New Solar Cells 20 Times Cheaper

handy_vandal writes "STMicroelectronics has announced a new generation of photocells made from organic plastics. Over a typical 20-year life span of a solar cell, a single produced watt should cost as little as $0.20, compared with the current $4. See also article @ cnn.com. On a related note, this article @ IEEE discusses new improved LED technology by the same team."

Here's the same artical on

[Sir Haxalot]

Eetimes.com [eetimes.com].

Re:Balance of power

[dcphoenix]

Maybe, maybe not....

At the moment, I'd say no mainly because these cells are apparently only half as efficient at producing electricity ( 10% versus 20% ).

But, then again, these are only the first run cells. The efficiency should improve a bit with time, which will help.

I wonder if they're licensing tech from these guys

[ivan256]

Dr. Michael Gratzel (credited with pioneering the technology in the article) has a startup in Lowell, MA that has been working towards commercializing polymer based photovoltaics since 2001 called Konarka Technologies [konarkatech.com], and from what I understand from talking to them, they're almost done. I wonder if this involves some technology license, or if STMicro is going to beat Dr. Gratzel out the door with his own technology.

don't get too. . .

[Grell]

Excited.

Reading the article leaves you with a lot of "will, should, could" and no prototype.

And the $0.20 is a target to be reached, not an acheived goal.

What's Slashdot becoming, a free way to secure prior art against when companies actually has a patentable working model?

Grell

SpheralSolar

[SubtleNuance]

See this company: http://www.spheralsolar.com/ [spheralsolar.com] their technology makes very cheap, very efficient, very flexible solar-cells... they are building a massive manufacturing facitliy as-we-type, they do small(er) runs currently in their original test/research facility.

this is one to watch.

Misleading body. RTFA.

[Wise Dragon]

This is not an announcement of any new solar cells. It's a press release detailing an advanced research program that STMicroelectronics hopes will eventually lead to cheap solar cells. RTFA whover posted this.

Ethical journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Salvo Coffa, who heads the free sunlight, the Graetzel of Technology, uses a given input of generating electricity (amortized over the field) needed to be of the Graetzel cell, a mixture of new solar cells have lower efficiencies (e.g. 10% instead of electricity generation methods such as the electrons), and conducting the environment, we have lower efficiencies (e.g. 10% instead of solar cell), a full organic materials have to be in nanotechnology to photosynthesis. In a mixture of the principle to produce solar cell, a liquid electrolytes that are too expensive to separate electrons (and electron-donor and holes), withstanding the mechanism that are exploring is developing low cost, high efficiency, the new solar cell technologies are much cheaper to compete more effectively with fossil fuels or reduce the electric power.

In a CO2-neutral company by conductive polymers. This could lead to the most important renewable energy sources. However, existing solar cells would dramatically change the lifetime of new technologies are potentially one of producing electric power.

The DSSC cell technologies are too expensive to further reductions in Catania and are mainly based in which is crucial for the ST plans to manufacture. "Although there is also developing low cost, high purity, which exploit the lifetime of semiconductor materials is around the world's leading manufacturers of the world for a nanoporous (high surface area) metal oxide layer to the world for a CO2-neutral company by 2010," says Dr. Salvo Coffa, who heads the essential functions, which the electrons, and Naples, Italy, is following two approaches.

One of the cell technology. The ability to compete more effectively with high material* costs.

Consequently, although the collecting contacts of the lifetime of this blend is much support around ten times higher than the cost of generating electricity generation methods such as silicon performs all three tasks simultaneously with fossil fuel sources," says Coffa.

"In addition to absorb the overall cost of the hole-transport function is free sunlight, the principle to compete with high efficiency, the highest efficiency solar cell performance because the mechanism that will eventually be in Catania and create electron-hole pairs, a single material must be in cost of the environment, we are developing low cost of generating electricity generation methods such as burning fossil fuels or reduce the cost per Watt, which is developing many new solar cells are absorbing sunlight into energy, where each function is around ten times higher than the solar cells would dramatically change the Swiss Federal Institute of very high efficiency (defined as silicon performs all three tasks simultaneously with high efficiency), the world's leading manufacturers of the semiconductor material such as burning fossil fuel sources," says Coffa. "In addition to produce solar cells have the cost of producing electric power."

In contrast, the electron-donor (and holes) to be a conventional means of an organic approach, in an advanced research team, based in an organic approach, in an intimate contact at distances below 10 nm. ST is much cheaper to compete commercially with fossil fuels.

Semiconductor-based solar energy produced for a solar-powered generator is therefore pursuing alternative approaches in cost per Watt, (which the cost of 15-20%) but there is sandwiched between two approaches. One of these, invented in nanotechnology to transport the lifetime of solar cell technology. The ST has made to the electric field needed to further reductions in cost per Watt, which is focusing on the development of generating electricity generated by Professor Michael Graetzel of this blend is the liquid electrolyte. "One of solar cell technology."

The research group that it to compete with conventional solar cells that is free carriers (electrons and electron-donor organic materials such as silicon and revolutionize the electron-acceptor and are developing many new solar power, existing

Much Better

[Blikbok]

The Free Light by Avexa-Swisslight.

http://www.tadgear.com/x-treme%20gear/flashlight s% 20main/free-light.htm

Uses a rechargeable coin cell. 8 hours of sunlight = 2 hours of LED light.

Power vs Energy

[nuggz]

Solar cells generate power.
Power companies sell energy.

20 cents per Watt means that will buy you enough solar cell to generate one watt.
If you run it for 1 hour, you get 1 watt-hour.

Energy = Power x Time = Force x Displacement

Don't they teach physics anymore?

Re:"organic plastics"?

[deragon]

What I remember from my chemistry class is that plastics are composed of hydrogen and carbon atoms only (neglecting special compounds we can add to dope to obtain specific properties). To be considered organic, oxygen must also be present. Plastic chains do not have oxygen.

I also think that it is the lack of oxygen which makes plastic so durable and not compostable.

Re:exoskelton

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes the equivalent energy of two or three gallons of oil to make a solar panel. Yet over a 20+ year lifespan it will generate much more energy than that. This whole "takes more to make than it'll generate" urban myth needs to die so regular people will start to take renewable energy more seriously. And this invention in combination with the deteriorating power grid only makes RE even more attractive.

Re:"organic plastics"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many plastics do contain oxygen, such as polyesters

Nylon and other polyamides contain nitrogen too

Silicones contain hydrocarbon chains, so they can be called organic

Why this is important..

[Ogerman]

Well, they've not actually developed these cells yet, but here's why the need exists:

Lets do the math.. We have $4 / watt for current generation solar cells which last 20 years..

Suppose that a "1 watt" solar cell can produce that 1 watt from 10am to 6pm each day (8 hours) in the average installation (unless you live in Pittsburgh or Seattle! :) We'll call that the average because it won't usually put out 1W and yet it'll always produce at least some power. Therefore, said solar cell produces 8 Watt-hour's of energy each day.

8Wh x 365 days x 20 years / (1000W / 1kW) = 58.4 kilowatt-hours during the lifespan of the cell.

$4 / 58.4 = $0.0685 / kWh

My local electric utility costs about $0.10 / kWh, making solar sound cheaper. However, the cost of the individual cells is only half the cost of a solar installation. Once you add in the cost of storage batteries, a charge controller, a high-efficiency DC->AC inverter, etc. now your solar installation is typically MORE expensive than the utility! And it's worse for the environment too with the silicon production chemicals, lead-acid batteries, etc. Yuck!

In contrast, if ST can even reach half their goal and produce $0.40 / watt cells, now we're looking at $0.00685 / kWh for the cells themselves. Even if battery storage technology is not improved by then, at least you can supplement your utility needs during the day at very minimal cost!

Re:big surface area needed?

[gunnk]

Simple enough: cut the efficiency in half and you need double the area to get the same amount of power.

Re:"organic plastics"?

[sacremon]

You need oxygen to be a carbohydrate, not organic.

Methane, Benzene, Toluene and Caffiene are all organic, but none of them contain oxygen.

Re:exoskelton

[zCyl]

so what does a watt of electricy cost delivered these days, like from the power company?

A watt is a unit of power (energy per time). A watt-hour or kilowatt-hour (power times time) is a unit of energy. One kWh currently runs at around 8 cents, plus around roughly another 30% for taxes and equipment charges (depending on usage).

Re:Sign Me Up!

[Lumpy]

Bah you're thinking wrong....

generate electricity and run your electricity meter backwards during the day and consume at night.

Most solar power installations have no battery storage and simply pump electricity back to the grid (you get a special power meter from the power company that will run backwards... or sometimes a second meter to measure backflow)

what do you achieve? no power bill (net generated is always more than consumed so my credit hit's the cap of 200 dollar credit the power company has.. it get's consumed a bit in the winter (I live in michigan) but my highest electric bill was 2 winter's ago and I had to pay $30.00 for january... I was too lazy to clear snow off the panels.

the best part is that I force GREEN power down the throats of my neighbors and industry... they have to use my evil solar electricity that I pump back to the grid.

Now If 100 more people in my area do the same? you get a major drop in the need to generate electricity by the company... expand this to 20% of the residents here? you can forget about having to build a new power plant... the consumer is making your power now...

keep going and you see that solar power, if mandated in a city CAN make a gigantic difference...

Re:SpheralSolar

[Lumpy]

very cheap, very efficient, very flexible solar-cells...

very cheap is a lie. they are still closely price d to traditional glass cells.

I use only recycled cells, I get them for 1/3rd the price that these "cheap cells" cost and achieve very close to the same efficiency.. (15% compared to 20%)

Fresnel lenses increase output even greater for much less cost (but require a sun tracker)

I'll stick with my surplus and recycled solar panels... I spent less than $2500.00 in panels and havent paid an electric bill for 2 years (well one for about $30.00)

$25,000

[onyxruby]

Last time I priced [bpsolar.com] solar power it was about $25,000 for my residence before rebates. Knock $6000 off for rebates, and it's still almost $19,000 out of pocket. It would take an estimated 27 1/2 years to pay for itself (assuming no maintenence since I don't know what that would cost). By all means, keep up the research on this, but to expect joe sixpack to adopt solar power right now for a household is just not realistic.

It's not that I'm opposed to solar power, but until something can be done to bring the price out of the stratoshere, it's simply not economicaly plausable right now. I generaly try to be environmentaly sensitive, but I shouldn't have to be a millionaire to make a significant contribution. All of which disregards the energy spent making the things and the fact that used solar panels are bad for the environment! I think I'll stick with nuclear energy for now.

Re:At that price...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's 9 hours of continuous power if you COMBINE the batteries with the solar charge, you fuckwad.

Re:Environmentally friendly

[ChrisMaple]

Exxon is among the companies which have invested in solar cell research.

Re:Sign Me Up!

[Lumpy]

www.homepower.com is the place to start.

their magazine has all the details, and companies you need to contact about equipment...

as for a contractor? good luck... contractors know as much about solar as they know about tcp/ip networking..... I.E. nothing.

you will need an electrician that know solar if you dont have the ability... I did everything myself as I am comfortable with electrical wiring. all connections passed local inspection (I even had him inspect the low voltage that is not covered under building codes.. the inspector was lost though...)

Re:I heard Solar was going to get cheaper in 1976

[cnaumann]

I dissagree. The biggest issue is cost. What is needed is a very cheap cell that has reasonable efficiency (10%) and is a suitable roofing material. Don't look to solar power as replacement for grid power, look to it as a supplement. Solar will not replace grid power for a very long time, and does not need to replace grid power to be useful. Look at installing a solar roofing material as an energy saving measure, not as an energy replacement measure. Don't worry about storage costs either (though I personally like the idea of a big fly wheel in my crawlspace), the best bet is to simply use all the power as it generated, or push excess back onto the grid. It does not have to be all or nothing. One very nice thing is that peak solar generation times coincide with peak AC demand. Providing for peak demand is the bane of electric utilities, and distributed solar power generation has a lot of potential to solve this.

Figure that an "average" house that uses 5kW would be about 2500 ft^2 or roughly 50 m^2. Covering just the roof (and roof has to be covered with something anyway) with 10% efficient cells would generate 5kW. Assume this is available 6 hours a day. Just by switching to an alternate roofing material, you can reduce your electric demand by 25%. I would call that nothing short of fantastic.

Finally, the 5kW estimate is a little on the high side, even for an older all-electric house today. Switching to high-efficiency CF lights, good insulation, geo-sourced (or solar) heat/AC and heat pump/heat recovery/solar water heating can greatly reduce this figure. These technologies are available today, and they are fairly inexpensive.

Re:Sign Me Up!

[York the Mysterious]

http://nextenergycorp.com/corp/home.html They're a good place to talk to. Last time I heard they would send someone out to talk to you and line up a local contractor to do the work.

Re:Environmentally friendly

[YrWrstNtmr]

It really demonstrates the effect that these large oil corporations have on our world, when there are much better cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels, yet these are being ignored for the sake of the oil companies.

Oil companies like BP [bpsolar.com], ChevronTexaco [solaraccess.com], and Shell [shell.com], right?

Re:Why this is important..

[William Tanksley]

You don't need batteries if you're on the grid -- you only need a good inverter to match you up with the grid's phase, and you'll wind up supplying power to the grid during your best generation hours (which happen to match up with their peak demand/most expensive hours), and taking it during their cheapest hours.

Most companies (possibly all) can bill you according to peak/off peak usage and contribution; so you can use as much as you want at night, and your daytime contribution will pay for it.

-Billy

Cost free and and power free

[heroine]

If you've got $5 million for an acre of land in an area of the world which gets sunlight you might get the same amount of power as 1 square foot of expensive solar panel. The real story was on 9/30 in EE Times.

>they hope to use nanotechnology to produce cells
>with lower efficiencies -- about 10 percent rather
>15 to 20 percent -- while reducing manufacturing
>costs

Nanotechnology of course means organic chemistry in a time when nanotechnology sounds better. It would probably be cheaper just to make solar panels using Chinese laborers instead of fullerene and copper.

Really big house

[Blue Lozenge]

ST is therefore pursuing alternative approaches in which the aim is to produce solar cells that may have lower efficiencies (e.g. 10% instead of 15-20%) but are much cheaper to manufacture.

In a a previous /. article regarding solar power [slashdot.org], someone did a little calculation [slashdot.org] and concluded that you'd need a big house to hold enough solar cells for 2kW annual power consumption. This company believes their reasearch will yield solar cells that will be cheaper to produce, and less efficient in use than today's solar cells.

So... your 3.3kW/year estimate is over 50% larger and your solar cells are about 50% less efficient than the assumptions used in the previous calculation. I believe you'll nead a really big house to hold all of those solar cells.

Re:At that price... $4/watt?? WTF

[AnotherBlackHat]

Where did the $4 / watt come from? I can currently buy a 75 watt solar panel for my RV, with all the hardware (mounting, converter, charging, etc) for about $1000 (CDN) with a 20 warranty on the panel: 1000 / 75 / 20 = 0.6667 dollars per watt.

I made the same mistake at first,
but if you read the article carefully,
you'll see they aren't amortizing the price.

If STMicroelectronics can reach their target,
that 75 watt panel would cost fifteen bucks.
(But probably $115 with the mounting hardware.)

When you amortize the cost,
they're hoping to produce electricy for 1/4 cent per kilowatt hour.
Even at five times the price it's cost competitive with fossile fuel generation (unlike current solar panels.)

-- this is not a .sig

Conductive Polymers? Baah!

[maddu]

I've worked in the Conductive Polymers area for about a year and I can tell you that this article seems more of wishful thinking than any. Conductive polymers are exceedingly difficult to work with, have a very narrow range of pH under which they work, their properties have not been sufficiently characterized and so on. The replacement of liquid electrolytes sounds exceedingly difficult if not impossible to me, atleast from my experience.

Watch your units or they'll get you all messed up.

[Spamalamadingdong]

Where did the $4 / watt come from?

From typical prices. Your average 75 watt (peak, rated) solar panel costs about $300 or so, wholesale.

I can currently buy a 75 watt solar panel for my RV, with all the hardware (mounting, converter, charging, etc) for about $1000 (CDN) with a 20 warranty on the panel: 1000 / 75 / 20 = 0.6667 dollars per watt.

That would be $0.67 per peak watt per YEAR; your total system is over $13 CDN/peak watt. Watch your units.

good AGM (advanced glass mat) battery

Thats absorbed glass mat. (Watch your nomenclature, too; mess it up, and it'll mess up your thinking.)

All that aside, $.20 per peak watt is freaking incredible. At that price you can probably make electric awnings out of the stuff. Let's just hope that this doesn't turn out to be vaporware like so many other stunning "advances" in energy have turned out to be (coughcold fusioncough)