World's Largest Solar Plant Planned in Bay Area (430 MW per year)

[jpak]

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=45233

A Palo Alto company has decided to build the world's largest factory for making solar power cells in the Bay Area -- a move that would nearly triple the nation's solar manufacturing capacity and give a significant boost to a growing source of clean energy.

Nanosolar, a privately held company founded in 2001 with seed money from Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, is scheduled to make the announcement Wednesday, and in the next two to six weeks will select either San Jose, Santa Clara or San Francisco for the facility.

At capacity, the factory could turn out enough solar cells each year to generate 430 megawatts of electricity, said Nanosolar CEO Martin Roscheisen. That's enough electricity to power about 325,000 homes. By comparison, all solar manufacturing plants in the United States combined currently produce enough cells each year to generate 153 megawatts.

Backers of solar power said the project is the latest example of how demand for solar is rapidly expanding, and how the technology, once the realm of hippies and back-to-the-land advocates, has become a hot commodity among some of the same Silicon Valley engineers and venture capitalists who made a fortune in the 1990s during the Internet boom.

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[iconoclastNYC]

1. Why isn't the government helping build more of these factories

Economy of scale should drastically cut the prices of these panels.... the government should help these companies more of these factories. Like a couple a year..... It would help ensure this stuff gets built in the USA.

[msongs]

2. because the government is owned by the oil companies??

and this would betray those soldiers who have already died?

or if we had all these solars cells we would not have to fight the terrorists over there to keep them from coming here?

Personally I would LOVE to have solar on my house. haven't had any clouds to speak of in a week, temps in the low 100's,
peak power demand time = peak temperature outside, a perfect fit.

we looked into solar and it is just too expensive even factored over 10 years. A 50% decrease in costs would blow the lid off
the industry and solar would be everywhere.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/6for2008.htm

[iconoclastNYC]

3. Good answers

I guess we can look forward to Al Gore making a big push on this topic when he's president right? Somehow I doubt it.

[movonne]

7. At this point in time the government is run by oil companies...I don't

think they are interested in solar power...maybe someday

[benburch]

4. Excellent.

Mind you, the theoretical capacity and actual are different.

Most solar cells produce about 50% of maximum due to weather and not being optimally mounted on a sun-tracking mounting.

[Fridays Child]

5. It's nothing short of criminal that such a plant hasn't been built here...

...in Tucson. Few places in the country receive more sunshine than the desert Southwest.

[Nimrod2005]

6. I hope there will be 100 of them soon...!

[NickB79]

8. Is 430 MW the average, or just under ideal conditions?

If it is average, that is impressive.

If it is only under ideal conditions, ie you took all the panels and set them up in the desert in mid-summer, at mid-day, no clouds, you have to multiply by 0.20 (per NNadir's calculations in a previous post). That would translate into 86 MW per year :-(, the equivalent of building one nuclear reactor every decade.

[phantom power]

12. Peak wattage is almost always quoted, unless they say otherwise.

[NickB79]

14. So most likely less than 100 MW per year then?

Crap, that's depressing but not completely unexpected.

[Ready4Change]

15. Depends on what they meant by 430 MW.

I think when they say 430 MW, they mean they could produce enough 100 Watt panels to total 430 MW. (ie: 4,300 of them.) How much power is actually produced by those depends on where, and how, they are installed. Properly orient them in Arizona and you'd get a lot of power. Strew them about haphazardly in Canada and you'd get a fair amoutn less.

One nice thing is that, as the factory runs over the years, the power generating ability it adds grows. Say this year it adds 200 MW of panels. Next year it adds 300. But this years 200 MW of panels are still out there, so this factories power addition is now 500. Then it produces another 300, for a total of 800, etc...

Most panels are now warranties to produce at least their rated power for 10 years. But they don't just halt at 10 years. They continue working, at a rate a little less than they used to. So, after 10 years and producing 3000 MW of panels, the 11th year would raise the total to something like 3250 MW.

Now, that amount of power pales compared to a nuclear or coal plant. But it costs a heck of a lot less, and pollutes a lot less too. (Although some will argue about that.)

We need more of this kind of news.

[jpak]

17. Most warranties are 20-25 years now (80% of original capacity)

and the useful life of current PV modules is 40+ years...

:)

[skids]

9. What most people don't fathom about this article...

...is that the construction of this plant will increase the amount of CIGS cells being produced per year (globally) by about 1500%. I'm no venture capitalist but -- 1500% annual growth on a technology -- that would be a good year for that technology, right? :-)

[phantom power]

13. To me, the domestic hi-tech job creation is the more impressive news.

Not that 15x growth isn't nice, but that particular rate isn't sustained. In 2008, there will not be 15x the production as in 2007. It's going to be 15x this time, only because the current production is so small.

But it sure is nice to see some hope for energy as a domestic growth industry in the technology sector.

[jpak]

18. Other US PV manufacturers are expanding production capacity

Ovionics will increase its capacity from its current ~50 MW per year to 300 MW per year by 2010.

Other US PV manufacturers (Evergreen et al.) are expanding production here and in Europe (thanks to their progressive views toward PV ).

If it weren't for Reagan and Poppy, the US would have had a vibrant domestic PV industry decades ago...

[Gregorian]

10. Thanks. This article had a little more than the last thread on this.

It's still in it's infancy. 9-11% efficiency from the cells is still very low. And there are many peripherals to this project. But it's a start. It's more than we've been doing. A step in the right direction.

[w4rma]

11. Supposedly this project is going to be using some newfangled type of solar

cell that only recently became available, from what I remember.

[mom cat]

16. This should also drop prices for solar panels!