Solar Power goes to Extremes for 5cents per kiloWatt hour (kWh)

We are hoping to build a green house, using recycled materials mostly. I am hoping we can use solar power to extend the day light hours, which would be the plant's growing guidance system, so to speak.

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This would be useful in a large-scale solar electricity plant. I personally wouldn't want it on my roof. High concentrations of sunlight means high temperatures and potentially failure modes that I don't want to have happen where it could burn my house down.

There are a whole bunch of promising solar cell innovations on the horizon, many of them already in production or soon to be. There is actually quite a bit of innovation going on in just plain old silicon solar cells. Cut ten cents off of production costs here, add a couple of percentage points to efficiency there and it adds up. The shortage of silicon bid the prices up, but there is a LOT of new ploysilicon capacity coming online. Some of it is upgraded metallurgical grade silicon, which is potentially much cheaper than semiconductor grade silicon. A Canadian company called Timminco (sp?) appears to be doing some impressive stuff with upgraded metallurgical grade silicon.

Dale, I hear you. I presume this is going to be installed in special locations that don't include fire hazards.

As for low cost silicon, yes, and this is great, but... some of the low cost is coming at the expense of the lives and health of rural Chinese, because Chinese polysilicon plants are making a fortune but do not typically process their SiCl4 waste- they literally dump it in the countryside. See for the story. I'll have to check out the Canadian company. Thanks for the feedback.

This looks very promising, James, thanks for sharing! At $0.05/kWh, it prices both coal and nuclear out of the market, which is great. It means there's no excuse left for anyone pushing new coal or nuclear plants. Moreover, there is indeed a lot of new silicon solar cells coming onto the market, but shortages of silicon keeps the price up. Also, as you say, some plants do not observe good manufacturing practices. Some technologies use very little silicon though. I recently wrote about OptiSolar's Topaz 550-megawatt solar farm being built in California, using thin-film silicon photovoltaic panels that use only about 1% of the silicon of competing crystalline panels, with nontoxic and recyclable equipment made largely of glass, metal, and concrete.

More hoopla over alternative methods that are supposed to be better.........until we find out they really are not!

Sam, yes good points that follow up on what Dale and I were discussing. Thin film technology is important in many ways. The NanoSolar and related new technologies, many based on cadmium telluride, indium-based semiconductors, and related materials, are practical in large part because of their thin-film nature. In many ways, "plain" silicon of one kind or another is more efficient than these other materials, though not usually when weight or mass is considered. Now, with your information about a thin-film silicon panel, we could have the best of a number of worlds.

Dawne Joy, you seem to be happy to discount a whole lot of facts based on no information, which makes discussion difficult.

Maybe it would help you to know that the new "richest man in the world," by some accounts, is the owner of Chinese solar cell manufacturing plants. Somebody is buying these things! The buyers are just mostly in more enlightened places than the US, especially Europe, though Texas, California, Arizona and many other states and individual US citizens are active in establishing solar power and wind power, and have been for a very long time.

There has been enough information published, in Gather and elsewhere, by many of us and by others, to educate you on available, off the shelf, alternative power systems that you can install in your home today, or that your city or town can install on a large scale, today. If you want a selection of articles you can search Gather for solar or wind power, or go to my external blog Chemistry for a sustainable world (which is syndicated by Reuters, Fox News, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Austin American Statesman, the Chicago Sun Times, and many other local, national and international new services).

In fact, if you go to GoGreenSolar.com - #1 online destination for solar panels & wind power and put in your zip code, you can get information about tax rebates in your State and competing bids for installation of solar heating (for hot water), solar electric panels, and wind power, all of which can be used to power your home and sell excess power to the power company (or cut yourself off from the power company).

If you want to discuss this more, I'd be happy to do so.

Good news!

Dawne Joy (and all): I just had a response from the original other whose article I blogged (Michelle Bennett of cleantechnica.com). She said "I know that GG&E (the Australian co.) already has their product on the market. They've even set up "franchises" around the world..." This refers to the Australian company that developed a very similar solar concentrators/solar panel device. See my external blog page for more.

I love new technology, I hope it keeps improving

it won't replace oil and it won't fix the world BUT it MIGHT help keep utility prices down for awhile yet.

Thanks Sally!

Doc, I appreciate the comment, though I strongly disagree with it. Maybe you would like to see the latest story from Oil and Natural Gas producer Norway, which is switching to wind power. Maybe you would like to read about Holland switching to electric cars charged by wind power (reported extensive here at Gather and all over the news). Maybe you would like to read about a town in Missouri that was the first US town to become self-sufficient for electricity, based on wind power. I don't know what the mystery is, but Norway isn't worried about foreign oil and it is still switching away from carbon-based fuels.

Clean energy can, will and is replacing oil in many places, right now. Thanks for your feedback.

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great article

I know wind energy is helping here in California, as some people are using wind turbines to produce electricity for their homes.

Many of the homes in this area are putting in solar panels. When I moved here, there were few homes with solar and each year the number has been going up a lot.

Timminco Limited is a Canada-based company. I have been following what the company has been doing for years. The company hasn't made money and has been doing a lot of closing down production in June. I'm sure glad I didn't buy stock in this company, as my husband would have never let me live it down.