The Pixelthinker.com blog

OK, everyone knows about women and chocolate. She’s gotta have it. Period. No pun intended.

Me? Gimme this female geek some quality techy innovation news, and I react like I just spotted some good Belgian chocolate heading in my direction.

Yeah, I’m an techy innovation addict. I just gotta have news of THE latest cool innovations. This woman’s gotta have her cool new technology info! Serve it up to me, ASAP!

So here’s my latest hit. Delicious thin-film photovoltaics, baby! !

Translation: Looks like they are FINALLY learning how to mass-produce solar cells for cheap!

“It’s a story being repeated throughout the solar world, from the Southwest to Silicon Valley to Germany. Everywhere you look, thin-film solar companies are opening new, more efficient factories. The thin in thin film refers to the skinny layers of photoactive chemicals needed for the technology, as compared with the thicker films used in crystalline-silicon solar modules. Though thin-film photovoltaics are cheaper than the crystalline ones on most rooftop solar panels, the technology has proved maddeningly difficult to mass-produce, which had kept it from going mainstream. But today thin film is the hottest part of the fastest-growing new energy source in the world. BCC Research, which charts technology markets, expects the global solar market to grow from $13 billion to $32 billion by 2012, with thin film expanding 45% a year. Masdar, the clean-energy arm of the government of Abu Dhabi, just announced that it will invest $2 billion in thin film. “Crystalline silicon has had its day,” says Peter Harrop, chairman of the London-based research firm IDTechEx. “These new technologies will be taking over.

Though the company was launched in 1999, it has its origins in a solar start-up that had been around since the mid-1980s. First Solar spent years tinkering before moving to mass production. It was able to weather those early days of profitless experimentation because it had a rich, patient backer: Wal-Mart heir John Walton, who pumped $250 million into First Solar before his death in 2005.

Walton’s investment has paid off handsomely. Since it began commercial production of thin-film modules in 2002 (much of the output has been sold to small-scale solar farms in Germany, where generous subsidies have primed the market), the company has done nothing but grow. With factories in Arizona and Germany and another being built in Malaysia, First Solar should be producing 1 gigawatt of solar power yearly by the end of 2009. “They’ve fully overcome the technological barrier with large production and low defects,” says Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association. “Their plants are fully automated–it looks just like a silicon-chip factory.”

….

As First Solar scaled production up, it was able to bring its costs down. Solar producers measure their costs in terms of dollars per watt of energy produced, a formula that’s a combination of the cost of producing a module and its power efficiency. Right now the best crystalline-silicon makers can sell modules at $3 to $4 a watt; First Solar can sell at around $2.40 a watt, a price the company expects to reduce steadily. “They’ve really pushed this industry over the threshold,” says Travis Bradford, author of The Solar Revolution. “They possess great technology.”

Yum. i love this kinda stuff.

Read more at:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1813954,00.html