delusionofgrandeur

I’d consistently forgotten to post about this for over a month but here we go now…

An Industry Week article last month pointed out that Colarado State University has developed a new method for the manufacture of photovoltaic solar panels. The method is both low cost, approaching $1/watt in manufacture and $2/watt to market and high-efficiency, typically 11% to 13%.

The new cells use a cadmium telluride construction rather than the common silicon crystalline design. It is pointed out all over the web that CdTe is toxic if released to the environment so any such solar cells would have to have an end-of-life disposal plan in place. However, these cells could potentially generate power for 40 years or more (some of the oldest operating photovoltaic cells are rumored to be ~80 years old now)

If these panel materialise on the market at £1/watt ($2/watt) they will effectively cut the cost of photovoltaic solar panel installations in half. This could mean cost break-even times shorter than 5 years.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Tech News.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.