Ultra Thin Solar Modules to Make 2008 Debut in Germany

The installation of Solar PV is mostly political and not driven by efficiency or economics.

Germany is crazy about solar due to German political systems, green parties. labor unions and even some conservatives.Solar is everything from clean energy, union jobs, and self defense from the Russians (traditional enemy) that control the natural gas and to a lesser extent the oil markets in Europe. Solar does a service to each of those interest, even if it is expensive.

If you contrast it with military spending and warefare, it might even be cost effective for that once great power. I hate to concede this point, but Iraq does cost a fortune and we will not know the results 10 years from now. We didn't know the FULL results of US occupation of Western Europe until the close of cold war - a mere 40 years. Remember President Carter was virtually willing to surrender the cold war in the late 1970s - thank God for Reagan.

 

 

I don’t mean to sound cynical, ok I do but only with the best intentions, I know Germany is known as the sun shine capital of Europe. Why is this not being tested in Greece or Miami where the weather is a bit better, or is this a plan to produce energy through rain clouds?

In response to Jeff Cleveland's post I think he might want to explore the possibility that UV and not necessarily direct sunshine is the energy source for PV technology.

Yes solar is a good fit for summer cooling peak demand (and

 

climate warming should just keep moving that up in importance).

 

And no there are few to no economic ways to store electric

 

power. One is to use a hydro dam and to either withhold

 

generation whenever intermittent renewables are producing, then

 

crank up the hydro as needed; or even to do "pumped storage"

 

where excess renewables (won't that be a dream?) can be stored

 

as water pumped uphill into the reservoir. Other options are

 

compressing air into underground caverns for use later to drive

 

air turbines, and "flow batteries" such as vanadium-redox,

 

though those are still in early testing.

I agree this is a great discussion - no name calling  and lots of sound thinking.

Germany has a strong commitment to promoting solar, wind and other renewables as a matter of policy. Part of this is their choice to move away from nuclear electricity.

Solar is the most expensive major CO2-neutral electricity source. Costs were on a very long steady decline until lately when Japan, California and Germany all started "N-thousand solar roofs" installation programs, and the market could not keep up the supply of purified silicon. Lots of new sources are being developed and the crunch should soon ease a bit.

 

 

Nice input from everyone,....I love the differnet points of view. 

How about when we build an efficient Lithium battery for our cars (PHEVS) we use the same design and construction to store the power from our PV's that we will all be shortly installing without having too many different designs.  Use the same design for both and create economies of scale pricing.

After all,...no company wants to retool every year to keep products selling.  Let the car bodies change to appeal year after year.  Let the battery design desities work for both PV cell storage and automobile power.  This is obviously where we're headed.  We can't drive "tidal or geothermal cars".

Keep things simple, don't overengineer, but lets' get going NOW.  Detroit is "done like dinner" and Ford and Chevy are very nervous.

We can do it!

Best to All.

FBerry

 What is the USA doing? Where are our research labs? I live in Arizona "The Valley of the Sun" and read or hear litle to NOTHING about SOLAR. Arizona State University should be leading the way.

WRT roofs vs. walls: amorphous cells typically have much better response to diffuse light, so probably do quite a bit better than silicon in such an application. Of course, their efficiency is far lower.

 

WRT energy timing: in the summer electricity use typically peaks with AC in the afternoon, PV is an excellent match. But you're right, storage systems are key. Lots of interesting work on batteries these days, but no really stand-out options. Soon I hope.

 

There is one thing what bothers me about PV. the most electricity is used during night time and this is exactly the time when PVs are completly useless...I don't understand why more money is not spend in how to store electricity. As far as I know they are having problems with the network of so many green sources.

I think the Germans are the only ones who can really produce mercedes quality for any building product. I hope they will continue with their research. They test their products and dont just put them on a shipping container and stick Made in China, good luck with the product...

Jim,

Unlike the U.S., Germany has actually been cut-off from world oil production, and had to make its own energy.  Those lessons die hard.  As long as the oil flows, our representatives sit on their hands.  If you take a slightly longer view, you can see we live in a 125 yr energy bubble.  News came out last week that the Saudi's have constitently over estimated there reserves, and it appears the Saudi feilds have peaked some time in 2006.  This is 10 years ahead of the most pessimistic forecasts.  Those who understand what this means are worried.  The end of oil will not be sudden, but it is coming sooner than you think.  We must invest in a renewable future and not stick to conservative short sighted policies. The production costs of solar must come down.  This can't be done by waiting. Renewable energy is not optional, it is an imperative. The politicians in Germany get this.  Our politicians will get it when the oil supplies tighten and our economy begins to tank.  I hope it's not too late by then.

The already low efficiency of these modules would be crippled if mounted on the walls of a building rather than the roof. When the sun is not directly on the panels, output plummets. The sun is overhead much of the day from April trough September. Even in winter, when the sun stays closer to the horizon, other buildings would impede direct exposure.

The application of Building Integrated (BI) PV systems is particularly interesting because it demonstrates several advantages compared with conventional PV power plants. Moreover, on-site generation has the additional efficiency benefit of avoiding the transmission and distribution losses associated with centralized generation. However, the solar PV array has a typical efficiency of 8 to 15 %. This means that the remaining 85 to 92 % of the energy is in principle available in the form of heat. The availability of heat together with electricity is a good chance for better design the system integration into the user overall energy demand scheme. Moreover, 5 putting this heat to use improves the system total efficiency and cost effectiveness [1]. Various concepts of combined PV/Thermal (PV/T) collectors are possible. The simplest design is similar to a solar thermal flat plate collector of which the black absorber is replaced by encapsulated solar cells. Heat is extracted from the solar PV/T array by a heat-transporting medium like water or air. These concepts differ in their approach to obtain the maximum yield and it is not easy to say whether the yield of a complicated design will be substantially higher than the yield of a simpler one. They strongly depend on the specific configuration of the collector (geometry, materials, etc. ) and on the running conditions (air or water air flow rates, temperatures, etc.) together with climatic conditions of operation.

The long-term goal is to realize GC Solar System (GCSS) that produce electrical as well as thermal energy at sufficiently low cost. This means that the  investment costs has to be lowered as much as possible. This can only be achieved by careful design, proper realization, optimization, standardization and mass production. In addition to this, PV/T building elements should also be designed in such a way that they meet architectural requirements and technical standards and look attractive to consumers as well. From this standpoint the recent study [1] was undertaken to include proposed GCSS targets the two dominating energy demands in residential buildings: low level energy for water heating and high level energy (electricity) to cover a significant fraction of the electricity demand. The study result shows that, GCSS offer some potential advantages over a separate GCSS consisting of side-by-side solar PV panels and thermosyphon solar water heaters, enabling faster introduction solar energy buildings. For the case study the annual specific rate of fossil fuel saving in electrical power grid amount 269.4  kg.fuel/year per square meter of the solar PV/T collectors as a result of 199.6 kW.hr/year.m² electrical, and 904.5 kW.hr/m².year thermal, power generation. However, solar PV/T collector concept results in lower direct electric and thermal power output, but the advantages are a potential of high specific rate of fossil fuel saving and good overall performance of the solar system. Such concept requires careful analysis on a case-by-case basis of potential future commercial applications, which may greatly benefit from cogeneration of hot water and electrical power.  [1] Hussain Alrobaei, 2007 , The Effectiveness of Combined Heat and Power Solar Water Heating Systems/ environmental-expert.com/resultarticlept.asp.   

Interesting indeed, as XSUNX in the US are into the same ideas about amorphous silicon.

XSUNX planes to set up a 100 MW producion facility in the end of 2009.

A good investment opertunity there, I think. !!  

 

Let's give credit where credit is due so full marks to the German people for their leadership in solar energy. As we all know there is no global silver bullet for the energy & greenhouse problems. Here in Australia solar is well suited to our climate with peak electricity demand in Summer afternoons.

Chuk, I don't know were you live, but I have been living in Ireland for the last 3 years and winter time (6-7 months) the lights are one for most of the day. The same in UK. I lived 12 years in Germany and again in winter it gets very dark. Not to forget the scandinavian countries. I am a total  supporter of soler power but I think it is going only in one direction. And the thing with batteries...can you recycle those???? I have been doing research on all renweable sytems now for over 2 years and one thing I miss. They are just not enough to cover all the energy needs of a household and of an office. Trying to combine them like most of the time done in practice is very user unfriendly and with complications. Is like the computers, you have a thousand cables going out to different hardware and in reality one would do for all if the producers agreed one system.

How is it that most electricity is used at night?  My office building is empty between 5:31PM and 8:01AM, and the A/C turns off automatically during that time.  For an office building, a huge percentage of electricity is used during the DAY, so PV is the perfect solution.  Residential is nearly opposite, depending on how many people in the house work/school away from home, but, even for residential, PV with batteries is still a much better solution than grid power.