We see many advertisements on TV nowadays praising coal, nuclear power and even oil (in this case very likely the intention is to say we have oil in the USA, we’re just not allowed to access it), but solar energy is not as apparent in these advertisements despite the advancements highlighted in this column.

The U.S. National Academy of Engineering recently identified 10 Grand Challenges for engineering  one of which was to make solar energy economical. Nanoscale sciences and technologies  increasingly are applied in the field of solar energy related sciences and technologies. An example is, the program of Nanotech 2008, a comprehensive technical and business event in nanotechnology with over 30 technical and business symposia that has many papers on nano and solar energy and photovoltaics.

Ted Sargent, a Canadian nanotechnology researcher has been awarded a $10 million dollar grant from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia to further develop nanotechnology that uses the infrared rays of the sun to provide power for virtually everything that now uses electricity.
There are numerous recent reports that mention solar energy and photovoltaics as targets for nano applications:

• Ben Walsh (2007). Environmentally Beneficial Nanotechnologies Barriers and Opportunities.  UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. PDF.
• Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature conversation and Nuclear Safety (Germany) (2008). Nanotechnology: Opportunities for the environment - protection of resources. Web page.
• Green Technology Forum (2007). Nanotechnology for Green Building Report Green Technology Forum. Web page and PDF.
• Michael Søgaard Jørgensen, Maj Munch Andersen, Annegrethe Hansen, Henrik Wenzel, Thomas Thoning Pedersen, Ulrik Jørgensen, Morten Falch, Birgitte Rasmussen, Stig Irving Olsen, and Ole Willum (2006). Green Technology: Foresight about environmentally friendly products and materials  - The challenges from nanotechnology, biotechnology and ICT (Rep. No. 34). Danish Ministry of the Environment. Web page and PDF.
• Ministry of Science and Technology Korea (2006). Nanotechnology. PDF.
• Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (2007). Green Nanotechnology: It's Easier Than You Think Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. Web page and file.
• U.S.National Academy of Engineering (2008). Grand Challenges for engineering. Web page. 

In industry the claim is now increasingly being made that a product will soon be available that will enable the generation of electricity on the cost level of coal. 

Nanosolar, founded in 2002, is building the world's largest solar cell factory in California and the world's largest panel-assembly factory in Germany. The Economist reports that “EDF, one of the world's biggest energy firms, announced it would invest $50m in a firm called Nanosolar, which aims to produce cheap solar panels. Nanosolar believes it can sell panels for a little as $1 for each watt of capacity -- less than one-third of the best deals currently on offer." Nanosolar panels are seen to be able to produce energy cheaper than coal. Nanosolar’s blog reported on December 18, 2007:

"Our product is defining in more ways I can enumerate here but includes:

• the world’s first commercial solar panel based on a printed solar cell;
• the world’s first thin-film solar cell with a back-contact;
• the world’s lowest-cost solar panel -- which we believe will make us the first company capable of profitably selling solar panels for 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."

Here is a link to Nanosolar news.

There are others who state that they get the price down to the level of coal. A big solar project  is planned for the Arizona desert. The installation, called Solana Generating Station, designed and built by the Spanish firm Abengoa is expected to generate electricity at 12 cents to 14 cents per kilowatt-hour. Nevada Solar One, near Boulder City, Nev is a project that has the Spanish company, Acciona as the developer. The price prediction is as follows: “the electricity generated at around 9-13 cents per kWh. However, as more of these facilities are built that price will come down to as little as 7 cents per kWh which is very competitive with fossil fuels today."  It is said that 7 cents per kWh was the cost of electricity generated by coal in 2003 in the USA. 

SUNRGI with offices, in Reno, Silicon Valley and Los Angeles claims on its web page that “it is possible to produce large amounts of electricity from solar radiation at a wholesale price of US$0.05 / kWh." A press release on the website states that “XCPV (Xtreme Concentrated Photovoltaics), a system that concentrates the equivalent of more than 1,600 times the sun's energy onto the world's most efficient solar cells, was announced today by SUNRGI, a solar energy system designer and developer, at the National Energy Marketers Association's 11th Annual Global Energy Forum in Washington, DC.” 

Solfocus is another one. And there is Coolearth, that is seen to produce electricity at 18 cents a watt, and MST that predicts prices for its product ranging from  5-15 cents per kWh. Also, eSolar whose “primary business goal is nothing short of making solar electricity for less than the price of coal, without subsidies."

All of these seem to be cheaper than Optisolar which is paid 42 cents per kWh. This seems to be too high if the predictions of the above companies come true.
The authors of a presentation (Photosynthetic Hybrid Photovoltaic Cells) at the Nanotech 2008 conference mentioned above state that their process will make today’s solar panels 100 times cheaper (see here and here).

The Choice is Yours

It seems that a lot is going on in the area of solar energy and photovoltaics, including work in the nanoscale sciences. And from the claims of many companies it does appear that the cost of solar energy is approaching the price of coal. Vinod Khosla, from Khosla Ventures was quoted as having said in May 2008 at the Churchill Club’s annual Top 10 Tech Trends Dinner, that one of his companies signed a deal for a 175 MW solar plant at costs below natural gas.

From all of the above it seems clear that solar is becoming price competitive, and we should seriously think about which source of energy to focus on.  It will be interesting to see which solutions will be allowed to move forward -- influenced, of course, by your choice. The prospects are immense. eSolar says: “Covering 1% of the Sahara Desert with eSolar power plants would provide enough electricity to power the entire world.“

Gregor Wolbring is a biochemist, bioethicist, disability/vari-ability/ability studies scholar, and health policy and science and technology governance researcher at the University of Calgary. He is a member of the Center for Nanotechnology and Society at Arizona State University; Part Time Professor at Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Canada; Member CAC/ISO - Canadian Advisory Committees for the International Organization for Standardization section TC229 Nanotechnologies; Member of the editorial team for the Nanotechnology for Development portal of the Development Gateway Foundation; Chair of the Bioethics Taskforce of Disabled People's International; and former Member of the Executive of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO (2003-2007 maximum terms served). He publishes the Bioethics, Culture and Disability website, moderates a weblog for the International Network for Social Research on Disability, and authors a weblog on NBICS and its social implications.

© Gregor Wolbring, All Rights Reserved, 2008. Please contact the author for permission to reprint.