Nanosolar has completed a 1-megawatt, ground-mounted solar panel installation at a military base in California. The company's management are the inventors of a solar technology that prints metallic, nanoparticle inks on huge rolls of aluminum foil.
The high-throughput, roll-to-roll silkscreen-like printing process coats aluminum foil with a proprietary ink made of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium (CIGS). This process avoids the vacuum deposition that has been characteristic of many thin-film implementations and kept their cost high. The Nanosolar Utility Panel is, the company claims, the first solar panel to be developed for utility-scale deployment. Panels are longer, have higher power output, install faster, and require less cabling and mounting material. Nanosolar claims that its panels cost as much as 40 percent less per watt compared to conventional thin-film panels.
A thin-film solar technology that prints metallic, nanoparticle inks on huge rolls of aluminum foil promises to be more efficient and cost less than alternate thin-film methods. (Source: Nanosolar)
Most solar cells today are built with photovoltaic (PV) processes, using semiconductor-type manufacturing processes on crystalline silicon wafers. Thin-film PV processes deposit a variety of PV coating types on a variety of substrates, which are then scribed away to form circuits. Substrate material can vary, but is often glass, plastic, or metal. Although Nanosolar is not the only panel maker to use CIGS-type inks, its panel efficiencies are among the highest.
Thin-film PV is often considered to have higher efficiencies than crystalline silicon wafer methods of creating solar cells. But deposition methods can be complex and expensive. Nanosolar's process not only uses high-volume roll-to-roll printing, but the company says that its metal-wrap-through back contact design enables panels with higher mechanical and electrical stability than panels created with thin-film on glass methods. Watch videos showing the process here and here.
The process also produces cells more efficiently. Median efficiencies of the 230W panels are currently running at 11.5 percent. The company expects to increase that rate to 14 percent by 2013 and reach grid parity by 2015.
Nanosolar's most recent installation placed 4,992 panels at the Camp Roberts National Guard Base near Paso Robles, Calif. The project is funded by the US Department of Defense Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP), which is testing a variety of alternative energy technologies.
Other installations are located at the Camp Perry Ohio National Guard Base, as well as in Portland, Ore. and Bordeaux, France. The company recently received ISO-9001:2008 certification for its German manufacturing plant. The certification covers all aspects of manufacturing and testing the panels.
Thanks for the reply--I see your point. Yes, it would be interesting to find out, especially after these utility trials, if the material is adaptable to smaller panels for home use. Of course, it may take awhile before enough volumes occur in large-scale usage to bring down the material price. Or other factors may help bring down the price if that material is already in use in other industries.
Ann, it still would be interesting to see what I could do with that kind of material, since it might be easy to work with. Of course we did not hear much about just how durable it is, which may be the show-stopper. If the material was not excessivley expensive it may just be something very interesting to experiment with. There could be a lot of possibilities.
William, I also tend to buy commercial-grade equipment when possible, for the same reasons. And I also like to design and build my own stuff, although usually it's in the realm of non-metallic and non-electronic items like furniture, various wood structures, food, or clothing. My point here was that these panels are optimized for very large buildings, so are more applicable to a utility installation than an individual home, thus the rhetorical question.
I understand that the target market is huge utility arrays, but why wouldn't I want to make my own custom sized array for my own use? And as an engineer with a whole lot of experience in designing products to satisfy customers requirements, don't you think that I might be able to figure out my own requirements? In addition to all of that, almost without exception, products targeted for industrial applications are far more reliable than the current grade of trash presented to the general public. so it is certain that I could build a solar cell array far more durable than what I could buy, and have fun building it besides. Some of us engineers actually enjoy the design and build process, and find a good bit of pleasure in a project that functions well the very first time.
There are good arguments for why thin-film solar may eventually be less expensive overall than current PV solar, since its efficiencies tend to be higher. The main problem has been with expensive production methods, so cutting cost there could potentially cut overall costs. Nanosolar is not the only company to make a CIGS-type ink, or to print circuits on aluminum foil (although other circuits printed on foil are not usually used for solar cells). Since their panels are aimed at utility-sized installations, I doubt that they'll be available for sale to individuals anytime soon, or why an individual would want one.
Interesting discussion already here. The proof, of coure, will be in the production. When I can order these cells from one of the suppliers that advertise in Design News, and actually have the product arrive and function as advertised, then it will be a valid item. In the interim, press releases can keep stock prices up and keep investors coming. Oh Well!
were it actually true it would be a great step forwad, it almost sounds too good to be true, which in all probabi;ity is the case, given access to the realities of materials engineering.
Its amazing our nation permitts a disbarred lawyer without industrial, science, or military experience to guide us through these trying times, considering his directions are extremely questionable, exposing his inexperience to make sound decisions
Do you not question the lfe of the party when its based on a complex multielemental compound structure subjected to sun energy as an untested product ? Especially upon study of materials principles based on the very real resonanting frequencies of a multipart compounds, shown to have significantly shorter half lives as the number of elemental species increase. people in government do so without access to variables of subject matter they make opinions about---unfortunately our military suffers, which I wonder if their decisions predisposing variables are based on this treasonist activity, after watching them in actiion during the last 3 1/2 years, where their 300 czars micromanage the federal agencies who would normally overview and prevent its own destruction, were it not for mini czars, as affroamerica makes its bid to administer our nation, or destroy it in an effort to reallocate assets to the sub-culture, who double in numbers every 29 years while the other multicultural element of america have 1.9 children per family.
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