‘self declare’ whether they are a commercial or recreational vessel and recreational vessels will pay the full duty rate. Fuel used for heating purposes on board will continue to be sold at the rebated rate of duty and the retailer will take the owner’s word, again based on self declaration, on what proportion is for heating or lighting and what is for propulsion.
Are these people buffoons? Oh yes!
As some of you know, I’m an ethanol supporter. However, in today’s engines ethanol does not get as good mileage as straight gasoline. Our gasoline now contains, on average, about 6.3% ethanol. That’s probably reducing overall gas mileage by about one percent. *Note: when you read gasoline supplied/used stats from the Gov they’re including the ethanol in the mix. (I hope this in not as unclear as I fear it is.) 🙂
This is an IPO I will be looking for.
STE (Solar Thermal Energy) seems to be a secret: http://ausra.com/. Vinod Khosla and Kliner-Perkins have their money there. Seems to be a relatively low tech system.
“Study: Solar Thermal Power Could Supply Over 90 percent of U.S. Grid Plus Auto Fleet ”
Any ideas?
“So, a larger factory will be built overseas. I wonder why? ”
Because that is where the customers are.
@Perry Debell: the fuss about red diesel for pleasure boating seems a bit odd given that we (British) are now allowed to process 2500 litres per year of biodiesel tax-free. That’s 5000 litres per couple. (Can you count children too?) And all you have to do (I assume) is bring some vegetable oil home from the supermarket and declare a bit of hocus-pocus over it.
Evan Jones
If there was ever an example of an oil field putting an end to the notion of peak oil, it is the Bakken.
Some large numbers are being tossed around on the size of the field, but even if off by half, we’re looking at something on the size of the Saudi fields.
In addition to the huge potential, the ownership of the lands is private. Which means it will be poor wheat farmers in Montana and North Dakota who will decide if and when someone can drill for the oil there. No government bureaucrats susceptible to political pressures will be making these decisions, as is the case here in Colorado with regard to the oil shales.
Things are really hopping up there too. Already, North Dakota is setting new records in oil production. The only drawback now is the lack of infrastructure to move the oil out of the region where it is needed. It is only a matter of time before this is realized.
The structure is a challenge. There are two layers of shale sandwiching a layer of dolomite, the dolomite being the actual oil bearing structure. Thick Oreo cookie. The dolomite has to be fractured to increase the permeability, allowing the oil to flow. From what I have read, the dolomite averages only about 10 feet in thickness. The entire formation is deep, around 10,000 feet. All of the above indicates a need for horizontal drilling, well within the skill sets of today’s drillers.
One company paid $1.65 billion to acquire the rights to about 150,000 acres of land in North Dakota. The president of the company believes they will harvest about 3 billion barrels from this field. $300 billion worth of oil for $1.65 billion. Not a bad trade.
The oil is very low in sulfur, making it very attractive to everyone.
Another company, PetroBank http://www.petrobank.com, has developed a technology for harvesting heavy crudes bound in shale. They claim a very high recovery rate. This will permit the processing of tar sands without the need for digging up the countryside, as is the case now. This will lower the cost of tar sands both economically and environmentally. Again, resources measured in the billions of barrels.
I used to believe in the concept of peak oil, but not in my lifetime.
Regards
Sanyo and Sharp are two companies in Japan that has made it a company goal to supply solar panels.
Sharp claims to have the largest market share: http://www.sharp.co.jp/sunvista/about/result.html (sorry its in Japanese.) They are “red” on the graph you see.
Sanyo claims to have a 19.7% conversioin efficiency. http://www.sanyo.com/solar/history/index.html (This one is in English)
Both of thse companies have staked their company fortunes on Solar Technology. Both are based on Silicon Technology. It will be interesting to see how they work with Nanosolar…
Several have asked how long the thin film panels will last. The following claim can be found on the company’s website (emphasis mine):
John- Thanks for the update on lifetimes. I found another interesting news item on CIGS panels.
June 12, 2008-
“Vitex Systems says it has achieved a “key breakthrough” in protecting flexible copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cells with its “Flexible Glass,” achieving 1100 hrs of testing in high-temperature and humidity conditions with stable efficiency.
CIGS has shown promise to achieve production efficiencies using low-cost roll-to-roll manufacturing, but like cadmium telluride (CdTe) cells they are sensitive to moisture and oxygen, and commercially-available flexible CIGS solar cells typically carry a lifetime guarantee of only a couple of years, the company notes. Encapsulating in rigid glass extends that lifetime but also adds weight and costs (production and shipping/installation) as well as less flexibility in packaging.
Tests are continuing to determine the devices’ ultimate lifetime, though Vitex’s Chyi-Shan Suen, director of business development, notes that early internal tests have extended to >4000 hours under such conditions, maintaining ~80% of the cell’s original performance.”
If Nanosolar has achieved 25 year lifetimes with a low-cost process, that is a remarkable breakthrough.
These are my actual and current prices for various kinds of energy:
100 cu ft natural gas contains 0.103 mmBTU costs $1.375 = $13.35 / mmBTU
1 kwH electricity contains 0.003413 mmBTU costs $0.17 = $49.81 / mmBTU
1 gal gasoline contains 0.115 mmBTU costs $3.919 = $34.08 / mmBTU
Observations, electricity is very expensive in Texas thanks to democrats/socialists restricting supply and driving up costs, thank you very much. Second, I really cannot see myself very interested in purchasing an electric car that I would need to plug in at night since electricity is the highest cost energy I buy. Third, I would love to find a real world, cost effective solution to generating electricity and if solar panels really were cost effective, I would jump on it. Although, I would have to think about how I could generate enough new carbon emmissions to balance this action – don’t want to cause a new ice age by withholding CO2 from the atmosphere 🙂
Jack Simmons: Things are really hopping up there too. Already, North Dakota is setting new records in oil production. The only drawback now is the lack of infrastructure to move the oil out of the region where it is needed. It is only a matter of time before this is realized.
Who is paying for developing the infrastructure?
The structure is a challenge. There are two layers of shale sandwiching a layer of dolomite, the dolomite being the actual oil bearing structure. Thick Oreo cookie. The dolomite has to be fractured to increase the permeability, allowing the oil to flow. From what I have read, the dolomite averages only about 10 feet in thickness. The entire formation is deep, around 10,000 feet. All of the above indicates a need for horizontal drilling, well within the skill sets of today’s drillers.
Interestingly, these are the kinds of technologies that may well benefit the hot dry rock geothermal industry as well.
The USGS recently published a report on the Bakken field:
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1911
In short, they came up with an estimate of 3 to 4.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil. That’s obviously well below the estimated size of the entire resource. The USGS based their estimates on current techhology. Now, it may be that new technologies will be developed to increase the number some time in the future. But the same could be said for many other industries as well. Moreover, from what I’ve read the yields on existing wells are slow, because once you drill horizonally and fracture the surrounding rock, you have to wait for the oil to seep into the void. It’s not like you get spouting geysers. I’m not against drilling there. I see no reason why not. But at the moment Bakken doesn’t look like a game-changer.
Also by the way, Robert Rapier at R-Squared Energy Blog has a good article about Shell’s attempts to develop a freeze containment technique to extract oil from the shale. If it works it could improve yields dramatically, but it would also be energy intensive and require large amounts of water — in other words, it would share many of the same drawbacks as harvesting oil from tar sands.
A lot of the claims of solar efficiencies from the new technologies are somewhat overblown. I’ll believe them when the commercial products hit the road. This isn’t my opinion – its the opinion of experts in the field – check out
http://www.materialstoday.com/2007_issues/nov.html
However, as I like to blabber on about, it all gets down to cost. I saw a mention that if nanosolar could make $5/watt, they’d be rich rich rich! Well, they won’t. A great site to check out for solar pricing is
http://www.solarbuzz.com/ModulePrices.htm
They put the average price for a solar module at $4.82 – these type are crystalline with efficiencies in the 15-17% range. Thin film run to the 11-12% (and the lowest price is a dollar cheaper). The new printed thin film technology is rumored to be in the 6-7% efficiency, and the rumors are that the cost will be $1/watt.
Now, there’s more to it than the panel. Without tax breaks (many of which are vanishing at the close of the year) you are looking at $9/W, of which ~$5/W is module related. The rest is for inverter, batteries, manufacturing, installation, profit…
So, lets assume that cost drops to say, $0.50/W – you’re looking at half the cost of solar as it currently sits. With the expected lifespans of these systems, you are approaching break even over a 25 year time frame. That’s pretty good.
Now, a house that uses around 900 KWh per month will require a 5KW system to completely power it. At current prices of $9000/kw, that’s $45K. If you assume that the cost of electricity is $0.10/kWh, the payback period with no interest and not including inflation (I’m not going into present value analysis that would make this worse) you’re looking at 40 years payback. With the price of a module going to $0.50/W the payback period goes to 20 years. Now, California electricity prices are greater than this because we don’t build new power plants (we constantly hang on the edge of the supply/demmand curve). So, say $0.20/W and you have a ten year payback, but probably 20 years with interest.
Overall, its a good development. I have more to say, but my 2.5 year old just got up and wants waffles… 😉
So I did some further calculations, and my earlier back of the envelope calcs were almost right on. For a station at Mt Diablo, CA, the breakeven point is about $0.18/kwh over 20 years assuming 7% interest on a loan. Now, that doesn’t include cloudy days, that reduce solar to about 20% (that by the way is why solar thermal only works in sunny environs – it won’t work at all without direct sun…) But I would say that even $1/W will be a huge step forward, and you’ll see a large movement towards solar. You’ll still need utilities in the winter and in the cloudy areas of the country.
Couple of issues. I don’t think the lifespan will much exceed 20 to 25 years. The typical warrenty on solar is a guarantee of no more of a loss than 20% over 20 years. I would say the failure rate accelerates beyond that time. Also, invertors only have about a ten year lifespan (so expect a $1/W charge every ten years, which I didn’t work into the price. Invertor costs may reduce, and lifespans increase, but that’s not where the tech development is being placed right now because the return on investment isn’t as good as for modules. Battery technology is very mature, and I don’t expect the prices to drop – they may in fact rise because they are largely based on material costs and as demand increases, battery costs will also increase.
I’m a big pro nuclear guy, but I give this development a thumbs up if it actually comes through.
This says nothing about transportation however, because the demand for batteries are going to have a real impact on their price, and may in fact blow all my calcs away… A nuclear methanol based economy could however solve that issue.
Robert Wood: I just decry the uneconomical.
Are superfund sites uneconomical? I would say they are. Unfortunately, it’s mostly government money expended to clean them up. That’s the problem I have with the argument that “government should stay out of the way”, because all too often in the past they did stay out of the way — and it’s ultimately the taxpayers, homeowners, and other “little guys” that end up getting soaked on the back end. If a superfund site appears in your “backyard”, go ahead and try to sell your house. But of course that’s your problem at that point, not those that caused the problem in the first place. Too bad for you.
On that note, allow me to revisit the drawbacks involved in harvesting tar sands. Not only does it require copious amounts of natural gas and water, but, IMO, the tar sand industry is an enviromental catastrophe in the making. Not only are the tailing ponds profoundly toxic (no one disputes that), there is no viable plan in place to deal with them. At this point, that’s considered an issue to be tackled in the future. But there are already signs that they’re leaching heavy metals and other toxic compounds into the groundwater. The air downwind from the tar pits is getting more acidic. It’s becoming less and less rare for people living in the area to contract rare forms of cancer. Is this kind of thing really what we want? It doesn’t sound so economical to me. Okay, maybe for the oil companies. But not in the long run.
So IMO, what is considered “uneconomical” needs to be considered in a broad context. This may be an extreme way of stating it, but it does seem apparent that even in its most extreme version some actually believe it. And that is this: government always makes mistakes but industry never does. A brief visit to the superfund site I linked to above should dispel anyone of that notion. Thus, in consideration of the potential hazzards that they may have to deal with at the back end, I don’t see any reason why governments should not incentivize, even invest in, alternatives on the front end when the back end burdens of those alternatives are less likely to be as large.
I wrote the foregoing and was ready to post it when I read Brendan(10:09:37)’s treatise. It was excellent! He made very important distinctions between manufacturing cost (cost/W) and retail cost (cost/kWh to the customer) (forgive me for construeing it that simply, but that’s basically what he did). But I think what he failed to mention is that once you figure out your retail cost you basically lock it in for the lifetime of the installation. No longer do you have to deal with the vagaries of things like fossil fuel prices, potential carbon add-ons, or whatever else dynamically affects the retail cost of your supply.
I forgot one comment on solar thermal. Its cost function is very similar to current solar, so theoretically the high temps could be used as process heat and could supply 90% of the us auto fleet with methanol. But the cost is substantial. More later…
Rick is right – its all economics. I’m not sure the oil shale is economically viable. Certainly solar isn’t right now (I don’t count gov’t tax breaks because its just someone else paying for it). If Nanosolar can acheive its claims, it is indeed a huge breakthrough.
Rick Lambert, that’s a good guess. I think I’ll add that to my post. However, I doubt trucking has increased. There must be an increase in inefficient driving to explain the large shift.