1kg CIGS = 5kg Uranium

Martin Roscheisen made this very telling comparison on his blog recently. Without question, the one side effect of nano techniques is the dearth of raw materials actually required. This something not fully appreciated by those in the materials side of things.

Of course, that one kilo has to be spread on many square miles of substrate to generate the actual energy.

Regardless this technology is going to change all aspects of the energy business and the sheer capacity to have one tool produce the energy equivalent of one nuclear plant each and every year has not sunk in yet. That is going to need a year, by which time I hope to have an early version of the Eden machine operating.

Before we are all finished, every square mile of usable land on Earth will have a large surplus of power to dispose of in the daily course of business, either at the farm gate or internally. It is just that simple.

It will still take decades to perfect efficient networks and adapt our civilization to this new bounty of energy. But make no mistake, it is a bounty. The average household will be primary producer of power at a nominal cost. There will be no distribution system to pay for.

This power source has a starting selling price of $1.00 per watt which competes now with every other option. A couple years out, the selling price can be much lower and capacity can be at four nuclear power plants and doubling every year therafter until the Earth is saturated.

1kg CIGS = 5kg Uranium

December 16, 2008

By Martin Roscheisen, CEO - Nanosolar

The notion of a kilogram of enriched Uranium conjures up an image of a powerful amount of energy.

Enough to power an entire city for years when used in a nuclear power plant, or enough to flatten an entire county when used in a bomb — that’s presumably what many people would say if one asked them about their thoughts.

In our new solar cell technology, we use an active material called CIGS, a Copper based semiconductor. How does this stack up against enriched Uranium?

Here’s a noteworthy fact, pointed out to me by one of our engineers: It turns out that 1kg of CIGS, embedded in a solar cell, produces 5 times as much electricity as 1kg of enriched Uranium, embedded in a nuclear power plant.

Or said differently, 1kg of CIGS is equivalent to 5kg of enriched Uranium in terms of the energy the materials deliver in solar and nuclear respectively.

The Uranium is burned and then stored in a nuclear waste facility; the CIGS material produces power for at least the warranty period of the solar cell product after which it can then be recycled and reused an indefinite number of times.

First Solar

This is a report out by first solar and what is interesting is that while using a glass substrate, they have still been able to drive the cost per watt down to an impressive $1.08 per watt. They also understand what the objective is.

In the meantime the CIGS technology is allowing the actual printing of solar cells and surely promises to bring this cost point much lower. I am expecting pennies per watt before this is much further down the road.

The real tough act to follow will be Nanosolar’s. A two million dollar tool that cranks out the capacity of a nuclear power plant each and every year at an opening selling price of $1.00 per watt leaves nothing to the imagination. The treat to First Solar is so real and immediate that this report serves only as an attempt to placate the backers who surely are getting nervous reading Nanosolar’s pronouncements.

The CIGS print protocol has been rushed to market upon it been just good enough and certainly cheap enough. On going refinement will surely double efficiency at the least and likely halve the selling price. This will even be fairly quick, well inside the design lifetime of the solar cells.

That means that if you build an application, you can expect and plan to change out your cells in perhaps three years for twice the power while saving some money.




First Solar Creates Tough Act to Follow

Solar startups will have trouble replicating the thin-film solar panel market leader's performance in today's poor economy, industry watchers at a Photon International conference warn.

by: Jeff St. John
December 2, 2008

Companies seeking to take First Solar's place at the top of the thin-film solar panel market won't have an easy time of it – even if investors are hungry to find such a contender.

"Searching for the ‘Second Solar'," – the title that Photon International gave to the opening day of its three-day solar industry conference in San Francisco – made that point neatly enough.

After all, you can't have a "second solar" without a First Solar (NSDQ: FSLR) to compete against. The Phoenix, Ariz.-based maker of cadmium-telluride panels has driven its production costs to as low as $1.08 per watt in the third quarter of 2008, down from $1.18 in the previous quarter and $1.23 in 2007 (see First Solar Profits Up 54%, Credit Crunch Could Impact Biz).

Getting to those low costs has been the result of more than 20 years of "hard work," as well as the alignment of First Solar's expansion at a time when solar power was receiving significant support from both governments and investors, Bruce Sohn, First Solar's president, told the conference audience Tuesday.

While many other solar panel startups are now aiming at costs of $1 per watt, "It's clearly not obvious who's going to do that, and how it's going to happen," Sohn said.

Thin-film companies including Solyndra, Nanosolar, Miasolé and HelioVolt, which make copper-indium-gallium-diselenide films, also known as CIGS, have raised a lot of money as they've set their sights on competing with First Solar (see Competition for First Solar?). So have giants like Honda and Shell.

Potentially, CIGS panels can harvest more electricity from the sun than cad tel panels. Experimental CIGS panels at NREL hit 19.9 percent efficiency while the best cal tel cells peak at around 16.5 percent efficiency.

Many also say that putting CIGS thin-film solar cells on thin substrates, like metal foils, is easier. First Solar puts its solar cells on glass, expensive to buy and heavy to ship, although it is trying to develop thin substrates.

And there are now new cad tel solar cells coming to market, such as AVA Solar, which just raised over $100 million in VC funds.

But given today's poor economic climate – and the growing maturity of First Solar's relentlessly efficient manufacturing, represented by the company's $6.3 billion current backlog of sales – startups will have a hard time trying to match First Solar's recipe in the short term, said Jeffrey Grabow, with Ernst & Young's high technology practice in San Jose.

After years of growing venture capital investment in solar companies, 2008 will probably see investments fall, Grabow said. In the short term, it's likely venture capitalists will focus on getting later-stage companies to profit-making production, rather than funding earlier-stage companies seeking to prove new technologies, he said.

"Since the end of September, times have changed," he said. "Venture capitalists are spending a lot of time rationalizing their own portfolios," seeking to separate those companies with short-term paths to profitability from those that won't survive, he said.

"Cleantech and solar have been bright spots, and I think they'll continue to get the lion's share of dollars in the near term," he said. "But I think a lot of that will be going to later-stage deals, because that's where they have to go."

The larger outfits like Honda won't have to worry about VC funding, but even these companies are having a rough ride. Shares of solar companies have fallen harder and faster than the Dow Industrial Average in the past two months, he said, and "This is going to affect anyone in the solar industry who's looking for capital or financing," Grabow said. (See Stocks Stumble After SunPower Lowers Forecast.)

Michael Ware, a managing director at Good Energies, a venture capital firm focused on greentech investments, said solar startups shouldn't "oversell themselves" when considering how to bring new technologies to market. Nor should they expect to go public with the expectation that they will match First Solar's market performance (see First Solar Shares Jump 24.5%).

"There's a long road to go from a startup to where First Solar is," he said. "To calculate your valuation based on where First Solar is, we think is a mistake."

While Good Energies will continue to look for investments in solar companies, "The new investments we're going to make are going to be very selective," he said.

Still, Grabow said, companies that do have technologies – and plans to bring them to commercialization

– that could match First Solar should relentlessly network to get the attention of venture capitalists.

After all, "They're afraid they missed First Solar, and they're afraid they're going to miss ‘second solar," he said.

Solar Thermal Power

This is a good survey article on solar energy with lot of handy links.

Direct solar conversion to electricity has been getting all the recent attention, but it must be said that converging solar energy into usable heat is also a good working strategy that is very easy to integrate into the power grid. Some of the systems are now very attractive.

Converting solar energy into a hot working fluid is then easily converted into grid power with conventional power equipment. I assume that the working fluid is water and that during the daytime operations can produce a large inventory of high grade steam that can be stored into the night. An additional energy source during the night is to take the spent steam and use it to drive a reverse Rankin cycle generator that drops the spent water from boiling temperature to the ambient nighttime temperature and produces seventy five percent brake horsepower.

Cheap solar cells are very good for static applications not needing high voltages. That means that it works well for buildings and the Eden machines. Not so well if you need a source of high power and you do not want to tie up a farm next door.

Giant solar collector fields can be built out in the desert and the energy easily converted into high voltage grid power for industrial use. The possibility of using spent water at night to provide a base load during the off peak period is actually attractive.

Can solar thermal power solve the worlds energy problems?

Posted in earth 4 energy by: stevaxx
November 30th, 2008

According to this link Europe uses 4,000 terawatts of energy but in the normally unusable deserts of North Africa and the Middle East 630,000 terawatts fall unused. If solar thermal plants covered the desert about the size of Austria it could power the whole entire world. The technology is cheap and includes an ability to store the energy for nighttime needs. If all this is possible why on Earth are we not employing this clean, cheap, abundent source of energy?

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,550544,00.html

Solar thermal could do just that at affordable costs. Solar thermal can now produce electricity at as low as 8 cents a watt, and that would be improved by the economy of scale of mass production of the solar plant components.

1% of the Sahara desert could power the whole world.

1% of the deserts in the American southwest could power the whole country.

And solar photovoltaic efficiencey is not stuck at 10% as someone answered. It is closer to 20%.

And that efficiency is rapidly improving and the cost of making solar panels is falling just as rapidly.

Solar panel industry experts say they are just a few years away from being at grid parity with coal and gas power plants.

In fact, Nanosolar is already there, being able to produce solar panel complete systems for less money than it takes to build a coal power plant.

And then there is the cost of the coal and the pollution from it.

http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/

"Nanosolar’s founder and chief executive, Martin Roscheisen, claims to be the first solar panel manufacturer to be able to profitably sell solar panels for less than $1 a watt. That is the price at which solar energy becomes less expensive than coal.With a $1-per-watt panel,” he said, “it is possible to build $2-per-watt systems.

According to the Energy Department, building a new coal plant costs about $2.1 a watt, plus the cost of fuel and emissions, he said."

from http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/category/solar/

Concentrating solar photovoltaic power plants and solar thermal power plants in the southwest should be a large part of our future energy system.

Scientific American A Solar Grand Plan

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan

Shows how we could have 69% solar power in the U.S, by 2050, spending less in taxpayer dollars than we spent building the internet and high speed information highway, and in about the same 35 year time frame.

And by spending about 1/8 as much annually over those years as we now give oil companies in subsidies.

http://www.setamericafree.org/saf_hiddencostofoil010507.pdf

Some solar thermal companies.

http://www.ausra.com

http://www.infiniacorp.com/main.php

http://www.skyfuel.com/

http://www.solucar.es/sites/solar/en/index.jsp

http://www.esolar.com/

"I'd put my money on the sun & solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that." Thomas Edison, 1931

Solar thermal plants can store heat, which will generate steam driven electricity at night.

"Solar thermal power plants such as Ausra's generate electricity by driving steam turbines with sunshine. Ausra's solar concentrators boil water with focused sunlight, and produce electricity at prices directly competitive with gas- and coal-fired electric power."

"All of America's needs for electric power – the entire US grid, night and day – can be generated with Ausra's current technology using a square parcel of land 92 miles on a side. For comparison, this is less than 1% of America's deserts, less land than currently in use in the U.S. for coal mines."

Some of the arguments against wind and solar just don't make sense, like the argument that they are too intermittent, or not constant.

"There are areas in Denmark and Germany who use more than 40 percent of their electricity from wind. From what I have read, they are less concerned about the intermittency than we are in the United States even though we aren't at 1 pecent yet. Why? Because we are told by the fossil fuel guys, hey, can't use wind, can't use solar, what about the intermittency. If wind gets up to 40 percent of the electricity we use and solar gets up to 40 of the electricity we use, the other percents of electricity we need can be made up from the fossil fuel plants that are still there. If they are run less at full power, they can last a long time. That can be your electricity `battery.'"

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/1/7/05733/93954

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1444/70/

"Using mirrors to focus the sun's heat on one of any various heat-to-electricity converters seems to have separated itself out as being the cheapest form of solar power."

"Solar energy is the great leveler (unlike oil, which has been the great divider) between the haves and the have nots). No one owns the sun. It can't be drilled or mined or tied up in financial derivatives."

(See Here Comes the Sun, February 17, 2007, Commentary, Chipstocktrader.com)

Green Wombat has several articles about solar thermal plants in California and Arizona. California has 9 small pilot plants that were built in the 80s and 90s. They produce 355 megawatts. Two larger plants have been approved for the Mojave Desert at 355 and 500 megawatts. Another is to be built near San Luis Obispo at 175 megawatts. Two or three others are in proposal stage, at up to 800 and 900 megawatts, for two of them.

http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/

from the Scientific American article:

"The greatest obstacle to implementing a renewable U.S. energy system is not technology or money, however. It is the lack of public awareness that solar power is a practical alternative—and one that can fuel transportation as well. Forward-looking thinkers should try to inspire U.S. citizens, and their political and scientific leaders, about solar power’s incredible potential. Once Americans realize that potential, we believe the desire for energy self-sufficiency and the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will prompt them to adopt a national solar plan"

"The huge reduction in imported oil would lower trade balance payments by $300 billion a year, assuming a crude oil price of $60 a barrel (average prices were higher in 2007). "

Together with Wind and other renewable, we can go to clean energy, while ultimately improving our economy as well.

http://www.setamericafree.org/blueprint.pdf

A Blueprint For U.S. Energy Security

From the SetAmerican free document above.

The total of all oil-related external or “hidden” costs of $825 billion per year. Thistotal is nearly twice the figure authorized for the Department of Defense in 2006.To put the figure in further perspective, it is equivalent to adding $8.35 to the priceof a gallon of gasoline refined from Persian Gulf oil. This would raise that figure to$10.73, making the cost of filling the gasoline tank of a sedan $214.60, and of anSUV $321.90.

And then there's the $300 billion oil adds to our trade imbalance annually.

You think that makes for a good economy?

There is an unbelievable amount of disinformation about the potential of renewable energy.

Morgan Solar Technology

This story in the Toronto star is of some interest. I do not think that this approach will supersede the emerging use of printed solar cells that are already selling at $1.00 per watt capacity. Also, the road to technical improvement is broad and open and will soon include sculpted nanoscaled surfaces that are able to tap a much wider spectrum than any tackled to date.

However, this surely reduces the amount of expensive silica based cells with cheaper light guides. Whether it can bring the cost per watt down below $1.00 is a question that remains to be answered. It also seems that gains produced by component reduction will be offset by cooling equipment costs.

It is good however, to see the focus on lowering the cost per installed watt. Everyone can see the impact on the windmill business and how rapidly it will grow the moment it makes economic sense. The promise of Nanosolar is simply that they can deliver the power equivalent of one nuclear plant per year with one production tool at that opening charge of $1.00 per watt and are doing it now at a positive cash flow now.

And Nanosolar may be getting ahead of themselves, although I see no sign of that whatever.



A new solar-cell system could one day make power from the sun as cheap as electricity from fossil fuels

Nov 10, 2008 04:30 AM

Tyler Hamilton

ENERGY REPORTER

John Paul Morgan was a cutting-edge engineer at JDS Uniphase Corp., back when the optical telecom giant was a market titan and solar power was still perceived by many as a backwoods technology for off-grid tree huggers.

Seven years later, the high-tech whiz kid has become a solar hotshot. Morgan has developed a new type of solar panel that, like many other systems on the market, concentrates the sun's rays on to high-efficiency solar cells. The big difference is the simplicity of his design and the lower-cost materials used to build it could soon make power from the sun as affordable as electricity from fossil fuels.

All he has to do now is prove it. "We have to show this technology is bankable," he says.

Morgan's path from telecom to solar panels wasn't a straight line. A graduate of engineering science from the University of Toronto, he joined JDS in 2001 while in his mid-20s. Within three days at JDS he impressed higher-ups with his first invention and within three months broke the company record for most inventions in a year.

But the telecom market crashed and Morgan grew bored. As his older brother, Nicolas Morgan, explains, "developing products to make the Internet faster didn't inspire him." He quit JDS in 2003, and travelled a year through South America, Australia and Asia before heading back to UofT to get his graduate degree in electrical and biomedical engineering.

Following through on a lifelong goal, Jean Paul then went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo where he handled logistics and construction projects for Doctors Without Borders. To him, the work was loaded with meaning, and while he returned a year later, he spoke of going back to continue with the cause.

That's when his father, Eric Morgan, stepped in. He talked his son out of going back, arguing that if he really wanted to help people he had an obligation to use his smarts to solve bigger problems.

Jean Paul stepped up to the challenge. While working as a research associate at the Catholic University of Chile (where his family has roots), he decided that the best place to focus on was energy.

"I came to realize electricity was a fundamental human right and if you don't have electricity you're living in the dark ages," he recounts. "I decided there to devote my life to the problem of developing inexpensive, ubiquitous electricity. Solar was the obvious choice."

At first, Jean Paul looked for solar companies he might like to work for, but after researching the market he quickly found there was a technology gap that needed to be filled. Most of the solar-system designs that appealed to him were clumsy and complicated. He decided his goal should be to come up with a novel design that eliminates that complexity.

So began another adventure. Within just a few months an invention emerged, several patents were filed, and by June 2007 Morgan Solar Inc. was founded. Jean Paul, who turns 30 in December, now has six employees working out of a nondescript office near Richmond St. and Bathurst St., and his company has a prototype that was displayed for the first time last month at an international solar conference in San Diego.

As more people see it, "we know we're going to blow people out of the water," says brother Nicolas, who heads up the company's business development. Their father, a senior executive at managing consulting firm Capgemini, has thrown in some angel capital and provides guidance as chair.

It's not that Morgan Solar is alone in its mission. The biggest expense today in manufacturing a solar panel is the materials, usually silicon, that make up the solar cells within. Researchers are racing to discover and commercialize methods to reduce that cost.

Some companies have developed ways to make solar cells using high volume roll-to-roll processes. This is similar in many ways to how we print newspapers or paper currency, and companies such as First Solar, Nanosolar, Konarka and OptiSolar – all U.S. companies, by the way – are leading the pack.

Thin-film solar cells use less material but are generally less efficient than traditional cells. This shortfall, however, is supposed to be offset by their lower cost of production. In other words, low-cost volume makes up for the loss of high-cost efficiency.

At the other end of the spectrum are companies trying to dramatically improve the efficiency of solar cells, such as Ottawa-based Cyrium Technologies Inc., which uses a number of exotic materials in addition to silicon to make multi-layered solar cells that can absorb more energy-rich light. Spectrolab and Emcore are two U.S. companies leading this side of the market, but their product is pricey.

Morgan Solar is attempting to build a bridge between low cost and high efficiency by concentrating an immense amount of solar energy on to a tiny thumbnail space lined with a superefficient cell from a Cyrium, Emcore or Spectrolab.

The idea is that such a small fraction of the costly solar cell is needed and so much of the sun's energy is focused on it, that material costs can be kept to a minimum and efficiency can be increased.

It's an approach dubbed "concentrating photovoltaics," or CSP, and a number of companies are in the race, among them U.S. ventures GreenVolts, Energy Innovations, and SolFocus, as well as Ottawa-based Menova Energy.

Some, like SolFocus, use mirrors to focus the light on a solar cell as if 500 suns are shining down. Others claim the same goals by using specially designed lenses or prisms that concentrate the light like a magnifying glass on the cell.

It's a tricky thing to do. The target, often a tiny little chip no larger than a square centimetre, must be hit with pinpoint precision. Structures must be able to handle strong wind and special tracking systems are needed to make sure the sun is always shining directly. Being off by a few millimetres isn't good enough.

Also, the heat that results from focusing 500 suns, and up to 2,000 suns for some technologies, requires some creative cooling to keep the cells from melting.

Morgan Solar has come up with a completely different approach that relies on what it calls a light-guided solar optic. Basically, pieces of acrylic or glass are designed to capture sunlight as it hits a triangular surface less than a centimetre thick. Once inside the material, the sunlight is trapped and corralled through a bottom layer to one corner, where a tiny sliver of solar cell is positioned to absorb the barrage of concentrated light.

The triangles are packaged together to form a square about the size of a Compact Disc case and dozens of these squares make up a single panel.

"It's bloody amazing," says William Masek, president and chief technology officer of Brockville-based Upper Canada Solar Generation Ltd., which has plans to build 50 megawatts of solar farms in Ontario. In the next few weeks he will begin field-testing Morgan Solar's prototypes. "They probably have the most breakthrough solar technology announced in a long time."

Masek says the cost savings for him could be enormous if the technology, as claimed, can affordably convert more of the sun's energy to electricity per square metre than conventional solar panels. "With traditional solar panels we'll need over a thousand acres of property. But if we switch to their system, we can cut that land requirement in half and also substantially cut our costs," he says.

The materials that make up the panels are nothing fancy or expensive, Nicolas Morgan says during an interview at the company's office. The solar panels are flatter than the competition, lighter, cheaper to build and can concentrate the light at up to 1,500. "This is completely new. Nobody has done it this way," he says.

Now comes the tough part – turning it all into a commercial product without falling into the valley of death, that point in the life of a technology start-up where the difficulty of finding funding ends up starving promising companies.

Morgan Solar's office shows that the company is prepared to operate lean, making the most of the $600,000 is has raised so far from Eric Morgan and a grant from the Ontario Centres of Excellence. In one presentation room an old wooden door found in a nearby alley is being used as a conference table. On the wall, plastic shower lining purchased at Home Depot functions as a makeshift whiteboard for brainstorming sessions.

Nicolas says the company is talking to venture capitalists but doesn't plan to raise private equity until its prototype has been proven to work. This will depend on the results of several demonstration projects, including two in Spain and one at the Earth Rangers Centre in Woodbridge. Commercial production of the product, dubbed Sun Simba, is targeted for 2010.

Jean Paul realizes tremendous work lies ahead, but his goal of developing cheap solar power for the developing world keeps him focused and driven.

"It's what motivates me to work 14 hours a day every day, and I don't get tired, because I know this work is important," he says.

Rust Belt Solar Revival

The demise of the rust belt was always an exaggeration, just as the fear that German industry could not compete. All industrial production is about intelligent design and then taking a few cents of raw material, pounding it a few times and selling it for dollars.

The industrial heartland that also includes Ontario is one of the globe’s great industrial engines.

It has supported high wages and high taxation. This put it at a disadvantage when competing with low tax and low wage economies. It still managed to become richer and more efficient as did German industry.

The next generation is seeing the wages of China and India rising and their economies begin to properly internalize as happened in Europe. There is still plenty of cheap labor around but never so concentrated and organized as that of China and India. In fact China and India are now beginning to compete for those workers.

What this article makes clear is that solar energy and wind energy represents a massive manufacturing effort. A lot of this had not really registered. The modern windmill showed that it is possible to build hardware robust enough to stand up against all that Mother Nature can throw at it. We are now going to build thousands of them and install them everywhere that makes any sort of sense. After all, free fuel works for everyone.

The solar industry is an even bigger manufacturing opportunity. The nanosolar thin film is actually a minor part of the manufacturing bill and its cost is now dropping sharply, exponentially increasing manufacturing demand.

We will be installing hundreds of square miles of solar panels over the next twenty years. The hardware for all this must be manufactured and will surely generate a manufacturing boom for the rust belt.

I personally think that while the rest of the globe still has energy options to postpone conversion to alternative energy, North America and Europe does not. The Europeans recognized this twenty years ago and made it public policy to stay ahead of the curve.

In North America, we have ignored the inevitable day of reckoning until it arrived and sucked the cash liquidity out of the economy. Now we need to catch up in a hurry. That means a massive build out of windmills and conversion of our trucking industry over to LNG fuel over the next five years. This will slash our dependence on oil and commence the reduction of our reliance on coal fired and natural gas fired power plants.

This all translates into a major manufacturing boom in the rust belt, even before we factor in the rapid build up of solar energy.

Our thermal plants will end up been standby power sources to pick up the slack on bad weather days.

Logistics Resurrects the Rust Belt

by Lara L. Sowinski

October 28, 2008

As in recent presidential elections, much has been said by politicians about the tens of thousands of manufacturing job losses that have occurred in the region of the U.S. known as the Rust Belt—those states that have a long history in industrial manufacturing, particularly steel and auto production, as a driver for their economies. But politicians usually don’t tell the whole story, and such is the case with how the jobs were lost and, more importantly, what’s been occurring in recent years to turn the situation around.The “secret,” according to Bill LaFayette, Ph.D., and vice president, economic analysis, for the Columbus (Ohio) Chamber (www.columbus.org), is in large part due to logistics, and he and many others in the business, government, and academic sectors are pulling together to get that secret out in the open.

For starters, “There’s an initiative at the state level, the Ohio Skills Bank, to align public colleges and universities as well as secondary education providers with economic development priorities. The goal is to make sure the state’s workforce has the skills that employers really need now and in the future. And, transportation and logistics is one of the main focus sectors of this initiative, especially in the Columbus region,” says LaFayette. “Part of the plan includes making sure university classes and credits are on par around the state, so the workforce can be more mobile,” he adds.

State lawmakers also recognize the role of logistics in the larger economic development picture. Ohio is in the midst of a major tax reform, which along with numerous other advantages, is helping the state become more competitive against others that it often goes head-to-head with, including Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota, explains Matt McCollister, vice president, economic development, Columbus Chamber.

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland asserted that the tax reform would yield significant results for the state.

“By 2010, Ohio will be one of only two states without a general tax on corporation profits or a property tax on business machinery, equipment, and inventories. This year is the last for Ohio’s business property tax; next year is the last for the corporation profits tax. And, Ohio’s personal income tax rates are falling by 21 percent across the board.”

“Between 2005 and 2007, Ohio’s per capita state tax burden has already fallen to 38th in the nation, from 27th, according to the Federation for Tax Administrators. When the new tax cuts are phased in, Ohio’s business taxes will be the lowest in the Midwest.”The Governor also pointed out that exports are up sharply. Last year, the state’s exports totaled more than $42 billion — an 11.1 percent increase over 2006—making it the only state in which exports have grown each year since 1998.

Moving from concept to creation

It’s great to have a vision, but it’s even better to put it into action, and the major logistics players in the Columbus region and throughout the state are beginning to see the results of this combined effort from the various interests in a number of ways.

Undoubtedly, one of the most important projects has been the Norfolk Southern railroad’s Heartland Corridor, a three-year railway improvement project scheduled for completion in 2010 that will significantly increase the speed of containerized freight moving in double-stack trains between the East Coast and Midwest. Currently, double-stack trains are routed through Harrisburg, Pennsylvania or Knoxville, Tennessee. However once it’s completed, the Heartland Corridor will move double-stack trains from Norfolk, Virginia’s seaports to Chicago, via West Virginia and Ohio.

The centerpiece of the Heartland Corridor is the Rickenbacker Intermodal Terminal located just outside of Columbus, which opened in March.

“The construction of the Rickenbacker terminal punctuates Norfolk Southern’s commitment to serve the growing intermodal demands of central Ohio and Midwest shippers,” said Wick Moorman, Norfolk Southern’s chief executive officer, earlier this year. “Rickenbacker, one of five Norfolk Southern intermodal terminals in Ohio, will anchor our Heartland Corridor when that project is completed.”

Elaine Roberts, A.A.E., president and CEO of the Columbus Regional Airport Authority, added that, “We have already witnessed the start of the intermodal terminal’s economic impact with new industrial development in the Rickenbacker area. We expect 20,000 new jobs over the next 30 years as a direct result of the new intermodal facility.”

The initial footprint of the Rickenbacker Intermodal Terminal will comprise approximately 175 acres with a handling capacity of more than 250,000 containers and trailers annually. However, it was designed to accommodate expansion as traffic volumes grow.At the same time, officials at the Columbus Regional Airport Authority are optimistic that the Rickenbacker International Airport (www.rickenbacker.org), a former military airport that boasts some of the longest runways in the country, will figure more prominently for air cargo shippers. One big draw is the relatively short taxi times and very low landing fees, along with easy entry to the cargo apron with direct plane-to-truck access so cargo can be off-loaded and ready for transport within an hour of arrival.The airport is currently under-utilized, say officials. Although the airport can handle up to 1 million metric tons of cargo, only about 100,000 metric tons are coming in now. In addition, there’s no regularly scheduled air cargo service at the moment, just charters. Nonetheless, airport officials say they’ll continue to aggressively pursue more business, which may come about sooner than expected should DHL’s hub in Wilmington, Ohio close down.

Another rail project that will bring more capacity to central Ohio is CSX’s National Gateway. Similar to the Heartland Corridor, the rail project will also link Mid-Atlantic ports to the Midwest with double-stack routes, which will transit through Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia.

The railroad plans to expand an existing intermodal terminal near Columbus and build a new terminal at Marion, Ohio. The total cost of the public-private partnership is estimated at $700 million.

In the meantime, the formation of the Columbus Region Logistics Council is a further example of how members of the business community, government, and academia are taking action to develop logistics throughout the region.

Battelle, the huge consulting, research and development organization, was tapped to put together a long-range strategic plan, a ‘logistics roadmap,’ that was delivered in 2007, explains Ben Ritchey, vice president, transportation market sector, Battelle. “One of the results was the Columbus Region Logistics Council,” he says. It’s a volunteer organization comprised of shippers, freight forwarders, developers, and transportation companies. Some of the members include ODW Logistics, Honda of America, Exel, Limited Brands, Ohio State University, CSX, and Norfolk Southern.

Part of the logistics roadmap calls for: fostering a logistics-friendly business environment; continuing to develop and enhance advanced logistics infrastructure; infusing world-class logistics technology into regional industry; and building a high-skill workforce for competitive advantage.

“The benefit of this four-pronged strategy lies in focusing appropriate investments and activities that will most readily achieve job and business growth, build infrastructure, develop a talented workforce, and enable technology adoption that sets our regional logistics industry apart from competing markets,” notes Ritchey.

However, lack of capital is still a concern, he acknowledges. Yet, the promise of public-private partnerships, especially for “last mile” projects, is a reason to stay enthusiastic, says Ritchey.

Transitioning to emerging industries

While the logistics industry is a key part of the broader economic development activity in Ohio, several other emerging industries are taking root there and in surrounding Rust Belt states, namely solar.

The U.S. is poised to become the manufacturing mecca for the $18 billion solar industry and nearly all of the current solar manufacturing capacity is in the Midwest. In fact, with the exception of Nanosolar’s thin film facility in San Jose, California and Ausra’s plant in Las Vegas, all solar panels manufactured in the U.S. are made in the Rust Belt.

First Solar, a $22 billion solar panel manufacturer based in Perrysburg, Ohio, announced in August that it plans to expand its manufacturing operations and development facilities near Toledo.

The investment will add approximately 500,000 square feet of manufacturing, research and development, and office space, and will add at least 134 new jobs to the company’s current workforce of 700 at its Perrysburg facility. First Solar is collaborating with state and local leaders on a comprehensive incentive package for these two projects. These incentives are central to First Solar’s expansion plans in Ohio and are subject to approval by state and local authorities.

The expansion is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2010 and will increase the annual capacity at the Perrysburg facility to approximately 192 megawatts. In addition, First Solar will construct a separate facility to support increased development activities associated with its advanced thin film solar module manufacturing technology.“Scaling our manufacturing capacity while taking advantage of existing infrastructure will incrementally lower the manufacturing cost per watt at a rate comparable to our lowest cost facility in Malaysia,” said Bruce Sohn, president of First Solar. “The expansion of our operations in Ohio is a direct result of the outstanding achievements of our associates and a strong, ongoing partnership with state and local leaders.”

“The state of Ohio is proud to support industry leaders like First Solar who are using renewable energy to power the future,” said Ohio Governor Ted Strickland. “In making this significant investment and expansion in Toledo, First Solar is helping us to send a message to the world that Ohio is reinventing itself as the leader in the advanced energy industry.”State regulations require that at least 25 percent of the electricity sold in Ohio to be generated from new and advanced technologies by 2025.

According to Gov. Strickland, “Already, Ohio has more alternative energy-related projects under way than any other state. The state’s extensive manufacturing supply chain provides thousands of products to the alternative energy industry. And, Ohio is home to the largest fuel cell supply chain in the country. Our welders, machinists, electricians, and iron and steel workers are retooling and transferring their skills to retrofitting buildings, building mass transit, installing wind and solar power, and manufacturing energy-efficient cars and trucks.”

“Ohio now leads the Midwest in the growth of venture capital investments in the biosciences; we rank first nationally in per capita clinical trials and operate the largest center for stem cell and regenerative medicine between the coasts. In the U.S. News & World Report rankings, Ohio leads the nation with four of the country’s top 15 children’s hospitals. The Cleveland Clinic, meanwhile, has spun off two dozen start-up companies in the past decade, and averages 200 inventions each year.”

CIGS Solar Cells Efficiency Rises

This is an informative bit of commentary that confirms my surmise that the labs are rushing into production on the basis of producing ten percent efficiency. That is the bare minimum for the beginning of application work.

Nanosolar is not planning limited quantities and they just announced that they have achieved operational breakeven on their present sales. Normally, I am skeptical of early days pronouncements about sales and earnings, but this company is clearly running hard to become the front runner and actually expect that their advisors would insist that they under promise and over produce.

It is also clear that their press coverage is nicely expanding and I have seen no challenges to date. But then their backers are intimidating. Obviously an early IPO is in the works for this company.

The more important point is that 20 percent efficiency is a done deal which makes it directly competitive the best silica and the theoretical thirty percent target is becoming very real.

Other lab work is also opening up exploitation of the full visible spectrum and also the infrared spectrum, allowing much more energy to be converted.

Nanosolar has clearly broken the cost barrier of $1.00 per watt or less. Now we need to maximize efficiencies to maximize the ease of application.

Amazingly, this is still all happening offstage from the mainstream media. Yet in 1970, I explained to my cousin that we would have a machine on a desk inside of a decade and that communication between machines would come shortly after. I then suggested that all human knowledge would become machine based and accessible in the nineties. And this would generate an explosion of knowledge and innovation. I merely failed to imagine that anyone would care besides us academic types.

We are about to be swamped with local cheap energy and the nice problem of finding ways to use it. We can now proceed by actually terraforming the Earth and turning most of it into a well managed garden.

Michael Kanellos

Rumor: New Record in CIGS Efficiency October 23, 2008 at 9:34 AM

The National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL) has upped the bar in copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cells once again, sources tell me. NREL scientists have developed a CIGS cell with 20.2 percent efficiency, inching past the 19.9 percent cell the lab announced in March. I’ve called NREL but haven’t heard word back on confirmation.

That number helps explain why VCs and investment banks continue to pour money into CIGS. Potentially, CIGS cells have the ability to convert more sunlight into power than other thin-film technologies like cadmium telluride and amorphous silicon. Cadmium telluride solar cells have a theoretical maximum of around 19.6 percent and commercial cad tel cells have an efficiency of around 10 percent. (We said nine earlier.) CIGS can also be printed, say advocates, on cheap, flexible substrates that can be integrated into building products. Cad tel solar cells, to date, need a glass substrate, which limits cad tel to rooftop applications.

CIGS cells are being produced in limited quantities around the 10 percent efficiency mark and theoretically CIGS cells could get into the mid-20 percentile or even low-30 percentile range someday.

Some of the leading CIGS companies include: Nanosolar, Solyndra, SoloPower, HelioVolt and Miasole. There are newcomers too: Telio Solar and NuvoSun.

Still, the stakes are high. Nearly a billion dollars have been invested in CIGS startups in the past couple of years and most of them have yet to start commercial production. Many companies have had to delay their CIGS solar cells due to manufacturing issues. (Chemically, the elements don’t play well together either — it’s the solar equivalent of trying to pull off a Guns N’ Roses reunion.) Even the large companies doing CIGS and CIS cells like Honda haven’t exactly been cranking these things out of the factory.

T.Boone Pickens Goes LNG

You may have picked this up in the press, but T Boone Pickens has publicly stepped up to the plate and is leading two initiatives aimed at securing future energy supplies and freeing the USA from dependence on the middle East in particular.

His strategy has the merit of been applicable immediately. Essentially he is building mega wind farms to produce electricity and aggressively displace natural gas from the power generation business. This is happening now.

The displaced natural gas will be diverted to supply the transportation business. His press coverage mentions both cars and trucks.

In practice, the best immediate improvement will come from converting the diesel fleet directly to LNG for which a huge global resource is in place today.

I will never be the wind power supporter that many are, only because it truly needs to be integrated with a variable energy source that can used to offset shortfalls. The best solution is a power dam with a well filled reservoir and a LNG power generator is not far behind.

In any event nanosolar panels are not too far away and that is capable of dealing with much of our power needs.

LNG however, is the only viable alternative for the long haulage business that can be rolled out immediately and fully installed within a couple of years. Biodiesel suffers from been too little too late and needs a protracted build out on the supply side. The same holds true for ethanol.

It is obvious though that the industrial aspects of all three are been tested and mastered and their availability is eminent. The strength of LNG is that ample feedstock is available now. Feedstocks for either ethanol or biodiesel are grossly insufficient and will take a fair amount of time to nurture. Ethanol, though is well on the way to been a significant part of the fuel cycle, having already reached critical mass. We are now seeing late generation supply crops hit the market, so that sector should be optimized in side of five years.

Pickens is totally correct in his strategy of supporting LNG conversion in the transport industry while diverting LNG from the power generation industry through the immediate build out of wind farms now. The important fact is that all of this can be done now without any delay as either supply is built out or technology matured.

He gives lip service to the use of LNG in the automobile industry which I see as window dressing. The real conversion must take place in the trucking industry which has both the immediate need and the resources. They do not have any option.

The auto industry is embarking on a multi pronged conversion strategy that will shake out over the next five years. On top of that, the consumer even today has options to exploit. Most can easily switch down to a smaller car or public transport fairly easily. The advent of hybrids is now accelerating that process.

The advent of ethanol fuels is at hand and is now been implemented. Supply will soon follow this demand.

Biodiesel is now a cottage industry but is also building momentum.

These are all steps that can remove our need for any use of oil in the transportation sector by themselves.

Far more importantly, $140 oil has convinced everyone in North America that any dependence on offshore oil is A Bad Thing. They will support any and all initiatives that will speed us all out of the oil business. And where we go, the rest of the world will swiftly follow particularly Europe, India and China.

The electric car will slid into the short haul niche as ample electric power is made available. Quite simply, with a nanosolar plant outside of town, it is very attractive to go pick up an inexpensive light weight town car for personal mobility.

Pickens is just getting into this massive market a step ahead of the crush.

As an aside, LNG has always been held back from full exploitation because of perceived handling problems. These seem to not be the problem that they once were but they still require active management that is easily supplied in the trucking industry. In the meantime, global resources are ample for centuries of use and ultimately are backstopped by the oceanic frozen methane reserves. It is also the cleanest burning hydrocarbon fuel and will slash the percentage of CO2 emissions.

The transport industry could switch to biodiesel and perhaps will do some of that also, however, it is better all around to switch to LNG now. It alone will slash smog in the urban environment.

Solar Windows

This news release on the making of very efficient panes of glass that collect and convert a portion of the incoming light is a nifty bit of work. It can allow the use of installed windows as household energy collectors.

Previously discussed printed nanosolar systems are hugely more important but do not easily address windows. What we have here is a neat strategy for siphoning a portion of the incoming light and transporting it to the edges were in concentrated form it is collected by efficient standard solar cells.

This also reminds me of the use of window panes containing a minute amount of dissolved gold on office buildings. I believe that they cut hugely into the amount of infrared light that came through. Other metals are obviously now used for the same effect.

The difficulty with this technology is the wonderful word ‘organic’. To get working dyes that will last even twenty years let alone forever is a very tall order. Mechanical protection is no big trick and installed diodes on the edges may not even have to be continuous. We are looking at concentration factors of at least twenty to one and likely much higher (the factor is twice edge length in inches for an eighth inch thick pane.). The constraint will be the absorption capacity of the photovoltaic diode. It should also be possible to design things so that a broken pane can be replaced without replacing the diodes mounted in the frame.

Again, once manufacturing and usage becomes ubiquitous, the technology can be advanced on a step by step basis to achieve better efficiencies. Thus been able to trade out the panes at will is a commercial advantage. Remember that we have used the light bulb socket for one hundred year. Our new technology which finally became possible had to design around this installed base. I could not imagine using the screw-in format otherwise.

This is, even with concerns over the life of the dyes, a neat way to utilize windows without affecting anything else in the building itself such as placing a system of panels on the roof. This technology neatly changes out the current installed base of windows while providing a power source that can be easily integrated into the newly developing paradigm of local solar energy generation that is about to be driven by cheap nanosolar power.

I have this vision of thousands of houses dumping surplus power as well as any unused stored power into the grid every day. There is good reason to expect every household to become a net power exporter even after consuming its share of urban transportation energy.

MIT opens new 'window' on solar energy

Cost effective devices expected on market soon

Elizabeth A. Thomson, News Office

July 10, 2008

Imagine windows that not only provide a clear view and illuminate rooms, but also use sunlight to efficiently help power the building they are part of. MIT engineers report a new approach to harnessing the sun's energy that could allow just that.

The work, to be reported in the July 11 issue of Science, involves the creation of a novel "solar concentrator." "Light is collected over a large area [like a window] and gathered, or concentrated, at the edges," explains Marc A. Baldo, leader of the work and the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering.

As a result, rather than covering a roof with expensive solar cells (the semiconductor devices that transform sunlight into electricity), the cells only need to be around the edges of a flat glass panel. In addition, the focused light increases the electrical power obtained from each solar cell "by a factor of over 40," Baldo says.

Because the system is simple to manufacture, the team believes that it could be implemented within three years--even added onto existing solar-panel systems to increase their efficiency by 50 percent for minimal additional cost. That, in turn, would substantially reduce the cost of solar electricity.

• Fact sheet: MIT's solar concentrators

In addition to Baldo, the researchers involved are Michael Currie, Jon Mapel, and Timothy Heidel, all graduate students in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Shalom Goffri, a postdoctoral associate in MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics.

"Professor Baldo's project utilizes innovative design to achieve superior solar conversion without optical tracking," says Dr. Aravinda Kini, program manager in the Office of Basic Energy Sciences in the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, a sponsor of the work. "This accomplishment demonstrates the critical importance of innovative basic research in bringing about revolutionary advances in solar energy utilization in a cost-effective manner."

Solar concentrators in use today "track the sun to generate high optical intensities, often by using large mobile mirrors that are expensive to deploy and maintain," Baldo and colleagues write in Science. Further, "solar cells at the focal point of the mirrors must be cooled, and the entire assembly wastes space around the perimeter to avoid shadowing neighboring concentrators."

The MIT solar concentrator involves a mixture of two or more dyes that is essentially painted onto a pane of glass or plastic. The dyes work together to absorb light across a range of wavelengths, which is then re-emitted at a different wavelength and transported across the pane to waiting solar cells at the edges.

In the 1970s, similar solar concentrators were developed by impregnating dyes in plastic. But the idea was abandoned because, among other things, not enough of the collected light could reach the edges of the concentrator. Much of it was lost en route.

The MIT engineers, experts in optical techniques developed for lasers and organic light-emitting diodes, realized that perhaps those same advances could be applied to solar concentrators. The result? A mixture of dyes in specific ratios, applied only to the surface of the glass, that allows some level of control over light absorption and emission. "We made it so the light can travel a much longer distance," Mapel says. "We were able to substantially reduce light transport losses, resulting in a tenfold increase in the amount of power converted by the solar cells."

This work was also supported by the National Science Foundation. Baldo is also affiliated with MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics, Microsystems Technology Laboratories, and Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies.

Mapel, Currie and Goffri are starting a company, Covalent Solar, to develop and commercialize the new technology. Earlier this year Covalent Solar won two prizes in the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition. The company placed first in the Energy category ($20,000) and won the Audience Judging Award ($10,000), voted on by all who attended the awa

Solar Power Arrives

Over the past year I have alluded to the pending change taking over the solar energy business. You may wish to reread these posts.

http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2007/10/solar-revolution-slowly-unfolding.html

http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2008/01/industrial-solar-cells-and-scientific.html

The breakthrough is happening now. Nanosolar which is partially funded by the founders of Google has successfully produced a printing tool that is now producing by using print technology sheets of photovoltaic material on a metal substrate. This is ahead of my expectations and the stage is now set for a rapid decline in the cost per watt of installed power. From now on, all the remaining problems are merely perfecting what is clearly working.

The apparent energy yield is peaking at 13%, which suggests that the usual yield is comparable to that of the amorphous silica that we use on calculators or close to 10%. As the technology is advanced, there are promising strategies that suggest 30% is possible.

Regardless, this is enough to fully justify making a tool to produce this product by the mile.

The tool is now doing 100 feet per minute and their objective is to hit 2000 feet per minute.

The real importance of printed solar energy panels is to drive the cost of solar energy from the current $6.00 per installed watt to below $.50. This is absolutely huge. It makes all other forms of static energy including coal obsolete and simply more expensive. They are already shipping at $1.00 per watt.

The tool, which came in at under $2,000,000 and is working, generates enough product in a year to replace a nuclear power plant. All other forms of alternative static energy are thus toast. I really cannot say this any more strongly. The entire power industry is about to find out that their most valuable assets are the local distribution systems. These are about to be fed by local solar plants good for perhaps 5000 homes at a time.

Right now, with the machine running, the product design team is picking the low hanging fruit. As costs drop, there will be many machines made and the new infrastructure will quickly emerge everywhere. Remember how India and China jumped over the need for land lines in the telecommunication industry? The rest of the world is about to be able to jump past the need for high voltage power systems and power plants.

This should be in full roll out mode within a couple of years as everyone understands the implications. And yes we are all going to be driving electric cars very soon. It suddenly became too easy and way too cheap.

The site that you need to visit can be googled under the word nanosolar. The enthusiasm is totally justified and these boys have already been shipping product for six months. It will soon be front page news.