« Renewables In Global Energy Supply | Main | A Look At The U.S. Department of Energy Funding »
February 24, 2006
Slate: Not The Right Time To Support Solar
Slate has an article stating that Republican's are one-upping Bush in their support for solar power funding, but all this is at the wrong time...a couple of years too early. It's bad timing because the price of the polysilicon feedstock is at an all time high, discussed before, (also in this podcast) due to the high growth in the PV market especially from Germany. The price of photovoltaics is expected to be reduced by 20% within only 2 years as new silicon refineries are opened, but the relatively high price of polysilicon has pushed newer PV technology that uses less of the feedstock forward. From the article:Another reason to wait out the polysilicon price bubble is that the high prices are doing wonders for alternative solar-power technologies that use less polysiliconor none at all. Several recent scientific advances have brought other materials to the efficiency levels of polysilicon. The competitor that's closest to marketsome production has already startedis the thin-film photovoltaic cell. It uses an alloy of copper, indium, gallium, and diselenide instead of polysilicon, and it can be made on flexible rolls, which means that it's cheaper to produce than a polysilicon cell. Shell Solar, one of the biggest producers of photovoltaic cells, recently sold its polysilicon-cell business and bet its entire future on this new technology. Further down the road are quantum dots, holographic tuning, and organic photovoltaics. If these technologies fulfill their laboratory promise, they'll offer higher efficiency for less money.Some have been critical of photovoltaics companies for not securing long term polysilicon contracts like the microchip industry has done. Perhaps this will be more likely to happen when the PV market surpasses the microchip market in terms of polysilicon usage, which should happen shortly given the 40% yearly growth in the industry.
Posted by dymaxion at February 24, 2006 02:16 PM