Combined Photovoltaic Thermal Solar Systems

I was looking at the thermal solar system my daughter's friend has at her house, and I wondered if anyone was selling a combined system. Since a huge cost is the housing and photovoltaic does not like to much heat, this could be a win win solution.

IEEE has done some work on it - Control of a combined photovoltaic / thermal energy syste

Seems to be a lot of research last energy crisis into this, but I am not seeing any products yet.

Paying Homeowners for Electricity Produced

Bill would alter economics of solar power. Right now if you a household produces too much power, they don't get paid by their utility per the article. The proposed bill would change this. No other states currently allow this. It would change the economics of a solar installation.

Solar Housing Tract in California near Sacremento

SMUD, home builder strike deal for 1487 solar-powered homes. Subsidy per house is $5,955 per home. I wonder what the payback time would be without the subsidy? My guess is this in addition to other subsidies from the State (there is no mention of those). Or what the total cost of each installation is.

My guess is each installation costs $20K before subsidies, and probably $5K to the homeowner after all the subsidies are added, reducing their electricity bill by 80%.

New PG&E Solar Plant

PG&E makes huge solar deal - SiliconValley.com uses Solar Thermal. Basically heats up water to steam that turns a turbine to generate electricity. Five plants to produce 900 Megawatts. This is one way to get around the silicon shortage.

Polysilicon Shortage through 2012

From a Press Release for a report 2007-2012 Deep Research Report on China Solar Grade Polysilicon Industry.

Key Points:

• Shortage will continue through 2012 as increases in demand continue to outpace production.
• Some manufacturers with processes that are not as efficient will not be competitive.
• China will be 2nd behind the US in production.
  

Solar Financial Engineering

Interesting article from the NY Times - Pay for the Power, Not the Panels

The article gives a taste to some innovative ideas in financing including renting (but for how long?) and use of taxes (for how long). The article lacks numbers. How much is being paid per Kilo Watt Hour from electricity from the utility, the cost being charged for solar power, and the expected payback time. The article claims the rise in Solar is due to innovative finance, but then the end quote says solar is not economical.

If the article had shown the numbers, there would not have been this basic argument.

Solar History

Three part series on Solar Energy and it's history. The author also wrote a book I should get.

• Photovoltaics: A Bright Idea
• Solar Cells From Space to Earth
• 
  

Trees Vs. Solar

The fight is continuing in the middle of Silicon Valley between two home owners, one with a solar panel and the other with redwood trees that are blocking sunshine to it. Previous post.

Solar Bubble - Will it burst in 2010?

Will the Solar Bubble burst in 2010? The argument per Lux Research Report being that enough silicon will finally be available plus competition from thin film technologies that will cause an oversupply of solar cells that outstrip demand hurting crystalline silicon PV. Lux Research does specialize in Nanotechnology (thin film) and makes their money by selling research reports (so they may favor thin film over other technologies, since these are their clients).

An interesting quote from the Wall Street Journal article that discusses the Lux paper:

“The sector will remain almost completely hostage” to subsidy regimes for the near future, Mr. Holman says. “We don’t see it becoming cost-competitive” with current technologies by 2012, he said.

The questions which I am not seeing addressed in what I have read of the report:

1. How much will demand increase for solar due to price drops worldwide? There are other markets outside the US that have significantly higher energy costs. Japan, Europe, etc. In Japan since the price of solar is near grid parity, the subsidy for solar has been removed.

2. How much is the estimated price drops for Solar? How will this impact the final install cost for a house for solar? What would be the payback period?

3. Why would Thin film increase their market share that much to 28% of the market from 17%? Thinfilm is just ramping up production and has the issue of lower efficiency requiring a higher cost of installation due to more panels needed. TJ Rogers has a few comment on thin film.

4. The requirements of US utilities to increase their use of renewable power. For example SCE is supposed to be 20% by 2010 and 33% by 2020. How does this impact the potential market for solar?

Printed Solar Cells

Konarka is looking for funding since they don't have any revenue yet part of the game is to create enough interest. So there have been a series of articles recently about the printing of solar cells including an article in Popular Mechanics. The cells are 5% efficient and should be in production by 2009. The ability of printing the cells using an inkjet printer and having them on flexible plastic does open opportunities for new products.

Green Energy is making Money

Green energy is making big money from the SF Chronicle.

Key Points:

1. Alternate energy grew last year to $77.3 Billion with 40% growth.
   
2. Revenue for Windpower was $30.1 Billion and Solar photovoltaic $20.3 Billion.
3. Exon's sales in comparison were $404.5 billion in sales last year
4. Information is CleanEdge Clean Energy Trends Report 2008 that was just released. The report estimates the market for alternate energy will triple by 2017.
5. Alternate energy in the US is highly dependent on tax credits, and the US congress has not extended them yet.
   

Good Overview from EE Times

Under the Hood: The next gold rush: solar power from EE Times.

Summary:

• Efficiency is interesting III-V Groups or multijunction concentrators have 40+ percent efficiencies (and are super expensive). Bulk-silicon solar cells are around 22 percent. Thin Film is at 18% including Cadmium Telluride and CIGS.
• Bulk-silicon is about 94 percent of the current global production.
• Global production has grown by 50 percent every year for the past five years.
• Revenue last year was $13 Billion for 2007, up from $10 Billion in 2006.
• The US is not a significant producer of solar cells.
• The US has the highest chance of coming out with a disruptive technology.
• Japan currently produces 50% of the world's solar cells.
• 
  

Solar Plant Waste in China

Solar Energy Firms Leave Waste Behind in China by the Washington Post.

The new plants in China will produce 80,000 to 100,000 tons of polysilicon, where only 40,000 tons is produced today in the entire world. The price of polysilicon has increased from $20 per kilogram to $300 per kilogram in the past five years. Polysilicon is the raw material used for electronic chips as well as solar cells. I am not sure if the new plants in China are going to make semiconductor chip grade polysilicon or just photovoltaic grade. Article from last year on the shortage of polysilicon. Currently 88% of polysilicon production is controlled by 8 companies.

Pollution in China is an issue that I hope improves. Previous post on China's Environment.

T.J. Rodgers Interview

Interesting to read.

Cypress' T.J. Rodgers on solar, politics, and capitalism, part 1 Clarification. If you have half the efficiency at half the price, but 70% of the cost is in non solar cell stuff (frames, panels, etc.), your final cost would actually be more. In math terms, 50% efficiency x 2 (twice the modules needed) x 2 the other costs x 70% = 140% the cost of using non thin film technology. The question is can the cost of thin film go down dramatically so it's a 1/3rd the cost?
Cypress' T.J. Rodgers on solar, politics, and capitalism, part 2

Japan did have subsidies on solar power until recently, when the price of solar in Japan became competitive with other power sources. The subsidies for Solar in Japan ended in 2005. In Japan, the power grid is required to buy solar power at retail rates. I believe it's common in the US for solar power from home owners to be sold not wholesale rates. The estimated payback time as of October 2007 in Japan was 20 years.

Some interesting solar history from 2004. Japan produced 46% of solar cells, Germany was #2, and US production had actually decreased in 2003 by 14%. Japan's subsidy was 50% of the installation, and then with the falling in price of solar went to 10%. Astropower, the largest producer of solar cells in the US went bankrupt, and was bought by GE.

catalytic photosynthesis - What is it?

I just saw it on another post in the comments of Oil Bubble About to Pop? and was curious what it is.

There are two definitions for it.

One is a method for removing C02 from smoke stacks (useful for coal plants) and making fertilizer out of it. The other is making hydrogen directly out of water. My guess is the post was referring to the hydrogen out of water, mimicking the photosynthesis process in plants.

Upcoming Solar Shakeout?

3 Stocks That Can Survive the Solar Shakeout from US News & World Reports

Key Points:

• Citigroup analysts expect the industry to be 33 percent oversupplied in 2010 for Silicon (raw material used for Solar).
• Sharp is currently the largest solar producer.
• SunPower from China is expected to overtake Sharp.
• Many solar stocks are down this year.
• Survivors will be low cost leaders with scale.
  

My 2 Cents:

1. Solar costs are going to go down in 2010 because finally there is enough Silicon. The thought of the article is this will hurt Solar producers. My guess is it will help them by reducing their cost and helping lower the cost of solar panels made out of Silicon. The extra silicon may already be allocated with the huge growth rate of solar.
   
2. Scale in this industry is important for cost and when there is finally enough supply of solar panels, I see a shakeout. Currently many solar producers have orders booked far into the future (2009 and 2010). The question is when will there finally be enough supply?
   

Solar Market in 2009

Interesting article - Contradictions in the Solar Market. It's questioning the growth estimates in the market and it does not use the word bubble, but it's hinted at. Will there be an oversupply in 2008 as more solar manufacturers come online? The market is estimated will grow by 50% in 2008!

The part about the lower efficiency of thin film requiring 3X the panels to generate the same amount of power, plus installation costs make it about equal to regular silicon panels is well written.

Good quote from the article:
Traditional monocrystalline and polycrystalline silicon solar panels with efficiencies between 15% and 22% compare to thin film amorphous silicon of 6% to 7%, which will possibility increase to 10% efficiencies in 2009 using bilayer micromorph structures. CdTe (cadmium telluride) technology, led by First Solar, is already achieving 10% efficiency. Thus, amorphous silicon is two years behind CdTe.

Applied Material - $1.9 Billion Order

Applied Material just got an order for $1.9 Billion to set up some solar factories. Wow! Applied Materials is the manufacturer for Semiconductor equipment and has moved to diversify into solar cells, which are still mostly made out of Silicon. The factories they are building could produce a gigawatt a year of cells, just under 10% of what was produced last year (12 Gigawatts). Revenue each year for Applied Material is about $2 Billion a quarter, so an order for $1.9 Billion is was about 25% of their revenue. With this additional revenue, now it's only 20%.

So what does this show? Applied Material is now a player in solar? Obviously. It also shows the rapid growth that is seen in the market. Applied Material did a substantial amount of R&D for reducing productions costs for solar. It will be interesting to see what the cost of the cells produced by the factory will be. And how the shortage of silicon will impact this. Of course when you are taking almost $ 2 Billion, you might decide to set up your own factory to make raw silicon.

Tradeshows for Solar

Conferences and Trade Shows for Solar

• Solar Power Conference 2008 - San Diego, California - October 13-16, 2008. By the Solar Electric Power Association
• Electric Power- Chicago MAY 6-8, 2008
• Solar 2008 by the American Solar Energy Society - May 3-8, 2008 San Diego

References:

• Kyocera Solar Trade Shows- Excellent list.
  
• International Tradeshows
• Solar Today Magazine
• Sharp Trade Shows - No list yet.
  

Solar and Saudi Arabia

Three different announcements lately that put together are interesting.

• AP Article - Oil giant Saudi to become solar power centre: minister. Saudi Arabia wants to become a center of Solar Technology. Nice press release.
  
• Cal Poly and the Saudis - Saudi Arabia has made a deal with Cal Poly SLO for an Engineering School (I went to Cal Poly Pomona). The Cal Poly's are excellent Engineering schools that focus on the practical.
  
• UC Berkeley seeks partnership with Saudi school - Berkeley has an excellent Engineering school.
  

Other Facts:
1. Currently there are few Engineering degrees in Saudi Arabia.
2. Saudi Arabia is seeking to diversify from just the oil industry.

Conclusions:
1. Saudi Arabia is seeking to increase the number of Engineering Graduates from it's schools.
2. High Technology is a potential area of diversification, including solar