I hope they succeed at what they are doing. I am concerned that I cannot find how much indium and gallium they use either per square meter or per watt. The price of both of these elements is rising geometrically. Since they are byproducts of other metal refining, there is no way to increase production of these elements by themselves. This is an issue they are surely concerned about, but make no mention of it that I know of.
I have put off raising capital for my own photovoltaic project, wherein I use very inexpensive fresnel lens arrays of my own manufacture in conjuction with the Boeing-Spectrolab concentrator chips. I have done this because I want to see how the Nanosolar system pencils out. Because my system requires tracking it makes it less attractive than a static flat panel, even though the energy conversion efficiency is much higher. My concentrator system could credibly reach less than a dollar per watt, but Nanosolar is claiming thirty cents last time I checked. I have no idea what they base this claim on and I am still a bit skeptical as I see the prices of indium and gallium soar. If anyone has some information on Nanosolar's use of these elements on a per watt or per unit area basis, I would appreciate a link. M. --- Michel Jullian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > http://earth2tech.com/2007/12/12/nanosolar-starts-thin-film-solar-panel-production/ > > "Nanosolar CEO Martin Roscheisen tells us this morning that the company has > already started > production of its thin-film solar panels. The company had set a goal to start > production and > shipping by the end of this year, and in our post "10 Questions for Nanosolar > CEO Martin Roscheisen" > back in July, Roscheisen told us: "Yes, we're on track with this. Do not > expect an Apple-style > product launch, though." > Roscheisen tells us that the company has reached that goal with production at > its San Jose, Calif., > manufacturing facility. We're not sure to what extent production is being > done, but Roscheisen says > there will be more info coming soon..." > > Impressively on schedule. Nothing about this on their site > http://www.nanosolar.com yet. > > Michel > > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
