Burn Some Daylight

Just returned from Intersolar--the global trade fair for the solar business.  Over 42 acres of space for 1,000 exhibitors and 50,000 visitors from over 130 nations planning and building a clean, affordable energy future.  My head is still spinning a week later.

The winners are the large solar parks.  The industry has clearly evolved towards larger installations.  Here is the breakout for solar power plant development in Germany:

Much more equipment--inverters, racking, trackers, security systems, and software related to running large solar parks was evident this year.  The dramatic growth in Spain over the last year has changed the tenor of the industry.

My top seven were:

1.  Cents per kWh is the new mantra--as we approach grid parity, the new benchmark is what you can sell power for.  With the present ITC, we will be at grid parity in large parts of California and Hawaii by next year.

2.  Applied Materials' Sunfab line produced a large format, 61SF, 220 pound, glass/glass module that is designed for groundmount installation.  AMAT has sold several lines for installation in Germany, India, and the UAE.  They predict a production cost of under $1/W in about 24 months--the magical grid parity number.

These large format, heavy modules are meant for solar fields/ground mounts.  Particularly suited to Germany and Spain where the array can float and not required to be grounded.  Heard that thin film degrades faster [on the order of 20%] if the array is grounded.

3.  Solar trackers really developed due to Spain and has a number of attractive offerings.  Cost is about $1.50 watt, and you generate 250 to 400 more kWh per kW per year.

4.  Concentrating PV--works well for arid and desert climates where cSi degrades under heat.  You need really accurate tracking--as the sun's rays are focused on a tiny solar cell--that is 99% accurate.  The installs are smaller than solar thermal fields, and don't use any fresh water, a big deal in an arid climate.  They do need to be kept clean--the Pilkington glass [enameled?] is a good candidate because it sheds dust easier.

5.  Racking systems that speed installation, including sliding in modules.  Labor in installation is going to become a critical installation cost component in getting installed cost to grid parity.

6.  Over thirty different module manufacturers from China.  Quality?  How do you value the 25 year warranty?  Production?

7.  Large solar thermal (>500MW) parks are making economic sense where you can interconnect, have access to a secondary heat source (CCGT or methane) and H2O.

The biggest deal may be the fact that Q-Cells announced that it is getting respectable performance from upgraded metallurgical silicon--this will increase module supply much faster than we originally forecast.

Predictions made over 20 years ago were that PV would be providing power cheaper than you can get from the grid by 2010.  Looks like we are going to be there.

Robert Metcalfe, the guy who developed Ethernet, is now focused on clean, cheap power--and the world needs LOTS of it.

In this talk [real networks required] at MIT he discusses his concept of the Enernet and goes about mining the history--and his recollection, since he "was there"--of the Internet for lenses on how to view our current energy crisis.

His main thrust is that you can't do clean, or green, without cheap.  The current trends, cleantech and green, miss the target:

• Cleantech--omits the need for "cheap"--no permanent solution works if it is not affordable.
• Green--is too anti-corporate, anti-global, anti-everything. This Luddite tendency will backfire, because the solution is has never been to regress.

"The climate change problem is going to get solved really quickly...But once we have solved that, we are still left with an energy problem"

Political expediency results in answers like corn based ethanol--bad feedstock made into a bad fuel.  So Washington is not the answer.

"Spend less time telling us there are no silver bullets, and more time finding the damn silver bullets"

His answers have a lot to do with distributed generation, a (much) smarter grid, and welcoming the unexpected.  Thus informed, I went on a search at Intersolar for silver bullets.    Here is what I found:

Direct purification of metallurgical silicon to "upgraded metallurgical grade silicon or UMG Si" --BP, Elkem, Q-Cells, Dow Corning.  Crystalline silicon cells much cheaper--much sooner.  Warranties still an issue as degradation rates are not fully understood.  2008 production sold out.  Ramping from 1200T in 2007 to 10,000T in 2009.  Potential for silicon costs to go from $4.50/W [current spot] to $0.30/W [UMG Si at scale]--in under three years.

CPV--Concentrating Photovoltaics.  The main players here are Concentrix, Solfocus, Greenvolts.  The big advantage CPV has is that it performance degrades less with increased temperatures than flat plate PV does, the tricky part is the harvesting--you have to be pointing directly at the sun or you harvest nothing.  Tracking is the killer app here.

cSi modules designed for high humidity environments--think HI, FLA, the Caribbean.  EVA, the gel the cells sit in, loves moisture, this approach uses an inert gas and vacuum instead.  Another harvesting technique.

And my favorite magic bullet wasn't even at Intersolar, since they are targeting the California market first.