Solar cells cheaper but cost more ?, Full story at http://www.physorg.com/news83872601.html

http://www.physorg.com/news83872601.html

I keep seeing the news of new improved solar cells and how the prices are going down. Problem is that last time (yesterday) I checked prices, they are 4 times higher than the last time I bought some cells.I have put off a number of projects waiting for the "lower prices". Where are the lower prices ? Same place as the flying cars?
This research money for stimulating competitive research is great, although being funded in areas with little sunlight is curious, basic techniques could be worked out in a basement with sun lamps, granted.Still this does look like very similar research that is already more advanced. Which shell is the pea under?

Mystery

From what I understand its a supply/demand issue.
The demand for silicon substrate is very high but there is not enough of it to go around thus driving the finished prices up.
This shortage of raw materials to build cells was (IIRC) supposed to ease early next year.

Arthur

I think people should reduce focus on solar electricity (ie. look for varied solutions rather than a magic bullet). Solar hot water is already cheap and feasible, and is extremely popular in much of the developing world. It needs more attention.

Much of India has blazing sun all day, every day. Even inefficient cells could quickly pay for themselves there in ou of the way places.

In fact, the thin-film solar cells currently being produced by ECD in Michigan are already selling here and abroad as fast as they can manufacture them, for many applications, including solar roofing for residences. It's already economically feasible.

AS OUR MISTERYSCIENCE MAN TELLS US LIKE IT IS, THAT DOES NOT ANSWER THE PRICE GOUGING GOING ON FOR A TECHNOLOGY THAT IS ALMOST ANCIENT.

GOVERNMENT SHOULD FUND MORE FOR PRODUCT DELIVERY WERE NEEDED MATERIALS FOR MANUFACTURING AND INSTALLATION OF PV SOLUTIONS THAT CAN COMPETE WITH GRID ELECTRICITY. THEN WE WILL SEE ANY MAJOR SHIFT IN ENERGY USE TO SOLAR GENERATED POWER.

I agree that to put all of one's eggs in one basket is somewhat foolish. The fact that the US domestic market can not meet it's own demand for solar panels and wind turbines means that other countries are looking to tidal power generation - with an impressive degree of success.

While squeezing every watt out of a solar cell is an 'interesting' challenge, the same funding dollars applied to tidal and solar chimney development would likely yield more watts per RD dollar.

In the end, the return had better justify the persuit of the means...

See this article for some insight.

http://www.renewable-energy-world.com/disp...wth_until_2008/

Arthur

I picked this up from a website recently.
Hope it makes you salivate.
Imagine wearing a jacket or rucksack that charges up your mobile phone while you take a walk. Or a tent whose flysheet charges batteries all day so campers can have light all night. Or a roll-out plastic sheet you can place on a car's rear window shelf to power a child's DVD player.

Such applications could soon become a reality thanks to a light, flexible solar panel that is a little thicker than photographic film and can easily be applied to everyday fabrics. The thin, bendy solar panels, which could be on the market within three years, are the fruit of a three-nation European Union research project called H-Alpha Solar (H-AS).

The new solar panels will be cheap, too, because they can be mass-produced in rolls that can be cut as required and wrapped around clothes, fabrics, furniture or even rooftops. "This technology will be a lot easier to handle than the old glass solar panels," claims Gerrit Kroesen, the physicist from Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands who led the development team.

Kroesen's team has made its solar cells bendy simply by making them thin. But this has involved a trade-off. While the best solar cells are now working at efficiencies above 20%, the H-AS cells are only about 7% efficient. The researchers think efficiency is worth sacrificing for a cell that is going to be more generally useful, though they still hope eventually to reach 10% efficiency.
Electron knockout

Conventional solar panels are made of pairs of sheets of semiconducting silicon, doped with phosphorus and boron atoms. Electrons in the phosphorus-doped (N-type) layer migrate across the boundary to occupy holes left in the boron-doped (P-type) material, setting up a voltage across the boundary between the two layers. When photons hit the silicon in a cell they knock electrons out of its crystal structure, generating a current that is collected by a mesh of metal contacts.

The H-AS solar panels are constructed in a similar way, but they are made just 1 micrometre thick by depositing polymorphous silicon at high pressures and temperatures. "Polymorphous silicon is as rigid as crystalline silicon. But because it is less than a micrometre thick it is flexible," Kroesen says. Today's solar panels are typically somewhere between 4 and 10 millimetres thick.

The process of producing H-AS films involves temperatures of up to 200°C, which would melt a plastic substrate. So instead of depositing the doped layers directly onto plastic they are first deposited onto aluminium foil.

After the assembly has cooled, a plastic carrier layer is added underneath it and the aluminium is removed and recycled. Contacts are then added, followed by a protective plastic layer on top, too. This sequence lends itself to continuous production on rolls of plastic film.

The Swedish and Dutch-owned company Akzo-Nobel, a partner in the H-AS research, already has a pilot plant producing rolls of silicon cells 40 centimetres wide. A projected full-scale manufacturing plant would produce panels at a cost of about 1 euro per watt. An A4-size panel sewn onto the back of a jacket and costing less than 10 euros would charge a mobile phone during a summer stroll. The company has not yet decided to go ahead with the plant.

Jeremy Leggett, chief executive of the UK solar cell supplier Solar Century, is impressed, describing the 1 euro per watt price point as "breathtaking".

I smell big oil.

hey ya'll i came across this forum while attempting to find information about solar cells....
I am a senior in highschool and i am doing a science fair report on solar cells (obliviously lol) i was wondering if anyone could help me find information regarding this subject im not having much luck :-/. if you find information or would like to help me (i would love you forever lol) you can email me at oneforonlyme@gmail.com (please put science fair in the subject line so i dont delete it :-D) thank you