Paper-Thin Solar Makes Any Surface Photovoltaic
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
Unfortunately the USA, due to decades of minimal R&D funding, is well behind the technology curve in this area:
> "Some Chinese companies are defying the “more efficient = more expensive” rule in 2022. High efficiency solar panels are entering the market from companies like LonGi, Canadian Solar, and Trina Solar that surpass the 20 percent efficiency rating, but cost less per watt as opposed to SunPower, LG and Panasonic panels. Solar is cheaper than ever without sacrificing efficiency ratings, which begs the question if U.S manufacturers will be able to maintain their pricing premiums."
https://news.energysage.com/what-are-the-most-efficient-sola...
Of course a boom in solar PV installation in the USA would pull the rug out from under natural gas prices, which more-or-less explains government policy in this area.
Is there any reason the market doesn't/can't support buying these panels here? Or are there weird tariffs against it?
IS there not already a boom in solar PV installation in the USA?
It looks like we're far from a watts-per-capita leader (15th in the world?), although we are ahead of China, for now.
So not so much anti-solar as anti-anything-threatening-fossil-fuels.
See also: “clean coal”.
Meanwhile the Democrats have wonderful Manchin, who stops you from doing ANYTHING to help the country unless you include some stupid kickback to like five coal barons in west virginia, despite the entire coal industry employing fewer people than plenty of industries we don't give handouts to. Coal is dying a perfectly reasonable death because it's just not cost competitive with anything, even though we ignore the most expensive part of it, the pollution. Despite that, west virginia keeps a stranglehold on the nations energy policy because 60k absurdly entitled adults are convinced that what their daddy did for a job that killed him in his 60s should be a career forever with no changes and they shouldn't have to adapt in any way to the modern world that DOESN'T want to poison them. When hilary clinton said the country would pay for them to learn new skills and get new careers, they responded by pretty heavily voting for the guy that said they could just go back to digging dirty rocks out of the ground. The entire state is somehow (it's propaganda, literally, from local coal companies) convinced that the modern world is impossible without coal, as if it is still the 1800s, ignoring that most of the world hates coal, always hated using coal, and has always switched to less grimy fuel sources as soon as it became cost competitive, which it is.
And don't give me any of this "wah wah don't bring partisan politics into this" because green energy policy is 100% partisan, with no reason, in the united states, and ignoring that, or trying to "both sides same" this issue is simply delusional.
IMO, the US federal government should drop a trillion dollars on a federal run solar power company, who's only mandate is to buy as much damn solar generation as possible, and sell it to local consumers as cheaply as possible, and "but it might be cloudy some days" problems should be solved by buying 10x as much solar as "needed".
Hence the difference between California and Texas.
People vote for the Democrats, sure, but do the Democrats do things to help the poor or the rich there?
Or is a liberal vote one to give nimbys the power to nimby?
The solar panels installed on the White House during the Carter years were a solar hot water heater, not a photovoltaic system.
Here is part of his speech from the dedication ceremony in 1979: "In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy…. A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people."
Details are not readily available without clearance, but the roof of the White House is a limited commodity and there was probably an antimissile system installed there after the solar panels. They might have needed the space.
Here in 2022 we can see which road was chosen. We didn't get to 20% renewables by 2000, but we are up to 12%, so making progress, if somewhat more slowly.
I'm not convinced. Virtually everything is much cheaper to manufacture in China.
Not to mention the carbon costs of producing solar isn't great.
People complain about so much when it comes to green energy. "Oh transmission losses will eat into it so we can't transmit it too far", well why can't we fill nevada with stupidly more solar than we need so we don't care about losses.
I agree.
"Classical" is already cost effective in many areas of the world, and would be in even more if the electricity price accurately reflected the societal cost of releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.
These paper-thin solar elements would fill a different niche though. If it's cheap enough (and doesn't come with other downsides), you could plaster any surfaces with it that aren't suitable for panel installations (think car hoods, boats, whatever).
And no one who has paid attention to the Biden administration would say the Biden administration cares about natural gas prices being low as they consistently take actions that increase natural gas prices.
Also worth mentioning that Beijing sits on one side of a mountain range, and the other side is arid desert. It's kind of a no brainer to drop solar panels there and tramsmit power to the nearby megatropolis.
> Of course a boom in solar PV installation in the USA would pull the rug out from under natural gas prices
Fracking already did this[2]. And solar doesn't make sense in many places in the US. You want somewhere dry and bright, which cuts off the pacific northwest, and most of the north*. You also want to supplement solar with something that will cool off your home in the evening, run your oven, and keep you warm at night. Which natural gas can actually do[3], so even proponents of solar should consider them at least temporary allies.
In contrast, wind seems to already be making 10 percent of the US demand[4], versus solars 2 percent. This is where the subsidies are going, and given how much reliable wind there is in tornado alley, will likely continue growing once subsidies expire. In the mean time, we can continue to import subsidized solar from china and focus on higher margin silicon applications. ^_^
[0]: https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/crude-petroleum/reporter/chn
[1]: https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/natural-gas-liquefied/reporter/chn
[2]: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/rngwhhdm.htm
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_power_plant
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_United_States
Can you explain with numbers how you arrive at this conclusion? (Solar is extremely popular and viable in Northern Europe, so it surprises me to read it)
However, energy prices in the US are considerably lower, so the bar for profitability is much higher.
The EU also has colossal subsidies for renewables, which obviously skew the market. In a purely market-driven world Europe would not be investing in solar.
Well, maybe, but there's more to a market than buy and sell price. There is also the cost of external energy dependency, for example, or environmental degradation.
I understand your point, I just take issue with the phrasing that subsidies for renewables are skewing the market, since in fact they are rather correcting it. Secondly because the oil industry is subsidised as well.
People who say this don't seem to realize that it was only 70 years ago we were just stopping the use of horses and other beasts of burden to do the majority of farming, and of course, replacing them with tractors... or the impact this had on productivity and availability.
Yes.. oil has negative "externalities." It also had massive benefits and created opportunities for expansion that we might not have otherwise had. The purpose of a market isn't to achieve perfect tyranny in the use of all resources, it's to make the best compromise out of the available choices.
Finally, it may just be that we haven't exactly factored in all the negative external components of our new energy choices. The market, if anything, has shown that it is willing to brazenly lie to the entire world if it senses that there is massive profit to be made in it. I don't know why people would expect the elites of green energy to operate any differently than the elites of oil energy have in the past, particularly when the market has made no efforts to induce the kind of perfection you have imagined here.
It's fine to be suspicious of any entity. But it's not easy to hide externalities. Your suspicion should lead pretty directly to evidence. As it does with fossil fuels. Those who profited from fossil fuels brazenly lied about their own knowledge of their externalities, but the rest of the world could see them in real time. They weren't trying to hide the externalities as much as they were mitigating their legal exposure and improving their propaganda.
I do realise the enormous positive effects the ICE has had on growth, labour intensity and general wellbeing. But it also has bad effects and we can move past the ICE now, and in fact we could and should have a lot sooner.
Most of the emissions come from electricity generation though, so no romanticising of the ICE will save us there.
The world panicked about nuclear power 30 years ago because of a Soviet screwup but that was a mistake. Nuclear and renewables should have been our focus all the time since.
And yes I absolutely realise there are negative externalities in cobolt extractions and whatever. That’s why we need the carbon taxes and similar regulations :)
What does that even mean ? I have a ton of sunlight all throughout the year (almost). What do I do to harness it ?
So in 2021 solar construction costs averaged $2.94/W for residential and $0.77/W for utility scale solar. https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/how-does-utility-scale-sol...
So if you installed a 10kW residential system it might cost $29,400 which would make you eligible for a 30% federal tax credit at a cost to the government of $8,820.
However if the government instead spent that $8,820 on utility scale solar it could pay outright for the construction of 11.5kW of solar generation capacity.
> I have a ton of sunlight all throughout the year (almost). What do I do to harness it ?
So as an individual it might make sense for you to take advantage of the government subsidy and have them help pay for a residential system for you! It just makes no sense at a societal level to spend money on small expensive systems when we could instead be spending it on large cheap systems.
Panels cost 4 times as much when installed individually instead of at a community scale. I agree the economy of scale here is just too good to be wasted away like this.
As a consumer though, I see two practical choices (1) keep paying PG&E their increasing cost for electricity or (2) eat that initial high cost of solar install and keep outgoing cost constant for a decade.
And some impractical ones like convince a bunch of people to setup a grid at community scale or do a DIY solar install to keep the install cost low.
Now that panels are cheap the installation costs dominate. Residential installation is basically never going to get substantially cheaper so it no longer makes sense to subsidise such systems when the subsidy alone would pay for more efficiently installed utility scale solar.
It seems like we should shift the subsidy to expansion of grid connectivity as that now seems to be the blocker for projects.
In a purely market-driven world, we'd already be well on our way to extinction.
popular? yes. viable? not as much. all of the contiguous US is further south than the UK. That means shorter winter days, but also incident angles are bad year round.
But dont take my word for it, check out https://globalsolaratlas.info
There seems to be a better argument in the southwest, where we have less agriculture and the hydro power Lake Mead provides is now questionable. which is why there are already massive farms there. Though, without that water I'm not sure who would want to live in Vegas at all. The best place for solar seems to be California rooftops. Lots of population, far enough south to have closer to optimal solar incidence, and arid climate that wont interfere too much.
But all of this means that you shouldn't expect a unified, cohesive federal energy plan. I don't, at least. Instead we should expect different geographies to find different niches, and a much more diversified plan spread across many more forms: wind, solar, hydro, fission, fusion, geothermal, etc. Plus anyone complaining the US underinvests in R&D has to contend with the fact that this publication came from MIT, and was funded in part by the NSF.
if your energy costs 7¢ per megajoule and you are being invaded by an opponent whose energy costs 0.7¢ per megajoule you are probably going to lose
i don't understand why the capacity factor for utility-scale pv in prc is so low but evidently they did not 'drop solar panels [in the desert] and tramsmit power to the nearby megatropolis'
I mean, I browsed the desert northeast of Beijing and found what looks like a solar installation, right next to some wind turbines. No idea how to estimate capacity from that, and without streetview to confirm it, I'm just making guesses based on how the pixels look.
like roughly how many square meters is it
The big ones seem to be more in the northwest[0], much further out. The land there is even less productive, but I don't understand how transmission losses don't eat them alive.
[0]: https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/largest-solar-plants-china/prc has had 800 kilovolt uhvdc since 02010; 12 years later there still aren't any in europe, north america, africa, or australia, though a european company was the lead contractor on the 02010 project
but plausibly the answer is that transmission losses do eat them alive and they have to curtail pv output in the northwest because there isn't enough local demand
The energy costs of solar at night are infinite, unless you add plenty of storage, whereas the energy costs of nat gas stay roughly the same at night
somewhat relevant, but not overwhelmingly, if what you need the energy for is running the tank and missile factories; solar intermittency just means you can only run the factories for one shift instead of three, so your capacity is three times as expensive
but historically many factories have only run one shift most of the time anyway so clearly this is not an overwhelming factor
being able to use processes that your competition would find outrageously inefficient because you can afford orders of magnitude more energy is a bigger advantage
think of victorian-era industrial-revolution britain against the zulus
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Oil_fields_in_China
The word "like" here indicates hyperbole - an intentional overstatement used as a figure of speech.
And all of the PLA's ambition is in the South China sea, which means even if you rely on Russia to supply you wartime energy, it has to ship through a battlefield. And anyone opposed to it has a pretty free hand to say "mine now" as the path meanders by Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, India, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka etc.
[1]: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/russian-oil-ship-to-ship-transfer-anonymous-chinese-buyer-sanctions-2022-8The numbers can be misleading; I'm not suggesting that jldugger doesn't understand this, just that I find the numbers and the way they are quoted a bit confusing. If we look at primary energy consumption by source from the US Energy Information Agency we see [1] that for 2021 the US used 98 quads of energy.
The breakdown into primary energy consumption by source for 2021 is
77 quads from fossil fuels
8 quads from nuclear
5 quads from biomass
3.3 quads from wind
2 quads from hydro
1.5 quads from solar
===========================
98 quads total
[1] https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/index.php?tbl=T...
Which is mostly ok, as Eastern Washington and central / eastern Oregon fit the bill both for these state as a whole, plus could be theoretically exporting their hydro / solar / wind generated power to other parts of the country. Problem is, the rural parts of these states feel ignored by the urban (read: politically powerful) parts of the states, leading to all sorts of pettiness around siting of new wind / solar deployments.
https://www.sunflarearray.com/
If Tesla Roof hadn't strung us along, we might have gone with Sun Flare. (We ended up with conventional panels instead.)
Any, the difference between Sunflare isn't really explained at the beginning of the article.
It sounds like the prototype is more like a stetchy piece of fabric than a roll of paper.
So any application that's space-limited, these are not a win. And isn't that, every home installation?
I did think it was strange that they obfuscated the W/m^2 statistic by only presenting W/kg and kg/m^2. I suppose focusing on watts per kilogram better aligns with a breakthrough in installations with poor structural support for heavy panels.
<digression> It's such a strange magpie impulse folks have to want solar on their house. Look at my stuff! I'm doing things!
From a societal point of view the efficient installation is in bulk, serviceable, unobstructed. A rooftop is comically not these things. </digression>
The efficiency is so low on these, good luck. Covering a corner of the parking lot with standard panels is going to be cheaper and easier than doing the roof using these.
Even better, if the contractor screws it up, it doesn’t burn the building down or cause massive water damage. Worst case some cars catch on fire. Much cheaper!
And you need to replace the roof? Now what?
Rooftop solar has numerous problems, starting with structural considerations, scale, shading, imperfect angles, local grid congestion and so on. Why have everyone waste money on this when we could just install solar farms?
They don't need much service. And it's not like you need a helicopter to get there
> And you need to replace the roof? Now what?
That's one in 50 years event
Like yeah, if you have good amount of space that is otherwise unused go ahead, but realistically someone will want that space for a house or business, not a bunch of glassy squares, those can go on roof.
What would you use to attach these, and what would that weigh?
I see these end up on cars, sailing boats, etc, where I think weight and flexibility matter more, before ending up in high-volume applications.
On the plus side, the article doesn’t mention it, but I would guess recyclability for these would be higher because they don’t glue cells to glass.
Is this really practical for outdoor use at all? Most of us have really durable roofs, not some paper/plastic felt cover.
Camper vans usually get very close to that limit. Even if the van has only 2 sleeping spots. Weight is definitely an issue there and most camper vans sold these days come with a solar installation on the roof.
With 100W of solar you can expect some additional autonomy as a camper. 200W is considered more than average solar for small camper vans in the EU.
A typical 200W solar panel weights in at around 10-13 kg + maybe 1-3 kg for the additional bracket.
11-16kg is something you would think about.
Thats also the reason why flexible panels are already used for some camper vans. They also have the advantage than you can put them on un-even surfaces.
The VW Grand California for example can be ordered with a flexible panel at the front side:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/VW_California#/media/Datei:VW_...
Also it’s 200W/m2 but camper roofs are a lot more than 1 square meter so you just cover a larger percentage of the roof with solar.
If efficiencies were within a few percents.. sure.. but when we're talking about a factor of 5+, it doesn't seem to be worth it.
As I mentioned: A typical camper van is borderline at 3300 kg already so you have 200 kg for cloths, food, water to drink, bedding, etc. It even matters whether or not you gained 10kg during winter or lost 10kg.
16kg equates to about 2 lithium ion 100WH batteries 1-2 bikes for bike tours 1 grill + extra gas for a barbecue
etc.
So you can decide between those or a conventional solar panel or you just pick panels that weight less then you can have both.
I doubt anyone will ticket you over being 10 kilos extra...
On top of that you could probably pick any other part to make lighter and come out cheaper than buying fancy solar panels
It is not about + or - 10 kg. But things definitely add up. 10kg here - 10kg there.
Solar panels is something that is under the control of whoever buys the vehicle. You have almost no influence of the vast majority of what makes up the van.
You also risk insurance issues when your car is over weight.
Believe me - weight is definitely an issue.
The weight is usually determined by 4 scales (1 for each wheel).
Then they look at your papers which also includes information about max load at the front + back.
If you are over weight you have to get rid of the additional weight and if you can't they will seize the car. You get fined. It does happen.
It happened to me twice in Germany, once in Norway and once in France.
I read an article about it in Czech a while ago, so I don't have a link at hand, but you should be able to find it easily.
5% efficient cells only make sense if applying them is about the same cost as paint and in applications like highway barriers or walls.
As with existing thin film cells, degradation in real-world outdoor conditions is significant and limits usefulness.
Edit: You can also do it with aerial photogrammetry and smart software, like https://sunroof.withgoogle.com/ and https://www.opensolar.com/accuracy
Either method would you get accurate enough readings in a few minutes (if you're onsite) or seconds (if you just use the software method). The earth's orbit and tilt is relatively predictable so really you just have to do the math (or let the software do it) to figure out how local obstructions (trees, other buildings, hills on the horizon, etc.) influence your shading.
So, the fabric modules have an areal power density of 37 W/m^2 vs. commercial residential panels at 214 W/m^2. So, fantastic for weight, but on a per-area basis, about 5.8 area units are needed for every unit of std panels.
This also means that a 370 W/kg vs 20 W/kg, the thin film has an 18.5X power / weight advantage. And that does not even count the further advantage of not needing the extensive support structures of current panels.
I also wonder about how they would tolerate regular rolling and unrolling, such as stowing them for bad weather; would that be a net longevity benefit?
>> “These cells as they are could last one or two years without packaging,” Bulović says. “With packaging, we could extend that to five to 10 years. And that’s plenty.”
That all depends on cost. If they are cheap enough, 2 years might be fine, as long as they can be recycled and don't just create a landfill problem (but even then, the 1:18.5 weight advantage drastically reduces any landfill problem).
This is fantastic, if they get even close to the cost/watt.
If the baseline base power supply is not maintained, then no amount of cyclic power supply can help out there.
Solar and wind power generators are never considered as a base power supply unless they run 100% 24/7/365. Only Antarctica science bases can boast the steadiest wind supply but is more prone to mechanical failures. And solar power is keyed only to daylight hours.
I think I’ve seen this one before.
Active-Surfaces.com
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It's cool, lightweight solar is a pretty great thing.
One electrode per side of the house or whatever structure, even roads, signs, etc.
Even if it was only a few percent efficiency, the massive surface areas would be more than enough regardless of sun angle or intensity.
They weigh less, so there are less raw materials involved. So you would expect that to impact production cost. Also, with flexible materials like this, they likely get produced on rolls. So machines might be a bit different and maybe run a little faster/efficient and use less energy and other resources.
As for transporting, moving something around that weighs a lot less is obviously going to be cheaper. And this sounds like it is also a lot less fragile so you can go easier on the packaging too.
Finally, for installation, not having to move around panels that weigh tens of kilos is going to be easier and quicker and also require less in terms of mounting infrastructure, roof preparation, etc. I could see this shave off some hours.
And of course the usable area improves too if you reduce weight. You could probably install this on walls even. And there are plenty of nice empty walls in most places.
So, yes, weight is a big deal.
Not if it costs more. It doesn't by definition cost less because it weighs less.
Titles are tricky, especially when you’re an editor who got Peter Principled out of writing.
I have surfaces, Greg. Could you make me photovoltaic?
> We now do, Bulović says. He envisions one day being able to buy a large carpet of solar cells “and simply unroll it on a roof.”
So I addition to hail we can now add “a stiff breeze” to the list of things that can destroy your solar array. You can’t just lay a thin film on a surface and expect it to stay there. I’d expect better from a materials scientist. If this makes it to commercialization, it will be laminated onto hard surfaces, not simply rolled out on “any surface”.