Thin Film PV

The company that manufactures this technology is called Nanosolar. You can check it out for yourself here, http://www.nanosolar.com

You can see most of the past articles and an overview of the technology. Also you can sign up to get e-mail notifications of new announcements at the website.

If there is another company that produces this type of product I'd like to here about it.

On the Nanosolar.com site they are bragging about how they can now 'print' solar panels at the rate of one GIGawatt per year. And cranking up the speed of their equipment will improve quality and quantity they produce. And their new 'press' just cost $1.6 million.

Currently they are NOT intersted in small users. They are still privately held. They want to sell to governmnets (nations, cities, etc) not people.

IMHO, they could monitize a few 'rolls' of cells by letting some 'small company' deal with 'retail'. That could help with PR, advertising, and let them still focus on building more presses and getting 'big sales' out the door.

The more there is out there, the better we will all be.

I just hope they don't get caught up in 'upgrade-paralisys', where they don't do anything worthwhile because they want to get it 'a little better' first. Put out something that works good, and later put out the 'better' version. But that is my .02 pesos. They are the ones that have to make their decisions.

Some time ago, I downloaded a document "Solar Cell Experiment", from The California NanoSystems Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, Science Outreach Program by May Leung Chiu, Amar Flood, Steve Joiner, Alshakim Nelson, and Rob Ramirez (March 2006), that describes a process of using a solution of titanium oxide to create primitive solar cells. I suspect with a little experimentation, one could adapt the concept to ink-jet printing or something similar. Unfortunately, I do not have the link for the document, but it is written as a classroom laboratory experiment, and quite easy to follow.

This is still in the "research" and/or "experimental" stage. One needs to look for marketed PV Cells. To date, I believe the PV Cells are marketed at ±$4.00/watt. This needs to be brought down to somewhere around ±$0.40/watt in order to make it competitive with other means of power generation. Also, the efficiency of all PV Cells need to be improved. I believe research on the efficiency side is moving forward rapidly. Time will tell, sooner or later, industry will be marketing PV Cells at price we can all afford. In the mean time, we will have to depend on government subsidies, grants, and loans that pay out in about 10 years.

Here is a link you might enjoy.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/404219/Homemade-Solar-Cells-Free-Energy-eBook

there is a Tucson company that does this onto stainless.

"They take sheet stainless steel, slice it, put it into a CVD chamber, deposit some Indium based material, deposit metal with a screen printer, cure the metal paste, and more or less presto, instant solar cell."