THIN FILM SOLAR PANELS

Archive for December, 2010

Fremont, California-based Solyndra has just completed its latest French solar installation to date on a warehouse roof near Toulouse, PV Tech is reporting. The huge array of more than 7,080 Solyndra panels will generate approximately 1,360 megawatt hours a year. It is the largest Solyndra system in France and one of the largest worldwide.

The 1.2 MW warehouse roof array was completed by a French Solyndra installation partner Nazca, on the roof of a warehouse owned by Port de Barcelona, one of the main commercial transport and distribution arteries in the Mediterranean area.

Back at home, Solyndra is under heavy criticism for receiving support from the Obama administration in 2009 and yet subsequently having to cut back on its employee numbers (by between 20 and 40, out of 1,000) which it announced earlier this month.

The company made sense as an investment in US green tech at the time. Solyndra manufactures a completely unique cylindrical solar panel that can convert reflected light from all angles when installed on flat white building roofs. Their competitive advantage was the great ease of installation: about as easy as just unfolding a series of card tables.

But the panels are made of thin film; copper-indium-gallium-deselinide. This new kind of solar panel material used to be cheaper than traditional silicon solar. So, like Nanosolar and other California thin film start ups, Solyndra looked like a sure green tech bet for government support.  As part of the Recovery Act stimulus bill, the Obama administration offered a loan guarantee to Solyndra in 2009 – which attracted a billion in private VC funding for Solyndra – even after the Great Recession,

However, the US government got in too late.

As a result of the EU signing Kyoto in 1997, requiring that they reduce carbon emissions with cap and trade starting in 2005, Spain and Germany had offered subsidies that have spurred such a run on solar that it created a glut. European innovation has outperformed US innovation. As a result, traditional solar prices have dropped so much worldwide that silicon solar is now cheaper than thin film.

Solyndra’s installation costs are lower, and the panels do not need to have roof penetration, but the panels are now more expensive than silicon solar which is now flirting with $1 a watt. When you include installation costs, they are competitive with silicon panels that are significantly more labor-intensive on the roof.

Susan Kraemer@Twitter

One of the simple facts about solar energy is that shouldn’t just be for those who can afford the upfront costs of installing a system, right? I sure don’t think so. Apparently, some folks in California and Morgan Stanley agree with me and are making it available to low-income residents of California now. Central Coast Energy Services in California, the Association of California Community Energy Services (ACCES), financial giant Morgan Stanley (to be specific, its solar energy subsidiary, Morgan Stanley Solar Solutions), and 12 energy service providers are now working together on a 10-year pilot program focused on providing free solar power to “income-qualified residents” of California.

The key objective of the pilot program is to install 600 solar photovoltaic systems on low-income multi-family dwellings in California. These systems would, of course, end up saving these residents a ton of money.

“This solar energy project is a wonderful example of innovative public-private partnerships that deliver real benefits to low-income citizens,” said Arleen Novotney, executive director of Association of California Community.

Of course, this reminds me of a similar program I wrote about just a couple months ago — Multifamily Affordable Solar Housing (MASH). That program uses a tiny portion of the California Solar Initiative’s $3.2 billion to put solar panels on low-income homes in California (for free). Looks like a great program that I think could be extended across the U.S.

And, going a little further back in time, this new pilot program reminds me of another California project that even goes a step further. As part of the GoSolarSF initiative, San Francisco has a program in place now (at least until the middle of 2011) that hires residents of affordable housing units in San Francisco to put solar power systems on their own buildings.

These are all great initiatives bringing solar power and its many benefits to a larger portion of the population. Great to see their proliferation in California.

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Photo Credit: 138 Photo via flickr (CC license)