The Future Is Bright

"If 2 percent of the continental United States were covered with photovoltaic systems with a net efficiency of 10 percent, we would be able to supply all the U.S. energy needs," said Bulovic, the KDD Associate Professor of Communications and Technology in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

The technical conference included invited and contributed presentations from academia and industry. Among the speakers were Michael Graetzel, professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, and MIT Institute Professor Mildred Dresselhaus. Dresselhaus gave a talk titled "Addressing Grand Energy Challenges Through Advanced Materials."

Other talks centered on nanowire-based dye-sensitized solar cells, heat transfer enhancement in nanofluids, hydrogen storage and electrochemical conversion and storage. "With this conference we want to put into the scientific area what nanotechnology can do for large-scale energy applications," said Gang Chen, conference chair and a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Manuscripts submitted to the conference will be published in a future issue of the ASME Journal of Heat Transfer.

Market Study 1: Environmental: Solar energy and the promise of nanotechnology for a healthy world. Nanotechnology & Solar Power News: Solar is a more realistic solution to global warming than carbon sequestration and other "magic" technologies. All quotations and sources are referenced.

The fundamental driver for solar PV & solar thermal is the efficiency & cost of conversion of sunlight to electricity or to heat. The competition is either fossil fuels or nuclear energy. Nuclear has three basic problems with no solutions in sight: (i) the nuclear industry only exists because the promoters do not have to pay for the billions to trillions of dollars of damage that will be caused from a large scale accident - check out the Price Anderson act which limits damage claims in the US to $500 million - the nuclear industry is basically uninsurable because the upside of a major accident is incalculable by actuarial tables, despite all the "media fog" put out by nuclear advocates(ii)the nuclear fuel cycle enables the production of nuclear weapons - see North Korea, Iran, etc.(iii) nobody wants a nuclear reactor and especially the long term waste products in their back yard.

Fossil fuels all depend on the "carbon subsidy" for current pricing - current coal, oil, gas prices depend on not having to pay for the destruction of the global environment upon which all life (including humans) depends by the mechanism of global warming. We need to get a grip on greenhouse gases before the industrialization of Brazil, China, India, Russia gets anywhere close to US, Japanese, or Western European levels. Some possible consequences if we do not halt rising CO₂ include the increasing acidification of the oceans - with the reduction of the domain where most conversion of CO₂ to O₂ occurs, the rise in sea temperatures to the point where methane gas stored in ice formations called clathrates (potentially leading to a spike in CO₂ levels last seen when forests grew in the artic & antartic regions), and the total destruction of the ozone layer.

Market Study 2: Technology's price, manufacturing capacity and emerging chemistries. Cost and affordability are major obstacle to full-scale PV integration. Today, even with tax subsidies, a minimum of $20,000 is required to provide base line power to a house in CA, that is 4 - 5 KW. In the January column I presented the estimate by Renewable Energy Corporation (REC), where REC targeted a 46% reduction in c-Si PV modules by 2010.

The industry consensus is that PV modules represent about 1/2 the cost of installed solar modules, which suggests a 2011 price in CA (with tax subsidies held constant) about 20% or so lower than in 2006, or around $16,000.
While thin film & nano technologies hold great promise to reduce cost per watt, today at least 90% of current sales & manufacturing is c-Si based. So a significant reduction in c-Si costs would have the most immediate impact on the adoption of solar PV. Such reductions can be accomplished by the scale up of c-Si manufacturing plants to the GW annual level - see the NREL 2004 Study of Potential Cost Reductions Resulting from Super-Large-Scale Manufacturing of PV Modules.

"We have studied the design for "A Solar City Factory" that will produce 2 - 3.5 GWp of solar panels per year-100x the volume of a typical, thin-film, solar panel manufacturer in 2003, and more than 4x the volume of the entire solar panel industry in 2003. With a reasonable selection of materials, and conservative assumptions, this "Solar City Factory" can hit a price target of $1.00 per watt as the total price for a complete, installed solar energy system (6.5x - 8.5x lower than prices in 2003).

This breakthrough in the price of solar energy comes without the need for any significant new innovation. It comes entirely from the design of a very large, dedicated and optimized factory, the design of manufacturing equipment for a very large factory and the cost savings resulting from operating at such a large manufacturing scale." Following up on this report is the very interesting news in & many other sources re SolarWorld AG's (Germany) 500MW Wafer and Cell Plant in United States. "SolarWorld AG said that it is beginning to establish an integrated solar silicon wafer and solar cell production facility in Hillsboro, Oregon. It reached a capacity of 500 MW in 2009.

This would make the plant the largest solar manufacturing facility on the American continent. Together with the expansion of the silicon wafer production at Freiberg/Saxony to also 500 MW, the SolarWorld Group will have a total global production capacity in excess of one Gigawatt". "Now that we will soon have exceeded the threshold of 1,000 staff in Freiberg the Group will also create a large number of new jobs at Hillsboro", announces Dipl.-Ing. Frank H. Asbeck, Chairman and CEO of SolarWorld AG. In the new wafer and cell factory the Group will produce highly efficient, mono-crystalline solar silicon products thus expanding its technological spectrum. The products from the integrated production in Freiberg are primarily based on high efficiency multi-crystalline silicon". While this plant is not at the GW scale it will still have the capacity for major cost reductions in the highest efficiency solar cells - initially resulting in larger profits to SolarWorld but in the long run to lower prices.

To return to thin film, the two commercial technologies today are a-Si, where a-Si with nanostructured Si delivers a significant energy boost and CdTe, where the leading player is First Solar who reported yearly revenue growth of 388% on sales of low cost Cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin film solar modules, designed for large scale, grid-connected solar power plants. Manufacturing costs have been reduced to $1.25 per watt. First Solar will ship 100MW this year and has 100MW plants underway in Germany & Malaysia with the potential to ship 300MW in 2009.

Market Study 3: Nanotechnology Trends. Investors along Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park are pouring money into solar nanotech startups, hoping that thinking small will translate into big profits. Both inventors and investors are betting that flexible sheets of tiny solar cells used to harness the sun's strength will ultimately provide a cheaper, more efficient source of energy than the current smorgasbord of alternative and fossil fuels.

Nanosys and Nanosolar in Palo Alto -- along with Konarka in Lowell, Mass. -- say their research will result in thin rolls of highly efficient light-collecting plastics spread across rooftops or built into building materials. These rolls, the companies say, will be able to provide energy for prices as low as the electricity currently provided by utilities, which averages $1 per watt. Other uses of nanotechnology foreseen by Konarka, Nanosolar and Nanosys include form-fitting plastic batteries for electronic devices like cell phones and laptops. While all three companies provide prototypes for large corporate research labs and government agencies, company representatives and investors are reticent to predict when nanotechnology-powered solar systems will be commercially available. Industry watchers, however, say that achieving mass production of these products may take five years or longer.

"We take the long view, although we're not averse to having products very quickly," said Bryan Roberts, general partner at Venrock Associates in Menlo Park, a leading Nanosys investor. "Whenever you're developing a novel technology platform, you're looking at a four- to six-year time frame rather than a three- to four-year time frame."

Market Study 4: Major investments. Despite the lack of commercial product availability, Konarka, Nanosolar and Nanosys have collectively raised more than $120 million since 2001, the year all three companies were founded. Recent investments include $7 million in debt financing for Konarka in June, making its total funding to date $38.5 million.

Nanosolar recently announced more financial support in a Series B round of funding that secured $20 million in May. With previous investments of $7.25 million, it has secured a total of $27.25 million.

Both Konarka and Nanosolar have said they plan to use the money for new research and development facilities. Nanosys, which cited poor market conditions as the reason for withdrawing its IPO in August, has raised $55 million to date. The company's last round of funding in April 2003 secured $30 million. Venture capitalist excitement for these new technologies reflects growth in the solar energy market as whole, say industry experts. "The technology is maturing, and the industry is maturing. British Petroleum, Shell and the oil companies are all in this field," said David Wooley, vice president of the nonprofit Energy Foundation in San Francisco, a research group funded by major charitable trusts but not affiliated with utilities or energy producers.

Market Study 5: Nanotechnological PV companies are ready to make a difference. Konarka, Nanosolar and Nanosys say that nanotechnology could make the price of electricity less expensive per watt.

• Current cost of solar energy, per watt: $4-$5
• Average cost of energy from traditional fossil fuel sources, per watt: $1
• Estimated cost of energy from nanotech solar panels, per watt: $2
• Total energy-generating capacity of the United States: 950,000 megawatts
• Potential total rooftop solar energy capacity in the United States: 710, 000 megawatts

Photovoltaic installations

It is anticipated for the coming years that the costs of crystalline silicon cells will remain stable or lower somewhat, up to 5% yearly; in terms of costs, however, the potential for more cost-effective thin film cells is much better. Large improvements in cell efficiency as well as large production volumes, leading to scale advantages, may lead to considerable yearly costs reductions. Cost reduction percentages of 10% or more have to be achievable. However, in this way of thinking it also takes at least a decade to make solar PV cost-effective without the necessity of additional incentives. Without the contribution of incentives for renewables or specifically for PV, and further of course depending on the current feed-in tariff, it is envisaged that a cost price of 1 €/Wp and below is needed to install cost-effective PV systems.

Nanoscale Aids Photocell Efficiency

The photocell operates by absorption of light particles in a medium that promotes electron-hole (or free electron- electron bond) separation. The well-designed photocell system has efficient absorption and then sweeps out the resulting carriers by making the collecting conductors ubiquitous. Otherwise, electrons may get trapped inside the semiconductor, ending the process of electron liberation that would have provided useful current. It is the nanoscale presence of carrier collectors that represents the means to get efficient electron capturing in systems that otherwise would reabsorb much photo-generated current. This capture efficiency is what makes nanotechnology able to open wide the possibilities for material systems which can effectively convert sunlight to useful electrical power.

Conclusion

It would be hard to imagine a better time to participate in Eco technologies including renewable, Green Solar technology and Wind Turbine sustained Energy investments. The shift into a responsible development of America's resources is eminent and the current demand is ever increasing. Green Renewable Sustainable technology have brought all aspects of the Wind and Solar industry into the 21^st century with clear benefits and inherent potential for multiple commercial spin offs of the new Hybrid Renewable Energy applications. The financial rewards are galvanized with government incentives and tax benefits for wind and solar energy installations.

"Over the past 4 years, the wind turbine and solar energy industry has transformed into one of the most technologically advanced industries in the United States. New innovations and cutting edge technology have reshaped the industry into a technology leader, in all segments of the industry. Green Energy, Inc. will play a role both in the services and as a new technology provider in the evolution of the solar and wind hybrid industries, focusing on symbiotic dual usage Wind and Solar Farms inked with industrial and commercial complexes". Zenergy Management