Comments on: First Solar’s new world record for solar cell efficiency and why it’s important

By: rfraenkel

rfraenkel — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:32:47 +0000

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/01/30/high-efficiency-solar-panels-using-holographic-film/

By: SRoeCo Solar

SRoeCo Solar — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 08:00:31 +0000

Fantastic discussion by @mark, @really?, and @RS. I wish more consumers had the same basic understanding as you all. @mark – you should be writing articles for gigaom and greentechmedia, or even Reuters (for the general public).

By: Niklas Akervall

Niklas Akervall — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 04:19:26 +0000

Solar panel efficiency is only one problem why don’t we have any good electric storage at our house without using stone aged battery like an big capacitor, charge during day use at night ??
So we don’t need the grid.

Thanks Nick

By: Really?

Really? — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 05:47:38 +0000

@Ucilia – More reading, that’s pretty funny.

My comment was towards the remark about 20% not being good enough. That’s a silly remark. 20% modules push the limits for silicon. It is incredible. At scale, at the right cost structure, I have no doubt that anyone who achieves this will dominate. Efficiency is just one of several levers. I don’t get too excited about 40% HCPV cells, for instance, because with the cost structure and optical / tracking losses it doesn’t pencil. Anyhow – champion cells are nice.

By: vdiv

vdiv — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:14:35 +0000

I just wonder about the environmental impact of large-scale manufacturing and disposal of cadmium telluride and whether in broad terms any increases in efficiency over silicon panels is worth the risk/costs associated with handling toxic materials.

By: Ucilia Wang

Ucilia Wang — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:49:55 +0000

@Mark: I don’t think you and I disagree about First Solar. It needs to improve its efficiency to better compete. But certainly efficiency isn’t the only way for it to do that. The company is competing on price per kilowatt-hour and offers EPC and power plant operational services. If it’s not able to do what it does better and cheaper than its rivals, then it’s not going to last long.

By the way, there is an ongoing debate on what is the theoretical maximum efficiency for silicon, Cd-Te, CIGS, etc. I wrote about this a few years ago and interviewed Martin Green, a well known expert in Australia: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/how-efficient-can-solar-technology-get

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 10:15:41 +0000

There is benefit in increasing efficiency, but it’s pretty small. And to be honest. it shouldn’t be mentioned much in the context of FirstSolar, which has no special track record on efficiency because Cd-Te is not an efficient technology.

The bottom line is that total system efficiency is interesting. $ / watt on panels matters but so does total # of panels. Really cheap, inefficient panels require big systems. The nice thing for residential and “corporate” (read: office park or big-box retail) solar is that 280-watt panels are now ubiquitous and 80 cents/watt. FirstSolar has nothing to sell to these markets — at all.

FirstSolar’s entire business is predicated on selling the fact they offer “higher than silicon performance” over 25 degrees Celsius. Their claim is true, but their efficiency is still worse there. So they need more land to do this. Their cost / watt is nominally better (barely), but they require more land and more and maintenance to make it so. Their system engineering division gets them “project wins”, but that won’t continue for long unless they keep improving Cd-Te tech, so news like this article does matter.

But they are still missing the other two legs of the tripod of solar deployment and are nowhere near being part of them with this.

With all due respect, FirstSolar has fundamental long-term structural problems because of its technology bet. And unless it can push efficiencies into the high 20s, it will always be cut out of huge chunks of the market. And that’s a bad problem that silicon does not have. That in turn creates a scale economics problem that silicon does not have.

By: Derek Jensen

Derek Jensen — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 06:32:11 +0000

Spam

By: Ucilia Wang

Ucilia Wang — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 05:00:19 +0000

@Really?: SunPower’s panels do have high efficiency for silicon panels. But it’s the exception at this point. Even then, the company is spending good money to drive up that efficiency number. You think it’s doing it just for fun? The rest of the silicon panel makers are producing panels at efficiencies that are mostly in the mid-teens. If you don’t understand why solar panel makers need to continue to improve their products’ efficiencies, then you need to do more reading.

By: Really?

Really? — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 03:26:12 +0000

20%+ module level efficiency (e.g. SunPower) is astonishingly good conversion efficiency for a 1-sun cell given all the loss mechanisms involved. Ucilia, if you do not understand this, you have no real business blogging about solar.