Thursday, June 22, 2006

Nanosolar News

One of the companies I've been watching closely is Nanosolar, because of their remarkable claims for low-cost solar power production. The good news today (via GCC) is that Nanosolar is building what is possibly the world's largest solar cell manufacturing facility, which will have the capacity to build 430MW of peak solar power every year.

Excellent news. Nanosolar is one of the first companies to promise solar power at a cost below $1 per peak watt ($1/Wp), a price at which solar is easily competitive with our other source of electricity on bright, sunny days - natural gas.

1 comment:

Ronald Brak said...

If the solar cells can produce power at a cost of $1 U.S. per peak watt and assuming that the average life of a panel of solar cells is fifteen years, then in sunny Australia and quite a few other places they can produce electricity for less than 3.4 US cents per kilowatt hour. That is extremely cheap. It sounds like a combination of solar, wind, a flow battery, a gas turbine and variable electrical rates for industry could economically power my entire state with minimal emissions of CO2.

If true, this is very good news.