4 ms·

Start-Up sells solar panels that are cheaper than coal power

53 points by iamelgringo 19y ago

DaniFong 19y ago
Wow. Great find - if this is true this would be wonderful for the world. I hope that the costs targets remain stable. These are projections, after all.
- Alex3917 19y ago
  Don't forget also that after the US implements a cap & trade system the value to the consumer will increase. The next attempt is going to be spring 2008, but if that doesn't pass it might get pushed off until 2009. But every single climate bill is based around the cap & trade system, and it's clear that one of them is going to pass very soon, if not in six months then in a year and six months, but soon.
davidw 19y ago
Weird that they put the factory in San Jose. I can see not outsourcing to China or similar faraway locales but I imagine you could save a lot just by moving it out of the bay area.
- mrtron 19y ago
  If you are 'printing' the panels, it is hardly a labour intensive factory. I imagine it is mostly automated, with a few engineers and forklift drivers working there. I also imagine if they dropped that much money on a factory, they considered building it elsewhere but likely constructed it there to save on shipping costs, etc.
- Retric 19y ago
  In many ways this is a beta production run so having high quality staff working closely with the design team is more important than labor costs. Right now they are more focused on moving product than lowering labor costs. After the bugs are worked out they will probably move to some distant location but for now it's cheaper to manufacture this stuff in the US. Anyway, "it had orders for its first 18 months of manufacturing capacity." so they are probably going to keep the plant running for a while even after opening production facilities in other countries.
  - davidw 19y ago
    "Easy access" makes sense, but even then, depending on how often they need it, you would have think plunking it down further off towards Sacramento would have saved some cash, given even land prices in the bay area. Oh well, it's pretty cool in any case.
  - pchristensen 19y ago
    I agree with the high quality staff issue (it's still Silicon Valley and some people remember how to do high-tech manufacturing) but I think they also wanted to be close to potential customers (rich companies that use tons of power and are flush with cash). Not to make deliveries to customers easier, but to make it easier for people to visit them and say "ooh, solar cell factory!". Plus their VCs probably didn't want to drive to Sacramento
- qaexl 19y ago
  Not so. With California getting ready to give government subsidies for solar-generated power, Nanosolar's customers are right there. They might even have gotten subsidies and tax incentives for locating their factory there. There may also be logistics issues because they are not using silicon.
kingnothing 19y ago
The company in Germany that is buying the first run of panels for their megawatt solar power station gets my kudos for using their landfill for a good purpose after it's full. I'd like to see more companies use innovative thinking like that to find a use for otherwise worthless land.
- eru 19y ago
  It's not so unusually to re-use full land fills here in Germany.
  - kingnothing 19y ago
    What else are they used for?
    - eru 19y ago
      Here in Magdeburg one land fill was made part of a park for the federal garden exhibition (Bundesgartenschau) in '99. They covered it of course.
      - eru 19y ago
        http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=de&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=magdeburg+buga&ie=UTF8&ll=52.136952,11.676085&spn=0.009259,0.020084&t=h&z=16&om=1 http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=de&geocode=&t... The strang 'snake' on the west flank is a shute that you can use with skids.
- paul 19y ago
  The shoreline area of Mountain View (where Google is located) is largely old landfill. There are still some flaming methane vents around (or there were a few years ago).
drubio 19y ago
They will make solar cheaper than coal , and manufacture in San Jose ?! WOW, but its still manufacturing the actual infrastructure and not the operational(daily) costs of placing it on the grid. I saw an article on wave power a few weeks ago which breaks down the structure as follows: Coal (3 cents) kilowatt hour Natural gas (4 to 5 cents) kilowatt hour. Wave (5 to 8 cents) [long-term goal] for kilowatt hour. Offshore wind turbines (15 cents) kilowatt hour. * Solar (18 or more cents, depending on the circumstances.) kilowatt hour. Producing at lesser than 3 cents seems astonishing, considering this last article pegs solar at 18 cents/kwhr, not to mention the leasing and operational costs of having manufacturing in the U.S Here is the original article on Wave power, which is set to go live in California by 2012 http://www.news.com/Wave-power-to-go-commercial-in-California/2100-13840_3-6223220.html http://www.news.com/Wave-power-to-go-commercial-in-Californi... The N.Y times article cites "the first solar panel manufacturer to be able to profitably sell solar panels for less than $1 a watt. With a $1-per-watt panel," he said, "it is possible to build $2-per-watt systems." According to the Energy Department cites: 'building a new coal plant costs about $2.1 a watt, plus the cost of fuel and emissions, he said. Its interesting how they play with numbers, the N.Y times numbers on solar are for building plants, the other source on news.com is for kw/hour indicating operational costs for putting it on the grid.
daniel-cussen 19y ago
Sounds way, way too good to be true. This would be like saying you found a way to make nuclear fusion work.
- eru 19y ago
  The article says that it will be cheaper than coal. That should be quite possible. Not that the energy will be free.
- paul 19y ago
  Nuclear fusion does work. This is just about capturing the energy :)
- qaexl 19y ago
  That's a very interesting reaction. I find it interesting that a lot of people get suspicious over a 'good thing'. Part of the culture, I guess. I've been hearing about Google investing into alternative energy projects, including Nanosolar and a (non-torrodial) fusion group that was formerly funded by the government. I've been hearing these rumors for the past two years or so. I heard about the Nanosolar bit right when Google was building all those datacenters, including the one in Washington (or Oregon?) near that huge power plant. I had also heard that Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Page's brother, Carl Page funded Nanosolar. You know, right after the Google IPO and Carl Page sold his company to Yahoo. (Though they supposedly invested a few years before the payday, so ... ). All of this is hearsay, of course. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/06/google_founders.php http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/06/google_founders.php Here's the bottom line. Nanosolar has hungry customers beating down their door. Like the NYTimes article says, why should they be making a big media fuss right now? Why do they need to prove to the world about those figures? It actually reminds me pre-IPO Google.com. "Come see for yourself."
mynameishere 19y ago
Why do they keep saying things like "$1-per-watt"? What does that mean? $1 per 1-watt maximum power production? $1 per 1-watt/hour maximum or estimated output? A power plant has a MW rating, like this: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/beavervalley.html http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reacto... About 810 MW/reactor. If they are rating a cell at 1-watt maximum output, it is probably dishonest unless they are accounting for clouds and nighttime, etc. What is the cost of infrastructure to maintain energy at night? Are millions of flywheels or batteries cheaper than a power plant? It's weird how the NYT will spend 9 pages on baloney, but only give something like this a tiny article.
- ph0rque 19y ago
  In order to compare apples to apples, electric power analysts use the (maximum, I assume; or maybe average) cost per unit of power that can be produced from a given technology. This lets analysts not have to account for the operational efficiencies of the powerplant, solar cell, etc. As far as cloudy days/nighttime, most of the energy use occurs in the afternoon and early evening, when everybody comes home and turns on their stoves, washing/drying machines, TV's, etc. This corresponds to the average peak solar production. So these solar cells would, if they find widespread use, get rid of the need for "peakers", which are peak generating units, and are the most expensive in terms of the cost of energy produced.
- pingswept 19y ago
  It's a ridiculous metric. They're talking about the power at which the panel peaks in full sun. If you buy a panel that peaks at 200 W for $600, that's called 3 $/W. It's dumb. A better metric would be $/kWh. Some related calculations here: http://pingswept.org/2007/12/20/i-retract-all-scoffing-remarks-regarding-nanosolar/ http://pingswept.org/2007/12/20/i-retract-all-scoffing-remar...

53 points by iamelgringo 19y ago

Wow. Great find - if this is true this would be wonderful for the world. I hope that the costs targets remain stable. These are projections, after all.

Alex3917 19y ago
Don't forget also that after the US implements a cap & trade system the value to the consumer will increase. The next attempt is going to be spring 2008, but if that doesn't pass it might get pushed off until 2009. But every single climate bill is based around the cap & trade system, and it's clear that one of them is going to pass very soon, if not in six months then in a year and six months, but soon.

davidw 19y ago

Weird that they put the factory in San Jose. I can see not outsourcing to China or similar faraway locales but I imagine you could save a lot just by moving it out of the bay area.

mrtron 19y ago
If you are 'printing' the panels, it is hardly a labour intensive factory. I imagine it is mostly automated, with a few engineers and forklift drivers working there. I also imagine if they dropped that much money on a factory, they considered building it elsewhere but likely constructed it there to save on shipping costs, etc.
Retric 19y ago
In many ways this is a beta production run so having high quality staff working closely with the design team is more important than labor costs. Right now they are more focused on moving product than lowering labor costs. After the bugs are worked out they will probably move to some distant location but for now it's cheaper to manufacture this stuff in the US. Anyway, "it had orders for its first 18 months of manufacturing capacity." so they are probably going to keep the plant running for a while even after opening production facilities in other countries.
- davidw 19y ago
  "Easy access" makes sense, but even then, depending on how often they need it, you would have think plunking it down further off towards Sacramento would have saved some cash, given even land prices in the bay area. Oh well, it's pretty cool in any case.
- pchristensen 19y ago
  I agree with the high quality staff issue (it's still Silicon Valley and some people remember how to do high-tech manufacturing) but I think they also wanted to be close to potential customers (rich companies that use tons of power and are flush with cash). Not to make deliveries to customers easier, but to make it easier for people to visit them and say "ooh, solar cell factory!". Plus their VCs probably didn't want to drive to Sacramento
qaexl 19y ago
Not so. With California getting ready to give government subsidies for solar-generated power, Nanosolar's customers are right there. They might even have gotten subsidies and tax incentives for locating their factory there. There may also be logistics issues because they are not using silicon.

kingnothing 19y ago

The company in Germany that is buying the first run of panels for their megawatt solar power station gets my kudos for using their landfill for a good purpose after it's full. I'd like to see more companies use innovative thinking like that to find a use for otherwise worthless land.

eru 19y ago
It's not so unusually to re-use full land fills here in Germany.
- kingnothing 19y ago
  What else are they used for?
  - eru 19y ago
    Here in Magdeburg one land fill was made part of a park for the federal garden exhibition (Bundesgartenschau) in '99. They covered it of course.
    - eru 19y ago
      http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=de&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=magdeburg+buga&ie=UTF8&ll=52.136952,11.676085&spn=0.009259,0.020084&t=h&z=16&om=1 http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=de&geocode=&t... The strang 'snake' on the west flank is a shute that you can use with skids.
paul 19y ago
The shoreline area of Mountain View (where Google is located) is largely old landfill. There are still some flaming methane vents around (or there were a few years ago).

drubio 19y ago

They will make solar cheaper than coal , and manufacture in San Jose ?! WOW, but its still manufacturing the actual infrastructure and not the operational(daily) costs of placing it on the grid. I saw an article on wave power a few weeks ago which breaks down the structure as follows: Coal (3 cents) kilowatt hour Natural gas (4 to 5 cents) kilowatt hour. Wave (5 to 8 cents) [long-term goal] for kilowatt hour. Offshore wind turbines (15 cents) kilowatt hour. * Solar (18 or more cents, depending on the circumstances.) kilowatt hour. Producing at lesser than 3 cents seems astonishing, considering this last article pegs solar at 18 cents/kwhr, not to mention the leasing and operational costs of having manufacturing in the U.S Here is the original article on Wave power, which is set to go live in California by 2012 http://www.news.com/Wave-power-to-go-commercial-in-California/2100-13840_3-6223220.html http://www.news.com/Wave-power-to-go-commercial-in-Californi... The N.Y times article cites "the first solar panel manufacturer to be able to profitably sell solar panels for less than $1 a watt. With a $1-per-watt panel," he said, "it is possible to build $2-per-watt systems." According to the Energy Department cites: 'building a new coal plant costs about $2.1 a watt, plus the cost of fuel and emissions, he said. Its interesting how they play with numbers, the N.Y times numbers on solar are for building plants, the other source on news.com is for kw/hour indicating operational costs for putting it on the grid.

daniel-cussen 19y ago

Sounds way, way too good to be true. This would be like saying you found a way to make nuclear fusion work.

eru 19y ago
The article says that it will be cheaper than coal. That should be quite possible. Not that the energy will be free.
paul 19y ago
Nuclear fusion does work. This is just about capturing the energy :)
qaexl 19y ago
That's a very interesting reaction. I find it interesting that a lot of people get suspicious over a 'good thing'. Part of the culture, I guess. I've been hearing about Google investing into alternative energy projects, including Nanosolar and a (non-torrodial) fusion group that was formerly funded by the government. I've been hearing these rumors for the past two years or so. I heard about the Nanosolar bit right when Google was building all those datacenters, including the one in Washington (or Oregon?) near that huge power plant. I had also heard that Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Page's brother, Carl Page funded Nanosolar. You know, right after the Google IPO and Carl Page sold his company to Yahoo. (Though they supposedly invested a few years before the payday, so ... ). All of this is hearsay, of course. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/06/google_founders.php http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/06/google_founders.php Here's the bottom line. Nanosolar has hungry customers beating down their door. Like the NYTimes article says, why should they be making a big media fuss right now? Why do they need to prove to the world about those figures? It actually reminds me pre-IPO Google.com. "Come see for yourself."

mynameishere 19y ago

Why do they keep saying things like "$1-per-watt"? What does that mean? $1 per 1-watt maximum power production? $1 per 1-watt/hour maximum or estimated output? A power plant has a MW rating, like this: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reactors/beavervalley.html http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/at_a_glance/reacto... About 810 MW/reactor. If they are rating a cell at 1-watt maximum output, it is probably dishonest unless they are accounting for clouds and nighttime, etc. What is the cost of infrastructure to maintain energy at night? Are millions of flywheels or batteries cheaper than a power plant? It's weird how the NYT will spend 9 pages on baloney, but only give something like this a tiny article.

ph0rque 19y ago
In order to compare apples to apples, electric power analysts use the (maximum, I assume; or maybe average) cost per unit of power that can be produced from a given technology. This lets analysts not have to account for the operational efficiencies of the powerplant, solar cell, etc. As far as cloudy days/nighttime, most of the energy use occurs in the afternoon and early evening, when everybody comes home and turns on their stoves, washing/drying machines, TV's, etc. This corresponds to the average peak solar production. So these solar cells would, if they find widespread use, get rid of the need for "peakers", which are peak generating units, and are the most expensive in terms of the cost of energy produced.
pingswept 19y ago
It's a ridiculous metric. They're talking about the power at which the panel peaks in full sun. If you buy a panel that peaks at 200 W for $600, that's called 3 $/W. It's dumb. A better metric would be $/kWh. Some related calculations here: http://pingswept.org/2007/12/20/i-retract-all-scoffing-remarks-regarding-nanosolar/ http://pingswept.org/2007/12/20/i-retract-all-scoffing-remar...