Nanosolar and Solar Future

I am a firm believe in solar power and how solar will become a large part of our energy production in the this country. As more all electric cars start to hit the street, we are going to need more sources of energy for the electric grid. Solar is going to become one of those growing sources.

This week Nanosolar started to roll out their first panels. Nanosolar is backed by Google.

The quote the NYT from CEO Martin Roscheisen is that "with #1-per watt panels, it is possible to build $2-per-watt systems."

Here's some more info from the 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.

Today we are announcing that we have begun shipping panels for freefield deployment in Eastern Germany and that the first Megawatt of our panels will go into a power plant installation there.

As far as the first three of our commercial panels are concerned:

Panel #1 will remain at Nanosolar for exhibit.

Panel #2 can be purchased by you in an auction on eBay starting today.

Panel #3 has been donated to the Tech Museum in San Jose.

[These are obviously not the first three we ever produced – we have produced loads for testing – but these are the first three of what we consider our commercial panels.]

I think we will be hearing more about Nanosolar. I image that as Google is a big consumer of electricity with their datacenters they will invest in finding more cost effect forms of power. Solar on the buildings in Mountain View and various data centers around the world is going to grow!

I attended the first annual open house in LA for Solar and I was impressed. Sweatwater Digital in the San Fernando Valley was in the process of installing a solar power system comprised of 600 panels. One of the largest in the city.