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sfsuphysics

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Saw this on the news last night
http://www.nanosolar.com/pr5-6.htm


Nanosolar to Build 430MW Solar Cell Factory
World's Largest Solar-Cell Factory; Building a Billion-Dollar Fab for Less; Volume Production Equipment Ordered; Decision Imminent on Bay Area Facility

PALO ALTO, California - June 21, 2006 - Nanosolar Inc., a global leader in solar power innovation, today announced that it has started executing on its plan to build a volume cell production factory with a total annual cell output of 430MW once fully built out, or approximately 200 million cells per year, and an advanced panel assembly factory designed to produce more than one million solar panels per year.

Presently in pilot production in its Palo Alto, California facility, Nanosolar announced that it has started ordering volume production equipment for what is going to be the world's largest solar cell manufacturing factory. The company also announced today that its first cell fab will be located in the San Francisco Bay area and that its first panel fab -- for a broad array of novel product form factors using advanced processes -- is expected to be located in Berlin, Germany.

Seed-financed by the founders of Google, the company's team started pursuing its mission of making solar electricity vastly more affordable in 2002. After four years of intense commercial research and development, including two years of manufacturing process development and engineering, the company has now delivered on its ambition to produce a fundamentally less expensive, mass-manufacturable solar cell.

"Thin-film printing overcomes the complexity, high cost, and yield and scalability limitations associated with vacuum-based processes. Nanosolar’s technology enables low-cost, high-yield production previously unattainable," said Chris Eberspacher, Nanosolar's head of technology, noting further: "This allows us to produce cells very inexpensively and assemble them into panels that are comparable in efficiency to that of high-volume silicon based PV panels."

Added Werner Dumanski, Nanosolar's head of manufacturing and a storage-disk industry manufacturing veteran: "Given the square meter economics of solar, high-throughput high-yield processes have to be used to succeed in this industry. With Nanosolar's printing process, the fully-loaded cell cost -- including materials, consumables, energy, labor, facility, and capital -- is less than the depreciation expense alone that vacuum thin-film companies have to pay for the equipment that produces their cells."

Regarding the scale of the factory, Dumanski points out: "A factory of this capacity would cost more than one billion dollars to build if one used conventional solar technology. Given the distinctly superior capital efficiency of our unique process technology, we can achieve this scale with a lot less capital and as a startup company."
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I saw it on news last nite announcing their intent to build a plant. Sounds cool affordable solar energy comparable to what you pay now. P Gand E must be cringing.
 
Not really, PG&E would rather renewables get out there because 1) they don't have to build additional plants and 2) PG&E probably can make a few bucks on the venture as well especially if they become offical distributers of said cells.
 
sfsuphysics said:
From the news reports I've seen it's going to be built in Palo Alto.
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I thought they were looking for an industrial type area ... maybe Palo Alto fits the bill. Anywhere in the Bay Area is good. This is really revolutionary technology!
 
Yeah, I know the technology is most probably proprietary but I'd be interested to how exactly they make solar cells out of thin film etching (I'm guessing from what I saw).
 
There's several companies presently jocking for the flexible cell market. One can take bullets passing thru it w/o a loss :D
 
Not etching. Printing probably with self assembling semiconducting nanostructures. They just print where they want to magic stuff to go. Then zap it with computer controlled lasers for whatever thermal processing is required for producing the working cells.

Check out these guys who are doing cutting edge nano stuff.

http://chem.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/yang/yang.html
http://chem.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/alivisatos/alivisatos.html
 
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