jsc:

Hear, hear! I agree 99.9%! One small difference, however: I think we need incentives on a TEMPORARY basis for truly beneficial renewables (and that excludes ethanol and agri-business biodiesel) to make this transition from our evil ways. Most importantly, I think we need incentives to conserve, and although I feel that "disincentives to waste" are largely ineffective, I wouldn't find harsh taxes (but only in the presence of cheaper, more environmentally-friendly alternatives) on oil/gas/nuclear too distasteful.

The "invisible hand" is a myth. Consumer wisdom is likewise a myth. The almighty dollar will rule for quite some time to come. We must acknowledge this reality and be prepared to do the heavy lifting with mandates and policies for a while. You know, kinda like "catapult the propaganda" until it sinks in. Mark? Are you out there? You know what I mean, don't you?

There have been many announced "breakthroughs" in PV over the last 35 years or so; the only significant previous one being thin-film applied to glass substrate. So the proof remains in the pudding. That said, if Nanosolar's combination of advances perform as they claim, this will be really significant.

Contrary to other posts above, the company web site does provide some basic product & performance data.

-1. Conversion efficiency: They claim comparable output to traditional silicon wafer arrays, and give some limited description of how that is being achieved.
-2. Useful life: They are warranting their initial production panels for 25 years, comparable to other PV vendors. They describe and illustrate testing in extreme climates and accelerated weathering trials in an indoor test environment as evidence of durability.
-3. Technical description of product: They list 7 specific technical advances/innovations that differentiate their product and methods of production. In the aggregate, these seem to reasonably account for their target price point of $1/watt vs. +/-$3 for other current systems.
-4. They have satisfied a number of investors and the DOE as to the merit of their products.
-5. They are building a great deal of production capacity and have over a year's backlog orders from utilities and other large scale users, suggesting this is somewhat more than snake-oil.

I'm looking forward to see how Nanosolar does in the market. For now I'll stick Ronald Reagan's only really smart policy: "Trust, but verify".

thewondering you: That's fine. I'm not a purist but you have to wonder why the US gov't is investing along with silicon valley entrepreneurs to commercialize this technology. More socialized risk and privatized gain.

The real problem is the oil, gas and nuclear subsidies. And, of course, the biggest one of all--military involvement in the Mid-East including the cost of the 6th Fleet for over 60 years.

DUKE 99 -- You're obviously knowledgeable, and realize the very seriously immense ratio of the Casimir effect.

The vacuum tube, like a gate keeper taking tolls to cross a bridge, controls immense flows and power, with a very small controlling signal.

Similarly for later development of transistors, which micro-miniaturized as tubes, but on an "impossibly" (to 1950s thinking) small scale.

Yeah, the thermodynamic LAWs are pretty damn solid looking, but so was Newton and Galileo (> 300 years ago). It would at the benign grace of God, if we could foresee another 100 years to occur at the rate that we're moving now.

"Good" news, the arms race directly micro-miniaturized everything to make missiles work better and better (smaller & smaller, faster and faster, bangier & bangier) - as will all technologies like this. Nano Nano?

Most people are 100% ignorant of the serendipitous and logarithmic benefits of pure research, of which much of today's world was propelled forward with (as well as the 50s & 60s boom to education, from Sputnik).

Wake up, that 50 year old build-up is all gone!

The level of knowledge is so eroded within the USA, that it's mostly immigrants that are running the show now days, and lots of them go back home.

Please keep your advice to look into solar TECHNOLOGIES (which is obviously great and needed), but NOT at the expense of cutting edge research in SCIENCE. Both areas deserve more attention to provide the basis for future civilization.

THE FIRST PEACEFUL NATION THAT CLEANS UP BEST WILL LEAD THE WORLD IN THE 21ST CENTURY.

"... the company... is notoriously secretive and has not answered questions about its panels' efficiency or their durability."

Engineers would be very suspicious of Nanosolar's claims since they cannot even disclose something as basic efficiency numbers.

"It is quite open about wanting to restrict access to the technology to give it a market advantage."

Has the hype machine taken over the board or are Nanosolar stock prices are looking fidgety?

For the good of the planet the technology should be exposed to all for rapid development and improvements.

This is exactly the kind of stuff we need. Now if it can only be made affordable for everyman. The only way that's going to happen in the near future, though, is if it's subsidized by the government. It needs to be.

Hi tech approaches are especially sought after by the capitalist to use as levers of influence, power and control over societies. The strategy works like this: The price is pushed down to get people hooked on a product after which the price is inflated to exploit the mass addiction for profit and political control. Let all of the "intellectual property" be donated to the public domain. Until then, view it as dangerous.

I found this article yesterday and did a little research on Nanosolar. If the technological break throughs are accurate, this could be the beginning of a whole new product that could decentralize/localize power generation. Which translates into individual freedom from huge corporations. This company should be able to profit from the work they have done, particularly if it is made affordable.

This is VERY exciting stuff.

Look at the company website, join the mailing list. They have appear to have a distinct technological advances at the nanoscale level of solar cell design and manufacture. The quickest way to have the PV cells made and used everywhere to reduce fossil fuel dependence, and dampen the coal industry, is for the market to throw money at it like mad. A chance for crazy market capitalization to prove its worth. As it is they have garnered very large sums of money for production capacity build up. Buy shares now. If the tech is as good as they say, no doubt it will be replicated and improved on and widened in scope by others in the near term, hence the initial secrecy, which has a limited future of a few years. Because the climate change crisis is crying out for advances in technology such as this, some sort of technology knowledge sharing, licensing and widespread adoption, and even technology stealing is required soon, especially for global manufacture.

The potential availability will soon puts a stopper on many people buying stuff from other solar PV manufacturers, who may go out of business soon. Why pay more now for old technology that is supposed to last 20+ years, and has to be paid off over that time, if better and much cheaper technology is available in 5 years? If Nanoscale is so good, let it be adopted everywhere fast, and train and retool other PV manufacturers to adopt the best methods. Many people want to go solar PV, but are put off now by the current cost, and the hope that costs are going to cheapen.

Let Nanosolar make its fortunes, but let us all benefit as quickly as possible from it to help save our future, because in every year the greenhouse gases are still increasing, and coal industry will always be still dirty.

Let me say first that I live entirely off the grid using sun and wind. My house has an Rvalue of 60 that is 3 times most current houses. My workshop will be almost as efficient. The technology is well proven but in many communities it cannot be used - the developers who control city hall won't allow it! The cost is comparable BTW.
Yet they trumpet new technologies that only improve efficiency by a mere 20%.

I fully expect wind, solar and batteries to be extinct by the end of the decade - replaced by Zero Point Energy. There are already at least 3 working machines. The developers face threats, death and economic ruin yet they persist.
These panels are NOT the 'holy grail'.

Nanosolar uses CIGS thin film, so the efficiency should be around 10-12% versus 13-15% for wafer based panels. The lifespan should be good and the costs as well.

Unisolar has thin film technology that could have undercut prices, but they chose to sell at market prices and use the profits for expansion. The same may happen here.

So how come Congress decided to give the lions' share of the subsidies to ethanol when a breakthrough like this was clearly visible well before they passed their energy bill. You can talk all you want about cellulosic ethanol at some unknown date in the future, the fact is, ethanol is a loser technology today, and well into the future. Solar technology just keeps getting better, and more efficient, right now, today. Plus it doesn't raise the price of our corn flakes. Congress clearly was beholden to ADM in the ethanol regard. What a shame. They could have pushed this technology along quite nicely. Instead, we'll have to let the free market do it's magic. If the numbers in this article are correct, that ought to work just fine.

Still ticks me off my tax $$$ are going to such a crappy technology like ethanol, though. In a true free market, ethanol would NEVER work.

This is an engaging idea, but I see that their first applications are to be for mega-producers rather than individual home use. Freedom from the grid will just have to wait.

SunPower already has monocrystalline PV panels that deliver 19.3% efficiency (sunlight power -> electrical power). The *warranty* is 25 years, and monocrystal panels are expected to last 30 to 50 years (the original PV cell made at Bell Labs in the 1950's is still going strong, with not much efficiency decay over time).

Thin film panels have always had less efficiency (I expect about 6-10%), and durability problems (over time, the efficiency gets smaller and smaller, until the panels are no longer useful - like newspapers fading until you can't read it anymore). Thin films typically last 5 to 10 years; their main selling point is low initial cost, but PV installations are more than just the panels: the rest of the system, and the installation itself, is expensive. Nanosolar's initial customers are utilities that want to get the system up and running in 9 months, not 10 years (like a conventional power plant) , and they probably don't mind replacing the films every 5 to 10 years.

Granted, printing these thin film solar cells, rather than using expensive vacuum facilities, is nice. But Nanosolar does not release 'private' information like how long these solar strips last, or what efficiency they have. Hopefully they have something really worthwhile. Lot's of money is being thrown at this company, that is a good sign (but lots of money was thrown at Enron, too...)

The more approaches tried, the merrier. I still like monocrystalline silicon cells and modules, the tried and trusted approach. Manufacturing costs are going down every two years, and silicon supply is poised to take off.

The big drivers to PV innovation these days are governments: Germany, Japan and California are creating investment conditions that has allowed these companies to have a market to get started. Just as the U.S. military created a market for Integrated Circuits, until the PC and Internet industries took off, we can thank the *smart* countries and states for creating a market for Solar PV. And soon, this industry will take off too. :-)

Great. Now somebody come up with home wind power production and let's get connected to the grid and do away with storage batts and laws against these. Decentralisation is the key.

Veggiecar

Ethanol is used mostly for transport while electricity is not.

Zero Point Energy is a chimera. The developers *claim* to receive death threats etc as an excuse for not delivering a working machine.

PAUL M -- Extracting usable energy (with near term technology) from Zero Point Energy may be "impossible" for some number of years, but that hardly qualifies it as impossible.

Have you knocked on the "surface" of a door recently, only to realize that both your hand and the door are 99.9999999999% empty space, but still seemingly "solid"?

Or consider that the electron orbital probability clouds (which IS all that we can interact with) are really not there until we look, but the harder we look to control and measure the location, the less likely we're ever to find anything at all?

Namaste … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … … … … … … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
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twistoflex... this is another example of how shortsighted congress is.... liquid fuels for transportation is not necessarily the answer. My point, overall, was that congress ignored great techologies like solar, wind, geothermal & others and put all their eggs in the boondoggle that ethanol is.

This is great news. This is what we should have been doing with the money Bush and congress have been using to murder people in the middle east. Ah the price of stupid viscious leadership.
One of these days I will jump on the solar pwer band wagon. I have been waiting for the price performance ratio to improve and it looks like it's getting pretty close.
It's good to see a domestic manufacturer of such products. It's the direction we should be heading.

To a scientist nothing is truly impossible, but
some things are very very unlikely. For example all
the air molecules in your vicinity could conceivably
concentrate themselves inside your pocket, with extremely
unpleasant consequences. Similarly, the laws of nature
are not carved in granite but subject to revision by
future observations. For example, Newtonian mechanics has been superseded first by special relativity, in
turn superseded by general relativity. On the other
hand the second law of thermodynamics has so far resisted attacks by proponents of perpetual motion
machines and now "zero-point energy," based on the
Casimir effect, where apparently quantum effects
produce a momentary macroscopic force, which can
bring two closely spaced metal plates together.
Since a metal plate has mass, work (i.e. energy)
is done. The catch is that one stroke does not
a cycle make. To produce a (for example) Carnot
cycle the plates would have to be repeatedly separated
and brought together and a net energy output demonstrated. Present experiments, although extremely interesting and thought provoking, are simply not of
this nature. What is certain is that if such an
experiment were successfully carried out it would
constitute a violation of the second law of thermodynamics, a very very unlikely event.
Wishful thinking is not new. Let us put our energy
and money into more promising technologies, such as
these improved solar cells.

To a scientist nothing is truly impossible, but
some things are very very unlikely. For example all
the air molecules in your vicinity could conceivably
concentrate themselves inside your cellphone, with
unpleasant consequences. Similarly, the laws of nature
are not carved in granite but subject to revision by
future observations. For example, Newtonian mechanics has been superseded first by special relativity, in
turn superseded by general relativity. On the other
hand the second law of thermodynamics has so far resisted attacks by proponents of perpetual motion
machines and now "zero-point energy," based on the
Casimir effect, where apparently quantum effects
produce a momentary macroscopic force, which can
bring two closely spaced metal plates together.
Since a metal plate has mass, work (i.e. energy)
is done. The catch is that one stroke does not
a cycle make. To produce a (for example) Carnot
cycle the plates would have to be repeatedly separated
and brought together and a net energy output demonstrated. Present experiments, although extremely interesting and thought provoking, are simply not of
this nature. What is certain is that if such an
experiment were successfully carried out it would
constitute a violation of the second law of thermodynamics, a very very unlikely event.
Wishful thinking is not new. Let us put our energy
and money into more promising technologies, such as
these improved solar cells.

"...owned by internet entrepreneur Martin Roscheisen who sold his company to Yahoo for $450m and, with the help of the founders of Google, the US government and other entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, has invested nearly $300m in commercialising the technology."

Profit motives aside, Roscheisen, those lovely fellows from Google, and the other unnamed CVs have their heads screwed on straight. If only Warren Buffett could get his own extracted from his poop-chute and stop being a jerk, the funding for truly renewable energy sources would finally approach parity with their potential benefits.

Alas, the salient point I get from the article and the comments is this: shifting government subsidies and tax breaks and incentives from ethanol/oil/nuclear/coal to photovoltaics alone (nevermind wind and hydro for the moment) can create jobs, lower carbon dioxide outputs, preserve farmlands for food production, alleviate dependence on foreign countries, impinge far less on the health of the environment in which we live, and lend the tiniest bit of truth to the "sapiens" part of Homo sapiens.

Of course, if this were to happen without a corresponding realization that we don't need to use (or rather, WASTE) half the energy that's currently being produced, we're still screwed. If this were to happen, my hope would be that we would realize that we don't need the ethanol industry. We don't need oil. That we sure as flarn filth don't need nuclear, and that we can give up coal as well. Stop the waste: that should be the first step. But I'm thrilled as hell to see things like Nanosolar out there.

I spent New Years Eve building a solar cooker with my brother. It's a prototype, so as you can imagine it was "edit as we go!" No electricity, no fuel at all except for the hydrogen fusing in the inferno of the sun. It's a "community cooker" for a community down south in Kaohsiung. We're building Version 1.0 starting Thursday, and if things work out, we expect to build two or three a month all year. As the rest of the world figures out how to make electricity differently or use it more efficiently, we're trying to get people to find ways to not even need it for some things. Newton's Second Law can be a harsh mistress, after all.

But none so harsh as the piece-of-crap energy bill that Evil Dick worked out in secret with the bastards of industry. Let's never let that happen again, shall we? Whether it's Edwards or Kucinich or Obama, make sure your candidate understands that the divorce is all for the best. ADM, Shell, BP, and all the rest of those cheatin' bastards: show them the door.

VeggieCar: I think where I'd take your point is to the foolishness of expecting the government to "subsidize" energy at all. The result is predictable--political considerations (ethanol) far outweigh reality.

Let them stop subsidizing oil, gas, nuclear and see what works. Let the gov't be limited to making sure sellers are telling the truth about their products in a way that buyers can make good comparisons, i.e., standardized descriptions.

Anyone who's ever tried to find the best deal on toilet paper knows what I mean.

Thin film CIGS in a roll to roll plant is a way of bringing the cost per watt of solar down, but we are still working on those Million Solar Roofs that Clinton and Gore wanted 14 years later. Dropping the panel price from $5 per watt to $4 per watt may help, but I doubt that it will get us there all that much sooner.

Good article. It's nice to be reminded that solar, wind, geothermal, etc. are areas of leading-edge and active research. Technologies clearly for the near-feature (if not present).

notice how the only customers will be POWER COMPANIES...

They will continue to feed you with their mix of oil, coal, gas nuclear and green their face up with wind and a little solar, meanwhile they will pass all of their expenses on to you, the end user and bleed you little by little until you can't take it any more
small communities need to organize and develop their own power companies.