Nanosolar has announced deliver of its first solar panel. This is a long time coming and indicates a great opportunity for OEMs to integrate this product into their designs.
From the Nanosolar blog:
Our product is defining in more ways I can enumerate here but includes:
- the world’s first printed thin-film solar cell in a commercial panel product;- the world’s first thin-film solar cell with a low-cost back-contact capability;
- the world’s lowest-cost solar panel – which we believe will make us the first solar manufacturer capable of profitably selling solar panels at as little as $.99/Watt;
- the world’s highest-current thin-film solar panel – delivering five times the current of any other thin-film panel on the market today and thus simplifying system deployment;
- an intensely systems-optimized product with the lowest balance-of-system cost of any thin-film panel – due to innovations in design we have included.
The $0.99/watt jumps out at me immediately. Other companies have made claims to severely reducing the $/watt, but this is the lowest I’ve seen claimed by any particular company.
What’s not quite clear to me yet (and I only know so much about this technology) how much square footage is needed to get a given output. Or in other words, did they reduce the numerator or increase the denominator? Decreasing the numerator means they made a significantly cheaper cell out of a less efficient material. While the costs on this sound very compelling, the square footage matters as there’s usually a limit to surface area for solar-based projects. Best Buy’s rooves are only so big. So while these panels are cheap, if they cover the entire roof, will they produce a significant amount of electricity?
I’d be interested in seeing what products/installations are developed with this technology in the coming months.
