Think thin

For Nanosolar, the future is municipal solar power plants

Posted by Joseph Romm (Guest Contributor) at 5:01 PM on 22 Apr 2008

Read more about: solar voltaic power | energy | renewable energy

The following post is by Earl Killian, guest blogger at Climate Progress.

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Solar panels 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.

...

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.

...

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.

For story: Think thin
10 Comments | Post a Comment

bad news, JR

get ready for safety valve

by ce1907 at 6:39 PM on 22 Apr 2008

Moore's Law

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."

Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

by jabailo at 7:01 PM on 22 Apr 2008

We got a Solar Sewer!!!

Here in my little town. (sewage treatment plant) Not to mention not one but two solar breweries making for a very neat closed loop system. Because the sewage discharge goes past some rice fields and then eventually passes a "major" brewery downstream.

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

by Pangolin at 10:07 PM on 22 Apr 2008

Still a luxury to most

Solar panels in my country is mainly used in public utilities like telephone booths and some kiosks, but domestically it is yet to be adopted as a source of power due to its price. Solar panel use is mainly limited to water heaters in my country, but nothing else.

http://environe.blogspot.com

by Sephyrave at 5:11 AM on 23 Apr 2008

the windbag money guy?

Hope them thin-film PVs can see through the clouds, 'cause the short-term forecast is for more unsettled weather including at least 20-30 percent more cloudy days ahead.

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/ ...

by LGT at 6:48 AM on 23 Apr 2008

Cogeneration

By collecting heat from the panels, as well as electricity, for domestic hot water heating and building heat in cold seasons, the extra 40% from roof mounting PV can be more than compensated.

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

by amazingdrx at 8:18 AM on 23 Apr 2008

18 cents per watt? Implications of doing that.

Without arguing the merits of methods - 18 cents a watt = $180 per KW - given solar capacity translates to less than a 1 cents per kWh. At that point really inefficient means of electricity storage make senses if they have low capital costs. For example: compressed air without gas turbines to help in recovery can get back about 400 watt hours for each kWh input. That is 2.5 cents per kWh in electricity costs, so if you can keep capital costs down to a penny per kWh that is 3.5 cents per kWh - for electricity as dispatchable as fossil fuel. Heck even 2.5 cents per kWh of capital costs would keep costs to 5 cents per kWh - again 100% dispatchable - suitable for base, load following and peak. And you could still use a port of that less than a penny per kWh power directly, lowering overall cost.

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.

by Gar Lipow at 8:47 AM on 23 Apr 2008

Retail Electricity Costs

Nanosolar being sold out for a year isn't really a good argument against residential installations. When you factor in connection fees, transmission fees, etc., residential electricity may be the most expensive source of power around. I personally pay around 60 cents/kWh when you add in all the fixed costs. If I was to go off-grid, I could pay-back possibly faster than if I had a net-metering system, simply because 50 cents is the fixed fees and 10 cents is the marginal price.

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.

-- entropyproduction.blogspot.com

by rmcleod at 11:54 AM on 23 Apr 2008

Storage

Storage can be very cheap too Gar.

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

by amazingdrx at 10:41 PM on 23 Apr 2008

if it's too good to be true...

Fair disclosure : I am involved in the PV industry.

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.

by MacAfrican at 12:09 PM on 21 May 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

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