GreenSun Energy claims to
have developed a new kind of solar panel
that will revolutionize solar energy. The panels are cheaper to manufacture
than conventional solar panels and are able to convert diffused or direct light
into energy.
The use of diffused light allows the panel to work in
cloudy environments where solar power would normally not be a viable solution
(albeit less effectively than in sunny environments). Diffused light also reduces construction
costs in three ways: by allowing a panel to produce as much electricity as a
regular panel five times its size, eliminating the need for a solar tracking
system used by conventional panels to align with the sun and reducing the
amount of retained heat thereby eliminating the need for a cooling system.
"We have developed a luminescence solar concentrator,
which concentrates solar light from a big plate, glass plate, it converts it to
the edges of the plate, so instead to cover the entire plate with solar cells,
that are so expensive, we can use only a small part of solar cells,” Renata
Reisfeld, the chief technology officer at GreenSun Energy, told the
National Geographic.
According to GreenSun, the panels
will soon have an efficiency of approximately 20 percent as compared to
the 10–16 percent found in standard solar panels. As a result, the cost
per
watt will be slashed. While the panel will produce 200 watts of
electricity and
cost $189 to manufacture ($.94 per watt) existing systems the vendor
claims
costs $900 to manufacture and produces only 180 watts ($4.54 per watt).
Being able to lower per watt costs could
make solar-generated electricity price competitive with traditional methods and
offer a financially viable alternative to fossil fuels. Such a move could
impact the development of the smart grid by reducing the demand for additional
transmission and distribution system being built in areas where alternative energy
solutions haven’t been feasible.
The solar panel’s ability to absorb energy
from indirect sunlight also means that the panels could be deployed on the
sides of buildings as well. Such a move could enable the building to generate
its own electricity.
“If the
photovoltaics [PV] were installed on facilities that have good building energy
management systems, the total package could minimize the PV intermittency
impacts onto the grid by balancing the solar generation against in-premise
loads [e.g., dial back the HVAC system when a cloud passes over the PV, and
ramp it up as PV output increases]," says Alison Silverstein, an energy consultant, “But this means that it's
not a PV-only or a grid-design-only issue, but a need to plan and install
technologies that complement and integrate together for maximum value and grid
impact.”
GreenSun, though, isn’t the only vendor
pursuing a new solar horizon. Solar PV costs have decreased by
about 30 to 40 percent in the last year. “This is due to a variety of
factors
including the global economic downturn, Spain’s slashing of their
incentives [they had 41 percent of the market in 2008], increasing
competition, and continued
research and development,” notes Neal Lurie, director of marketing and
communications
for the American Solar Energy Society. As a result, Lurie notes that
solar costs today are much lower than
they once were. First Solar, for example, is producing solar modules at about 87 cents/watt, he
says.
Even then
most buildings may not need to generate their own electricity in the first
place. “With so many other things building
owners can and should do first to manage their electricity demand, attempting
to be their own producer of electricity is way down on the list of
cost-effective energy conservation strategies,” writers Peter Pfeiffer,
president of Barley & Pfeiffer Architects, an Austin-based firm specializing in sustainable building
architectures. “My experience with this stuff over the past quarter of a
century is that one can get between five times and 10 times the return on his
investment by implementing energy demand management strategies first as compared
to renewable energy strategies.”
