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Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels
- evolvd 15y agoSeems like something they could scale up and mass produce.
- jonhohle 15y agoLooking at Twin Creeks' website[0], it appears they are in the wafer manufacturing business and are using solar to promote their technology. It doesn't seem clear from their website that they would ever be the ones selling solar panels - but they might manufacture them for a client. They are selling their services, one application of which is solar cells. [0] http://www.twincreekstechnologies.com/ http://www.twincreekstechnologies.com/
- brlewis 15y agoThe article says we still need better battery technology, and there's truth to that. But even without batteries, just providing power on days when air conditioners run continuously, solar could make a huge difference in the energy picture.
- ck2 15y agoAnd using electric cars for battery storage too for excess power generation. Just imagine the world if it was 10 cents per watt instead of $1 a watt for solar. I hope I live long enough to see it. Dare we dream 1 cent per watt, just like what has happened with CPU development in the past three decades? Could we have 1 cent per watt solar in 30 years? 50 years? 100?
- saalweachter 15y agoIf current trends[1] continue, it will take about 15-25 years for solar energy to become cheaper than fossil fuels, which seems like a reasonable length of time for a trend to continue. To get the installation cost down from an estimated $1.40 in 2020 to $0.10 and $0.01 with the same trend would take 30-50 and 60-100 years, respectively. 70-110 years is definitely further in the future than I am comfortable peering; 40-60, also a little shaky. But given current trends, it looks like 2050-2070 is roughly what you need to shoot for to live to see $0.10 / Watt solar energy. If you were born in America after 1976, I'd aim for 2076; it'd be nice to see the Tricentennial. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-05/solar-energy-costs-may-already-rival-coal-spurring-installation-boom.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-05/solar-energy-costs-...
- ck2 15y agoSadly no way to see tricentennial unless there is a leap in not only medical technology but the politics and cost of it in the USA. Here's hoping for 10 cents in 30 years. ps. Isn't it $1.40 right now in 2012? Or are you calculating for off-grid with batteries instead of grid-tie?
- p0ckets 15y agoThe price of fossil fuels could also go up. We are starting to shift production from conventional drilling to more expensive methods like tar sands.
- ars 15y ago> it will take about 15-25 years for solar energy to become cheaper than fossil fuels You neglected to account for the change in price of fossil fuels. Natural gas is extremely cheap right now and is expected to only get cheaper.
- saalweachter 15y agoOr only burning coal at night. Once solar is significantly cheaper than coal and demand pricing kicks in, a lot of time-shifting of energy use could occur. Right now, night-time electricity is cheaper because demand is lower at night, but if the supply of daylight electricity increases dramatically, any activity which currently benefits from cheap nighttime electricity could be shifted back to the daylight hours. Data centers currently consume something like 2% of electricity -- it is probably possible to shift at least some of that to bright, sunny days. It may stop being cost-effective to run night shifts at factories, especially if your manufacturing process is energy-intensive. We might end up charging our electric cars at our offices during the day instead of over night at our homes. It'd be pretty silly to fill a battery with solar electricity during the day just to transfer it to another battery at night. Even without batteries, solar energy could still pick up a lot of our current nighttime energy usage because a lot of our nighttime energy usage doesn't actually have to be at night.
- rmc 15y agoI'm now thinking of amazon EC2's 'spot instances' where you launch an instance, do some computation then shut down, but only if the price per hour is less than some choosen point. (Basically a stock market for computation). If solar took off, i can see a correlation between price per hour and sunny days, as more machines are turned on when it's cheaper to run, hence increasing supply, and decreasing price. :P
- count 15y agoThis already happens, both at the energy generation level (power companies broker energy futures (excess supply/demand) between each other - see Enron for more) and at the energy consumer level (big businesses like refineries and foundries and the like pay less for electricity pulled in off-peak hours).
- polshaw 15y agoTo be clear-- the reason energy is cheap at night is not JUST because it is used less-- it is also because there are certain continuous energy sources. Nuclear power, geothermal, tidal, wave and wind power are all producing energy round the clock and if you don't harvest it, it's lost. We are not heading towards a world where we have a single power source (solar), and most of our power uses cannot be rescheduled. As fossil fuels are one of the few sources which can be turned on and off at our choosing, I would expect they will function to fill in temporary gaps between supply and demand once renewables capacity is large enough to take the average load. I don't see these gaps occurring predominantly at night.
- ck2 15y agoThat is some amazing technology right there, almost fun to read because it sounds like science fiction but it's real. And privately designed/built/owned particle accelerators? It's definitely a new era. What if one day the other side of the globe getting sunlight powered the grid for the other half? Of course this would require very peaceful nations on each continent, so even if we had the cost-effective technology now, it would take hundreds if not thousands of years to happen politically.
- DougBTX 15y ago> And privately designed/built/owned particle accelerators? It's definitely a new era. https://www.google.com/search?q=mass+spectrometer&tbm=shop https://www.google.com/search?q=mass+spectrometer&tbm=sh... I guess it's just a question of power!
- brlewis 15y agoWe're already buying energy from nations that aren't very peaceful, so the political issues may be solveable. I think, though, that transmitting energy halfway around the world would present engineering problems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission
- ck2 15y agoBuying oil from nations we don't like is acceptable because everyone wants to own their own car, it's very selfish motivation and massively profitable for the middlemen. Trading cheap electric power with little profit requires governments to make forward thinking, progressive decisions because no business will bother unless they could make millions from their effort. Also, I often ponder what will happen one day when power is cheap and easily available - you'd want to hope it means less war but I fear it means the opposite. The war machine will LOVE cheap power and then attacking power feeds or cutting off the other side of the globe as an act of war or terrorism will be too easy of a target. So we'd need peace first which is unlikely to happen given most governments.
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- ginko 15y agoCould this method also be used to create ultra-thin wafers for microprocessors?
- thefool 15y agoSimilar idea (solar cell would be much cheaper if they were much thinner), different process: http://www.naanovo.com/home http://www.naanovo.com/home
- nextparadigms 15y agoThis is why I welcomed the backlash and even some of the sensationalism regarding the nuclear explosion in Japan. Even if I realize that nuclear energy could be safe and it's good to have an alternative that is cheap enough to compete with coal, I'd still wish we'd spend all those billions switching from nuclear and putting most of them into renewable energy technologies, which should be the future. The arguments against solar were that the tech is "not there yet", so then it's better to just focus on nuclear. I disagree with that. I believe that if the energy industry changed focus to solar panels and other renewable energy technologies, we would get there a lot faster. We would have a lot more companies exploring different ideas that make them more efficient and cheaper. Nuclear technology will probably never be gone, or at least not within the next century. But I just don't want it to be the holy grail of the energy industry and see the vast majority of investments go into that. I want renewable energy technologies to be that.
- white_devil 15y ago> if the energy industry changed focus to solar panels and other renewable energy technologies, we would get there a lot faster This is probably true. But as always, the problem is money. More specifically, the money that entrenched interests possess (and throw around). I'd love for solar energy to happen as soon as possible too. It shows great promise. But it might not happen for a while. > Nuclear technology will probably never be gone, or at least not within the next century. 100 years is a mighty long time. Who knows, nuclear reactors might be completely replaced by renewable energy sources within the next fifty years. Let's hope for the best.
- greedo 15y agoThe idea that solar, wind and geothermal energy can replace nuclear power for electricity generation in my lifetime (the next 35 years) ignores the reality of how much electricity we consume and how it is currently generated. Here's a link to a graph created by the Lawrence Livermore Lab that quickly illustrates the miniscule impact of doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling the three primary alternative energy sources. I wish we could all live in a world powered by solar cells etc, but it just isn't going to happen.
- siculars 15y agoAnd this is a beautiful example of manufacturing innovation and advancement, evolution and revolution, coming from those that actually make things. When you make things you find a way to make them better. This is why I believe we in the USA need to maintain a strong industrial/manufacturing culture. Not simply to employ people but rather to be at the epicenter of where innovation happens.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- TeMPOraL 15y agoI highly recommend reading "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air"[1] to anyone interested in topic of energy sources and use. It covers lots of things mentioned in comments, like storing energy in pump storages or car batteries in order to make solar/wind plants able to provide a big contribution to power grid without breaking it. What is important, this books talks about those ideas using real data and carefully estimates what's really feasible to do (like, how many pumped storages you'd need if you'd like to switch 50% of your energy sources to solar). [1] - http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/ http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/
- skittles 15y agoIs there a mistake in the 40 cents per watt cost reported in the article? I work for an energy company and our wind-farm energy is around 4.5 cents per kilowatt.
- ahi 15y agoI suspect your wind-farm energy is around 4.5 cents per kilowatt-hour edit: napkin math: .40 * 1000 watts = $400/kw Assuming 4380 hours of optimum sunlight per year and lifetime of 10 years ~= .01/kwh Should be competitive even when my ridiculous assumption meets reality.
- fryguy 15y agoPresumably, the only cost in solar panels is their construction, so there are no recurring costs (other than amortizing their lifetime). It seems complicated to figure the number of hours it lasts for, and figure out the energy generated in those hours. It's a lot simpler to figure out the amount of power generated for a given surface area (in some standardized amount of light input), and the cost of that surface area to generate. So if you wanted a kilowatt of power generated continuously from the sun, minus overcast and such, it would cost $400. I'm not an expert, but that would be my guess.
- drucken 15y agoIt is not clear if glass as a protective cover is still used or required for final production of solar cells made with this process. Does anyone know?
- ender7 15y agoAlmost certainly. You could use another material, such as some clear plastic or epoxy, but the idea is still the same (and glass has the most desirable transmittance properties I believe).
- ars 15y agoGlass blocks UV which isn't ideal since it heats things up and UV has useful energy. But it's cheaper than quartz.
- tlb 15y agoAny claim of something being cheaper, with a picture of some shiny stainless-steel small-scale lab equipment, is suspect. It's not demonstrated to be cheaper until you're producing at scale.
- sovande 15y ago[..] cost of around 40 cents per watt, about half the cost of panels currently coming out of China (where the vast majority of solar panels are made) To me, this is the second cool part of the story. It shows that we can still do industrial enterprises in the west by applying technology. Sooner or later the production and assembly industry will have no more cheap labor forces to "exploit" on the globe and production, assembly and automaton technology may (again) be an industrial game changer for the west as it was with "spinning jenny".
- wavephorm 15y agoWARNING: it's another one of those OnSwipe mobile sites that crash your browser. I wish there was some way to opt out of OnSwipe and just load the desktop version of a website on my iPad.
- invalidOrTaken 15y agoI think I may have misunderstood the manufacturing process. To my reading, it looks like they have 3mm-thick wafers, accumulate a 20mm-thick layer of hydrogen, which then shears off in a furnace, leaving...a 3mm-thick wafer. Which they started with. Thanks in advance to whoever explains how I've misunderstood this. EDIT: Oh, I neglected to pay attention to units. The above should be 3mm, 20-micrometer, and 2.98mm, respectively, which means the sheet shearing off is 0.002mm thick. This is seriously cool. Thanks for everyone's patience.
- grep2 15y agoExactly, the point is that the 20micron-layer of silicon that was shearing off is now the solar cell. Compare that to 200micron sheets, as used currently, and you see where the savings come from (i.e. you can get up to 10x more solar cells from a standard waver). I hope this helps.
- jmaygarden 15y agoThey must have meant 20 micrometer thick layers since they also state that they are "a tenth of the thickness" of standard "200-micrometer-thick (0.2mm)" wafers.
- abstractbill 15y agoThe hydrogen layer accumulates below the current surface of the silicon. When you put it in a furnace, it causes a very thin layer of silicon to shear off from the 3mm wafer.
- invalidOrTaken 15y agoErr, 2.998, not 2.98.
- jstalin 15y agoFrom the literature I've seen, the realistic maximum amount of solar energy that can be produced through photovoltaic cells is about 40-50 watts per square meter. Although solar is exciting, there's just no way it can be used to replace fossil fuels, no matter how cheap it gets to manufacture. It'll have to be a combination of renewables (why not more hydroelectric power) and greater efficiency (like LED's).
- cma 15y agoNot really a big crisis; we could shut down every nuclear plant in the US today if people switched from drying clothes in an electric dryer to hanging them outside. We live in a time of absolute plenty.
- ryanisinallofus 15y agoA case in which building your hammer to build your desk does actually add value.
- hinathan 15y agoFor traditional wafer processes, you consume a great deal more feedstock than goes into the active portion of a wafer, and even then you may end up grinding away much of the material such as in the case of backlit imaging sensors. This 'exfoliation' approach in some ways plays into the concept Elon Musk floated about SpaceX - the actual atoms in a booster are relatively simple, they just need to be arranged in the right way.
- marshray 15y agoAnd if the solar panels don't work out, they can take four of those ion cannons and use them as blinged-out wheels on their Escalade.
- gaius 15y agoAnd the ion cannon is powered by...? And the raw materials were extracted by machines powered by...?
- jes5199 15y agoelectricity!
- pkulak 15y agoAnd as an aside, companies are already pretty good at storing energy with things like molten salt.
- bnolsen 15y ago"fossil fuel" is likely a misnomer. Read to your heart's content here: http://trilogymedia.com.au/Thomas_Gold/usgs.html http://trilogymedia.com.au/Thomas_Gold/usgs.html
- kragen 15y agoThe thing I'm puzzled about here is why saving silicon makes your solar cells cheaper. I mean, silicon is really cheap, right? Metallurgical-grade silicon is 77 cents a pound: http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/silicon/silicmcs06.pdf http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/silicon/sil... — and that works out to around a penny a watt. I tried to dig into this a few years ago. Evergreen Solar's 10-K for 2007 http://edgar.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/947397/000095013508001256/b68105ese10vk.htm http://edgar.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/947397/000095013508... has some information. Evergreen's competitive advantage is supposedly that they use less silicon than other manufacturers because they don't saw their wafers — they grow them. They say they use about 5g of silicon per watt (in 2007, planning to reduce it to 2½g per watt by 2012), and it sounds like they get paid about US$3.87 per watt on average (US$58M revenue in 2007, maxed-out manufacturing capacity of 15MW/year, 276 full-time employees in manufacturing). Their "cost of revenue" (i.e. manufacturing cost) was US$53M, or US$3.53/W. But 5g of metallurgical-grade silicon at the price above is US$0.008. If each employee costs US$120k per year (including health benefits, and remembering that a bunch of them are Ph.D.s) then that would be US$2.20/W in labor costs, which already accounts for the majority of that cost of revenue. But they're not buying metallurgical-grade silicon; they're buying "polysilicon", short for "polycrystalline silicon", which is perhaps a bit of a misnomer, since how many crystals are in each piece of silicon supplied by their suppliers is somewhat immaterial, since Evergreen melts the silicon down and crystallizes it in polycrystalline silicon ribbons in their "String Ribbon" furnaces. Maybe that costs a lot more than metallurgical-grade silicon? It used to be hard to find that information! But it's much better now; http://pvinsights.com/ http://pvinsights.com/ lists current PV-grade polysilicon prices at US$29 to US$35 per kilogram, and http://www.pv-tech.org/news/polysilicon_prices_declines_will_continue_sector_shakeout_says_gtm_research http://www.pv-tech.org/news/polysilicon_prices_declines_will... explains that this is a major drop from previous prices of US$80/kg. 5 g at US$35 per kilogram is US$0.175. But "Silicon PV Module Price Per Watt" ranges from US$0.75 to US$1.40. Dropping 17½¢ off that price still isn't going to get you to 40¢. And if Evergreen has really made it to 2½g/W, silicon cost is even less of the total cost. http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008483.html http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008483.html mentions that in 2008 polysilicon prices peaked at US$400/kg. Anyway. I'm obviously no expert, but I'm skeptical that peeling silicon with a particle accelerator is going to decrease the cost of photovoltaic cells.
- aaxp 15y agoWaiting for shills to block this technology using peer review to save petro-dollar empire.