New Silicon fab process for making Solar panels

[Old and In the Way]

Could be a big technology breakthrough in the fab process and associated manufacturing costs.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=sunshine-is-free-so-can-photovoltai-2010-03-10&ec=su_cheapphotovoltaic

[Confusious]

1. Interesting

But what always aggravates me about these videos, is that I would like to know more about the process in-depth, but they have to make it so 8 year olds understand it.

We melt it and make wafers..... How do you get the wafers to be thin enough? arrggghhh.


But thanks, hopefully something comes of it.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. There are a number of new approaches coming to market

Thin film is another. The near term ones tend not to be as dense a collector (power per unit area), but look to be lower cost enough to make it a good trade. Solar alone will never replace oil or nuclear, but every little bit helps.

[kristopher]

4. Just to clarify - Oil, Coal and Nuclear can be COMPLETELY replaced with renewables.

And solar will be a very large part of it when the job is finished.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. Nice theoreticals, but nonrenewables will be with us for the foreseeable future

Lessening over time, but still required

[kristopher]

10. There is no need for them. You are conflating technology with economics.

We can replace nuclear and fossil fuels as rapidly or as slowly as we wish.

[NNadir]

7. Or so airheads have been repeating for 50 years with no real result.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table1.html">If one can't do observations, then by all means, chant.

If renewables could do anything they would have done it a long time ago, given all the cheering.

In fact if renewables could do everything, nobody would have ever bothered to crawl into dangerous holes to dig coal.

Not to worry. Various Popes have been repeated for 2000 years that Jesus would come again.

That has not happened either but until this day one can still hear Popes saying the same damn thing.

On the other hand, Popes may have done a lot of work for ignorance, but they didn't destroy earth's atmosphere in the process.

The "renewables will save us" faith, by generating complacency and indifference in the face of a real danger, fossil fuels, about which anti-nukes, with their withered and/or non-existent understanding of science and technology, couldn't care less.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

8. Just because the ideologues are pushing a bogus 100% mantra does not mean that renewables are not

going to do a lot of good. Places like NYC can never be 100% renewable, but serious inroads can be made.

[Name removed]

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[IDemo]

5. My money's on sliver cells

But I'm biased, since the company I work for recently announced a partnership with Origin.

http://www.originenergy.com.au/1234/About-SLIVER

[ProgressiveProfessor]

9. Those look to be a cool emerging tech as well

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Quite cool

I'll be waiting for that PBS show!