The following post is by Earl Killian, guest blogger at Climate Progress.
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Traditional photovoltaic (PV) is typically installed on rooftops and competes with retail electricity. Over 40 percent of the cost of a system can be in the installation, which must be customized to every rooftop. So technologies that dramatically lower PV cost end up having a less dramatic impact on total residential system cost. So it is natural that the next generation technologies, such as thin films of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) printed as ink on conductive substrates, need to look at non-rooftop applications, where the installation of a large solar farm is fairly turnkey.
Nanosolar, a thin-film PV startup, has just announced their vision in their blog and newsletter. They see the best fit for solar being municipal solar plants of 2-10 MW in size and suggest such plants can be done in 12 months, providing a significant advantage over coal or nuclear. Martin Roscheisen, Nanosolar's CEO, writes:
A 2 MW municipal solar power plant requires about 10 acres of land to serve a city of 1,000 homes -- that's acreage generally easily available at the outskirts of any city of such size in even the most developed countries. Similar for a 10 MW plant for a city with 5,000 homes: This would require five such lots.
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In a solar power plant, solar panels are mounted onto rails above the ground so that grass and flowers can continue to flourish in between and below the rows of panels. Care is taken that sufficient amounts of rainwater can drop through between adjoining panels so that the flowers and organisms below are not starved.
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While rooftops are surely a good application too for solar panels, it is a business that's difficult to scale rapidly in a truly meaningful way. Crawling onto rooftops and mounting solar panels in compliance with building codes is fundamentally always a somewhat more expensive proposition.
Roscheisen does not explain how grass and flowers are to grow below panels without sunshine (between rows makes more sense).
Currently Nanosolar is only pursuing utility-scale solar, and is sold out for 12 months. This isn't a technology you will be able to put on your roof any time soon.
Another company with a similar vision is Coolearth, which uses a reflective balloon as a low-cost concentrator. They too are pursuing utility-scale applications, though they suggest ground-based (not rooftop) residential and commercial availability will follow. Whether there is a market for ground-based residential installation is unclear, however.
Coolearth claims that using balloons as concentrators instead of mirrors is 400 times cheaper, and uses 60 times less steel for the truss and rigging. The small PV inside the balloon is water-cooled. In their video, they claim a cost of 18 cents per Watt.
One disadvantage of PV compared to some Concentrated Solar Power technologies, with which it competes, is that PV does not have the possibility of nighttime generation from Thermal Energy Storage as found on some (but not all) CSP systems. However, with the daytime electricity demand often twice that of nighttime, PV can still be a useful addition to the grid.
Read Martin Roscheisen's Municipal Power Plants for yourself.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Comments
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ce1907 Posted 11:39 am
22 Apr 2008
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Delay And Deny Posted 12:01 pm
22 Apr 2008
First Solar: IBM 360
Nano Solar: VAX
Nano antennas: Apple IIc
http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/nanoantennas-solar-arra ...
"solar panels that can continue to absorb energy even after the sun has set. The technology, not only efficient at nearly 80%, will also be cheap to manufacture, at estimated pennies a yard."
J. Bailo
Participant
Texeme.Construct()
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Pangolin Posted 3:07 pm
22 Apr 2008
Solar bus stops, gas stations, some carports, a college, several parking lots and increasing lumps of panels showing up over things all over town. Why even the county jail's all solar powered.
There's no need to go out of town and ruin good farmland when there's plenty of parking lots that needs shading.
Put the Carbon Back
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Sephyrave Posted 10:11 pm
22 Apr 2008
http://environe.blogspot.com
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LGT Posted 11:48 pm
22 Apr 2008
The moneybag wind guy [the windbag money guy?] T. Boone Pickens might have a point with his 10-billion dollar wind farm ...
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/48058/ ...
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amazingdrx Posted 1:18 am
23 Apr 2008
Cogeneration benefits from distributed application on as many roofs as possible, that way the heat can be used where it is captured.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Gar Lipow Posted 1:47 am
23 Apr 2008
Those requirements: low capital costs but a high tolerance for storage losses are different than we normally look for in storage. I'll bet there are technologies out there that can meet them. Maybe some variations on hydrogen production with cheaper less efficient electrolyzers, and single cycle turbines to burn the hydrogen instead of fuel cells?
Again not opining on whether anyone can actually meet that 18 cents per watt target. Just pointing out some implication if anyone manages it.
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rmcleod Posted 4:54 am
23 Apr 2008
Similarly a commercial consumer (like Walmart) likely pays different fees for electricity depending on the time of day. Now, typically PV power output peaks a couple of hours before peak demand, but the correlation is still fairly strong.
It's simply demand outstripping supply, and it's the primary reason the price of PV hasn't dropped even as the thin-film manufacturers have reduced their costs. I think it's more likely that Nanosolar just wants to keep their marketing cost in check while they get their manufacturing operations going.
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entropyproduction.blogspot.com
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amazingdrx Posted 3:41 pm
23 Apr 2008
With other sources added into the equation, wind and biogas, much less storage is actually necessary.
So much so that heat/cold storage in buildings and appliances will do the job. If that heat/cold is produced with geo heat exchange it takes even less power.
18 cents per watt might be difficult. But they are correct, CSP combined with PV, can compete with wind on cost. Especially if it collects heat as well as electricity.
With 10 sun concentration, 38% efficiency is possible, NREL verifies it. 10 sun CSP would use one tenth the PV area. It all calculates out as cheap as wind in the end. With the whole smart grid, storage, geo heat exchange, solar cogeneration, biogas, wind, and plugin hybrid and mass transportation.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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MacAfrican Posted 5:09 am
21 May 2008
I think I know why these guys have sold out the next two years' production : they will probably only make 100 KWp of solar modules! These guys are to the serious PV industry what WebVan and the Silicon Valley VC's were to the dot-com era.
Easy questions when confronted with spin like this : ask for a peer reviewed or independent lab tested report confirming module efficiency and while they're at it, a long-term exposure test or policy on 20 year performance warranties.
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