Solar power breakthrough

[PhotonBoy]

CNN: Discovery may spur cheap solar power (pop up alert)

"AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -- A major European chip maker said this week it had discovered new ways to produce solar cells which will generate electricity twenty times cheaper than today's solar panels." /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif

 

[Double_A]

I heard that story too on the radio the other day.

I thought to myself that's fantastic, until they got to the part that the panels/cells were indeed much much cheaper, but they weren't as efficient in converting light to electricity.

Two hundred square feet of panels maybe 5% of the price but it doesn't do me any good if they only produce 50% of the electricity, my installation would have to be twice as big. Zoning dept in a nearby city has been giving a commercial building owner a real hard time about his proposed install. Even though he had already incorporated hiding the panels in the first plans he submitted. They still turned him down, it's been in all the papers how anal this particular city is. No good deed goes unpunished it seems.

Bummer!


GregR

 

[PhotonBoy]

Existing panels for solar power generation are bulky and ugly since they're designed to house the expensive, fragile solar cells.

The new ones, in my mind, offer the potential to be packaged in a different manner, say as shingles or special exterior wall siding. Being plastic, I think they'd be more flexible and durable. With a bit more research, I think the efficiency could be improved also.

An unknown factor is their long-term life. Would the efficiency tend to diminish over several years?

 

[Brock]

A couple of companies already make panels that are in the shape of shingles. I saw a house this summer that had them. They are about 2x the price of "normal" solar panels, but honestly from 100 feet away you wouldn't know they were solar shingles. That would be the way to go, who could complain? Stealth I say, stealth. Now if I could only get a wind generator that looked like a TV antenna /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif