Sanyo Electric To Mass Produce World's Most Energy-Efficient Solar Cell (21.6% efficiency)

[jpak]

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20101203-702996.html

Sanyo Electric Co. said Friday it will start mass producing a new solar cell with the world's highest energy conversion efficiency.

The new cell, to have a sunlight-to-energy conversion rate of 21.6%, will start selling in Europe in February, Sanyo said.

The company's most efficient cell previously had a conversion rate of 21.1%.

The Japanese electronics maker will mass produce the new cells at its two domestic plants, and put them into modules at its Hungary plant for sale in Europe.

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[burrowowl]

1. Why isn't the US

researching and manufacturing better products?

[jpak]

2. Three words

Grand

Old

Party

:thumbsdown:

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. What makes you think the US aren't?

My computer is doing it right now!
http://cleanenergy.harvard.edu/

…

The Clean Energy project uses computational chemistry and the willingness of people to help look for the best molecules possible for: organic photovoltaics to provide inexpensive solar cells, polymers for the membranes used in fuel cells for electricity generation, and how best to assemble the molecules to make those devices. By helping us search combinatorially among thousands of potential systems, you can contribute to this effort.

…

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. See also…

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=267504&mesg_id=267504

[Submariner]

3. For efficiency comparisons

http://www.mpoweruk.com/energy_efficiency.htm

[Tesha]

4. And your point is?

Or are you hoping we just naively assume that since Solar PV
has a low conversion energy that somehow means something?

Insolation on the surface of the earth averages about 1 KW
per square meter, so even at a low conversion efficiency,
there's a lot of energy to be had.

Tesha

[txlibdem]

6. A lot of -FREE- energy, thank you.

The high efficiency of these cells is impressive but are they affordable?

That is the frontier solar panel manufacturers need to cross. I couldn't care less if I have the #1 most efficient solar cells as long as I can afford to put solar on my roof and reduce or eliminate my electric bill!

[DLnyc]

8. Yes, the important figure is watt capacity per cent, not watt conversion per

watt of energy coming in.

Currently installation decisions are based mostly on the cost of capital. Wind turbines are going up at about 1 cent per watt capacity, as far as I can gather from news reports, so that's where the money is mostly going. Solar installations, like Nevada's Solar One, sound like they went in for about 4 cents per watt capacity, so those are currently more expensive.

The figure to watch is cents per watt capacity. When that gets to one, I figure solar installations will go up all over the place. Well, mostly in high desert areas, to be precise.

[txlibdem]

9. Is that nameplate capacity or actual output?

Still very good either way...

[TheWraith]

11. A lot of energy to be had at the cost of a lot of wilderness.

To meet the US' electricity requirements would be about 47,000 square kilometers of solar cells, or just under half of Nevada.

[diane in sf]

12. oh horse pucky, put panels on existing roofs, use efficiency, wind, etc.

[Tesha]

14. Don't harsh his buzz with reality and/or creative ideas. (NT)

[TheWraith]

23. You would need more land than all human inhabited area.

Seriously--you could cover every single roof with solar panels--which would be several orders of magnitude more solar panels than we're capable of producing over the next decade or two--and you STILL would not get close to supplying all the necessary energy.

[txlibdem]

26. When you're wrong you really go all out, don't cha?

Look at my post below... we would need 7% of the human inhabited space in America to get 100% of our energy needs from Solar PV.

[Tesha]

13. So? How much of our country has been given over to...

...oil drilling, gas drilling, deep-mine coal extraction,
and open-pit coal extraction? And when you make your
calculations, don't forget to include ancillary costs such
as the capital industries that support oil, gas, and coal
extraction and their feedstock industries (so a portion
of the steel mining and refining industry and the like).

I'll be you'll find that your "half of Nevada" has long
since been expended in the service of fossil fuel extraction.

Tesha

[txlibdem]

22. Bravo!

Facts are sticky little things, aren't they? You just can't sweep them under the rug that easily.

I think your last sentence speaks so much truth. I'll be you don't include the gas stations in your calculations either. Each one of them here in Texas are about a 1/2 acre at minimum, some are 2 acres (the ones along the interstate are HUGE here).

How many gas stations are there in the United States?

This is the most recent data I could find:

According to The Journal Of Petroleum Marketing, June, 1998 issue, there are 187,097 retail location selling motor fuel in the U.S. These locations sell 344,765.9 gallons of gasoline and 85081.8 gallons of low sulfur diesel fuel per day.

Jul 16 01, 2:13 PM

http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question12909.html

If we give a figure of 1/2 acre for each of them we end up with 93,548.5 acres total. 146 square miles, 378 square kilometers, just for the gas stations.

[TheWraith]

24. So we should just go ahead and destroy ANOTHER great whack of the environment? It's okay now?

More to the point, we can't MANUFACTURE all those solar cells, completely aside from placing them. To supply all US electrical usage would require about 3,872,598,000,000 kilowatt-hours per year. A 1 KW solar system, located in Nevada, produces about 1600 KW/h per year. The US manufactures 750,000 KW worth of solar panels per year... at that rate, it would take us 3,227 years to build enough supply all electricity for the US. Even if we multiplied our current production by a factor of forty, which would be outpace all global production of solar cells currently by a factor of six, we still would take 80 years to build enough.

[txlibdem]

25. Some small criticisms of your claim

You claim that 47,000 square kilometers is just under half the size of the State of Nevada. Wrong.

"Nevada is the seventh largest state covering the Great Basin in the northern part and the Mojave Dessert in the southern part. It has an area of 110,567 square miles or 286,367 square kilometers."

http://www.dimensionsguide.com/what-is-the-size-of-nevada/

So you're off by quite a bit: it's 16.4% of the land area of Nevada (about 1/6th).

You claim that it would take 47,000 square kilometers of solar panels to get all of our energy needs from Solar PV.

In the United States, cities and residences cover about 140
million acres of land. We could supply every kilowatt-hour
of our nation’s current electricity requirements simply by
applying PV to 7% of this area—on roofs, on parking lots,
along highway walls, on the sides of buildings, and in other
dual-use scenarios. We wouldn’t have to appropriate a single
acre of new land to make PV our primary energy source!

...

We still wouldn’t have a landuse
issue, even if we didn’t
use roofs for PV. We would
need only 10 million acres
of land—or only 0.4% of the
area of the United States—to
supply all of our nation’s electricity
using PV.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pdfs/35097.pdf
(note that .4% of the US comes to about 40,468 square kilometers)

So it's somewhere in between 0 and 40,468 square kilometers because some of the Solar PV is going to be installed on roofs, parking structures, etc., according to that source.

Just as an aside, what if we wanted to make all cars in America electric cars. How much land area would that take?

"965 square miles (2,500 Km2). That's less than 1,000 square miles!

What this means is that a solar square with 31.1-mile sides (50 Km) could generate all the energy that would power every single car in America (assuming they were all electric vehicles.)

Ted Turner's ranch in New Mexico is about 244 square miles – so he alone could generate enough electricity to power 25% of all cars in America. A solar plant the size of King Ranch in Texas with its 1,289 square miles could generate all of America's electric vehicle power with 30% extra electricity to spare – maybe export it to Mexico?"

http://tonyseba.com/electric-vehicle/oil-energy-independence-%E2%80%93-what-is-the-solar-electric-number/

Why don't we compare that with how much land is needed for oil and gas?

"According to the U.S. House of Representatives, oil and gas companies lease 74,219 square miles (47.5 million acres) (192,226 square kilometers) of land in the United States to drill oil. They also lease a further 44 million acres (68,750 mi2) (178,061 square kilometers) for offshore drilling (1). Adding these two numbers we get that the oil and gas industries lease 143,000 square miles from the U.S. government—to meet just about a third of America's transportation needs.

So to power just about a third of our cars, oil companies need 143 times the land that solar would need to power every single car in America (assuming they were all electric vehicles.)"

http://tonyseba.com/electric-vehicle/oil-energy-independence-%E2%80%93-what-is-the-solar-electric-number/

Note: bold, underline and square kilometer conversions mine.

So, tying all that info together, we currently allocate 192,226 square kilometers of land area for oil and gas drilling, plus another 178,061 square kilometers for offshore drilling, totaling over 370,000 square kilometers and all we're getting out of it is energy for one third of our vehicles and other liquid fuel uses (like home heating oil and natural gas). Remember that we import around 2/3rds of our oil so the total land area needed for our fossil fuel use has to be far larger than the 370,000 figure I quoted, (I don't want to even try to calculate it). Maybe double at least, perhaps triple? And I haven't mentioned coal at all yet. How many square kilometers are devoted to coal mining? I dunno.

It seems that the point is made that we already use far more land for the dirty polluting energy sources that we DON'T want anymore than the 47,000 square kilometer figure you so decry in your post. I'd much rather see those 47,000 acres split between the desert areas of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Texas. No sense putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak.

[TheWraith]

27. Sorry, I typed square kilometers instead of square miles.

As to the rest of it, your post is based on a notoriously inaccurate DOE report that cherry picks numbers to emphasize the positives of solar power. 140 million acres is 218,750 square miles. 7% of that is 15,312 square miles. Total US energy demand is estimated to be 925 gigawatts average peak by 2017. One square meter of average solar cells produce about an average of 0.136 kilowatts over the course of a day. That means that to provide that 925 gigawatts would demand at least 68,000 square kilometers, or 26,000 square miles. Just for the solar cells.

Now add in the energy that we derive directly from fossil fuels: gas, LNG, LPG, fuel oil, coal, biomass, etcetera. That equates to another 2,300 gigawatts on top of electrical demand. Yes, seriously. Now about a third of that goes to transportation, so we can give a bit of a discount to it since electric vehicles are more efficient than fossil fueled ones. In fact, out of that ~750 gigawatts demanded by transportation, let's take away about two thirds of it. So now we're looking at 1800 gigawatts of energy that needs to be replaced, which translates to another 50,400 square miles. You can get some more back on the assumption that some industrial applications will be more efficient on electricity than on fossil fuels. Of course, a lot also won't, and that's not factored in at all.

As you can see, my original description of the math was pretty generous, and based on the assumption of ZERO growth in demand from 2008 energy numbers, extremely good energy efficiency programs, and favorable conditions for using more efficient technologies.

Add to that of course the fact that if we multiplied our production of solar cells by a factor of 20, it would still take us 80 years to produce enough to meet today's electrical demands alone.

[txlibdem]

30. With a math error in the first paragraph I'm afraid I was unable to continue reading, no point in it

You stated: "One square meter of average solar cells produce about an average of 0.136 kilowatts over the course of a day." While I agree with you that a solar panel will not produce its rated power over the course of the day due to weather, shading, their orientation and some other factors, I have to point out that your figure is abysmally low.

I can't be sure but it seems likely you are attempting to use 13.6 percent solar panel efficiency, then starting with what seems like a low output solar panel (maybe 100 watt or 80 watt) then dividing the size of the panel by some value to get power output per square meter. But you first are using outdated performance figures for efficiency and it seems like you are using figures per hour, not per day.

For homeowners and small businesses, roof-mounted panels are a typical option. Solar panels rated at 100 to 200 watts cover about 10 square feet (1 square meter). The power you get from a 100-watt solar panel depends on how much sunlight it receives, and on a daily basis the total power is much less than the rated wattage.

The power a solar panel can achieve and the power it delivers are two different matters. If a given panel is rated at 180 watts, then it will perform up to that level in the brightest sunlight (1,000 watts per square meter). However, unless you live on the Equator, your solar panel will not receive that much sunlight. The amount of sunlight that reaches the ground in your region (called "insolation," averaged in watts per square meter) divided industry-standard bright sunlight (1000 watts per square meter) will tell you what fraction of the rated wattage your panel will produce.

A simpler method is to find the number of "peak sun hours" your location receives each day. Any reputable vendor will have this information. A peak sun hour is one hour of 1,000 watts per square meter sunlight (http://photovoltaics.sandia.gov/docs/glossary.htm). Most locations in the United States receive less than six peak sun hours per day. You can predict how much power a given solar panel can generate by multiplying the watt rating of a solar panel by the number of peak sun hours for your location. Note that the sun hours will vary by season, and are lowest during the winter.

Factors other than the maximum potential of your solar panel have to be considered. Is your panel in full sunlight? Is it positioned properly to attain the maximum exposure? Cloud cover will reduce the power by up to 30 percent or more. Snow and dust will limit the amount of light that reaches the panel and reduce power output.

Predicting the 24-hour performance of a panel in a given location can be estimated by noting its power production during the noon hour (brightest sunlight) and assuming approximately 20 percent of that power will be produced each hour averaged over a 24-hour period.

http://www.ehow.com/about_5398329_much-power-solar-panel-generate.html

So to find out your solar panel output at noon you need a couple of pieces of information, first is the solar insolation at your location and then the output of your panel.

Here's some info on costs:

State and local rebates can be even more powerful than tax credits, but they're not available to everyone. Here are some sample rebate programs:

Arizona: $2.50 - $3.00 / watt
California: $1.90 - $2.50 / watt
Colorado: $2.00 - $4.50 / watt
Texas (Austin): $4.50 / watt
Databases of rebate programs: RecSolar, DSIRE

http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/solar.html

[DLnyc]

28. oops, double posted

self-delete

[DLnyc]

29. Not to quibble too much, but I don't think that would be one half of Nev.

Area of Nevada:
Area Ranked 7th in the US
- Total 110,561 sq mi
(286,367 km2)
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada

So I think 47,000 is more like one SIXTH of Nevada, not one half (6 X 47,000 = 282,000).

For comparison, the Sahara Desert covers over 9,000,000 square kilometers:
"The Sahara (Arabic: الصحراء الكبرى‎, aṣ-ṣaḥrā´ al-kubra, "The Great Desert") is the world's largest hot desert. At over 9,400,000 square kilometres (3,630,000 sq mi), . . ."
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara

the Nevada test site covers about 3,500 square kilometers:

"Formerly known as the Nevada Proving Grounds,<2> the site, established on 11 January 1951, for the testing of nuclear devices, is composed of approximately 1,360 sq mi (3,500 km2) of desert and mountainous terrain."
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_National_Security_Site

and the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico covers over 8,000 square kilometers:

"White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) is a rocket range of almost 3,200 square miles (8,300 km2) . . . "
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sands_Missile_Range

[TheMadMonk]

31. And even already, the first and the smaller of the full scale solar...

...instalations are proving to have unanticipated negative impacts on the land they're installed on.

Assuming we render the land unfit for anything but mushroom farming, it's 5 square kilometres to the gigawatt with the best we have on hand to day and about 4 sq km to the GW as an absolute theoretical floor. To move everything over to solar would necessitate putting tens of thousands of square kilometres of land under permanent shade.

Most of the other technologies on that list allow for some multipuposing of land, solar depurposes land enormously. So even installations installed on rooftops in cities can have negative impacts. More urban solar = fewer urban trees = a likely increased urban heat island effect.

[intaglio]

20. I checked that graph (it's source is Eurelectric)

It is based on a conversion efficiency if only 15% for solar, and I do understand that conversion efficiency is not the same as generation efficiency. Having made that statement the 21% thin film efficiencies of Sanyo's cell or the 39.2% efficiency of Spectrolab's cell make the first comparable to microturbines (wind powered) and the second up with the PEM fuel cell.

Note also the bias toward large scale power generation technologies, which makes me doubtful of this particular definition of Generation Efficiency.

[txlibdem]

10. I just wish your link had info about the expected price per watt

As I said in an earlier post, I truly don't care about having the highest efficiency solar panel. I want to have a solar panel I can actually afford.

Solar PV is still far too expensive and the cost barrier is what they need to work on.

[Tesha]

15. Actually, it's *NOT* "far too expensive" today.

Even here, in the lousy-for-solar-PV Northeast, I could
install a system and see a payback well within the life of
the system, and this will only get better as electric rates
continue to rise and the cost of PV continues to drop.

Tesha

[Kolesar]

16. It is like "buying your electricity in advance"

That would add value to your home.

[Tesha]

17. Precisely. (NT)

We're waiting for one thing, and it's not really "technology".

We're waiting for someone to package up PV in such a fashion
that it would *REPLACE* our existing roofing system (the shingles,
flashing, and the like). When there's a well-integrated Solar PV
*AND* roofing system, we'll be there! And I expect it will arrive
just about the moment that our current roof needs replacing. ;)

Tesha

[txlibdem]

18. Payback well within its lifetime

That may be so but the payback in Dallas is 17 to 20 years. The lifetime of the inverter is 15 years so you'll have to replace that before the panels are even paid off. Then the life of the panels is fairly much longer than that. 25 years some say.

Let's compare that to a commercial wind turbine whose payback is 5 years. Let's compare that to a residential wind turbine, which may either never pay itself off or reach payback within 10 years, depending on how tall the tower and how often you get wind high enough to get the thing spinning (most residential wind turbines don't start producing measurable amounts of power until the wind reaches 8 to 12 mph).

Let's compare that to a Concentrating Solar Thermal power plant, whose payback is somewhere between 5 and 10 years.

I don't like the numbers yet. It just doesn't make economic sense to me yet. Maybe if I was a lottery winner I'd go ahead and pay that much money up front and leisurely wait the 20 years to get the payback...

[intaglio]

19. Newspapers accepting press releases as news

currently the mass production ready cell with the highest efficiency is Spectrolab's (part of Boeing) 39.2% efficiency.

http://optics.org/news/1/6/24">Optics dot Org

Sanyo has the record only for thin film solar cells.

[Tesha]

21. It's still news because thin-film solar cells are far less expensive to produce than...

...single crystal silicon solar cells. They're also amenable to
far more flexible (literally) packaging, so that integrated
roofing system that I spoke of above is far more likely with
amorphous/thin-film solar cells than with crystalline/bulk-
silicon solar cells.

Tesha