New Solar Power Design...using polymer foil?

[Ed Ziomek]

Ethanol lately is getting a bad rap, though maybe deservedly so, saying that the carbon footprint in its production rivals fossle fuels, and it is only 80% efficient...80 cents to produce, for $1.00 worth of power.

Solar enthusiast are now mentioning a solar powered alternative and rival to wind and ethanol production....using a polymer foil substrate...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/02/19/ccview19.xml

From the Telegraph.co.uk website...regarding the Swiss start-up company Flisom


Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gas by half
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

"Within five years, solar power will be cheap enough to compete with carbon-generated electricity, even in Britain, Scandinavia or upper Siberia. In a decade, the cost may have fallen so dramatically that solar cells could undercut oil, gas, coal and nuclear power by up to half. Technology is leaping ahead of a stale political debate about fossil fuels."

and...

"The "tipping point" will arrive when the capital cost of solar power falls below $1 (51p) per watt, roughly the cost of carbon power. We are not there yet. The best options today vary from $3 to $4 per watt - down from $100 in the late 1970s.

Mr Sethi believes his product will cut the cost to 80 cents per watt within five years, and 50 cents in a decade."

This would seem to be wonderful news.

My own concern is the mathematics... "$1 per watt"???. That seems to be a misprint... A lightbulb is 70 watts per hour, am I correct? So it would take $70 to light a lightbulb, per hour?

And of course, there is the age-old... "What stopped all of us doing this 20 years ago, and what is stopping us now?"

[Ed Ziomek]

Two more references, including a very interesting comment on investment partners....
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/thinfilm-solar-clobbering-oil.php


"With the investment dollars of Google’s founders, Nanosolar is building a plant in California the capacity of which would catapult it into the top solar makers in the world."

http://www.flisom.ch/e/F_Techn_LCost.html

"The FLISOM technology is based on the concepts that led to the world record for light-to-power conversion efficiency of solar cells on plastic, developed at ETH Zurich. "