SUN ROOF: Solyndra's cylindrical solar modules, pictured here in Fremont, Calif., helped maximize power output from flat roofs but struggled to compete with the low price of silicon photovoltaics.
Image: Courtesy of Solyndra
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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
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Entrepreneur is just a fancy French word for a salesman, and a sales pitch isn't necessarily constrained by the laws of physics or economics. These folks don't so much have a business as an argument—or a business proposition as the cliché goes. Chris Gronet, the founder of Gronet Industries which became Solyndra and, more recently, defunct, was one such entrepreneur who visited the offices of Scientific American in the fall of 2008.
Much as Gronet's business alma mater Applied Materials has learned to perfect technological processes such as thermal processing at high speed, this entrepreneur had learned to perfect his rapid patter—and to leave nothing out of place, whether the perfectly parted hair that remained undisturbed by the palpable downdraft of the ventilation system or the thank you e-mail sent the day after the meeting. Like most good, green entrepreneurs, he took a dash of optimism about the bright, clean future for solar energy and paired it with a dose of reality about continuing high prices for the purified silicon at the core of a photovoltaic (PV) device.
Interactive by Krista Fuentes. Photo of photovoltaic array at Oberlin College courtesy of Robb Williamson
He also had a slogan—"the new shape of solar"—that encapsulated the idea, much as a cylinder of glass encapsulated the thin-film semiconducting material that made Gronet's solar tubes work. The shape even fed into the name—Solyndra—as well as promising half the installation cost in one third of the time, enabling "grid parity" (that is, a price competitive with electricity from fossil fuel–fired power plants) at some imminent date for the first time in the history of solar power. In the meantime, with feed-in tariffs in Germany and Spain as high as 44 euro cents per kilowatt-hour, "we do great," Gronet said.
But wait, there's more. On roofs that didn't line up with the sun's path across the sky, the cylindrical nature of the solar module allowed owners to get more power off the roof by capturing diffuse or reflected light. The panels did not require heavy racks that anchored deep in the roof for support but rather lay flat and spaced out to allow wind to flow through them, allowing them to withstand gusts up to 210 kilometers per hour as demonstrated during a test installation in Florida that survived a tropical storm. That also allowed more of the panels to fit on any given roof. "By covering the 30 billion square feet of large, flat roofs in the U.S. alone, Solyndra's new design has the ability to meaningfully impact the world's energy needs," Gronet wrote in that thank-you email. "Conventional flat PV solar panels are not optimized for large commercial rooftops."
German photovoltaic installers such as Munich-based Phoenix Solar AG loved the cylindrical devices, committing $615 million to purchase some of them. "We simply do not need any supporting structures or ballasts or roof penetrations," Phoenix's chief technology officer, Manfred Bachler, explained in 2008. "We see significant cost-savings."
But Solyndra was always a dicey technology proposition: Take a temperamental semiconducting film that must be perfectly applied at high speed and pair it with a shape that is both hard to manufacture and ship. Voilà: a cylindrical solar cell that could either be a game-changer or a money-loser. "Some claims do not sound true," said environmental engineer Vasilis Fthenakis, a senior scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory's National Photovoltaics Environmental Research Center, in 2008.
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36 Comments
Add Comment"Entrepreneur is just a fancy French word for a salesman"??
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot it's not. Entrepreneur is not a synonym for salesman in any way. Why not say, "Entrepreneur is just a fancy French word for a grapefruit"? It would be just as true.
God what a poor excuse of an article... The US taxpayer should NOT be financing manufacturing facilities for technology that can't compete in the real world... even before the price drop from Chinese made Solar Cells.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe would have been better off funding 100's of small companies to make more competitive technology then the Solyndra's and SunPower http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/11/solar-company-with-1-2-billion-taxpayer-loan-guarantee-political-connections-exhibits-signs-of-financial-trouble/
This was quid pro quo and Chicago Politics. The paint is an opportunity for the future is a joke. Some Hope and Change!
$/kW is the wrong metric.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven so, it should always be multiplied by *at least* 4.
At best, even in a desert, the maximum annual hours of usable sunshine is only ~2000 hours of the 8760 hr/yr.
So, the holy grail of $1/W amounts to $4/W.
Thus the real target needs to be 25¢/W . ;(
And that would be without BOS (Balance Of System) nor installation and maintenance expenses.
However, the real metric for comparison to incumbent producers is ¢/kWh.
For 24 x 365.
Including all appropriate storage and backup generation.
Without 100% backup for MW or GW of power supplied to the grid, who is going to go without electricity? Sure, some industries can. And, OTOH, cloudy days reduce demand for air conditioning in hot climates - actually a very good fit, if it weren't for the cost. And the limited hot/summer season. And the day time only usage.
Solar needs to be extremely more cost effective and also solve the storage problem. And that storage period is going to be large, days if not weeks. Going without significant fraction of power is equivalent to post hurricane or earth quake, albeit for a much shorter duration.
Depending on undependable / intermittent solar input requires very significant storage capacity, days if not weeks, for any significant industrial scale fraction of grid supply. Seldom used capacity that just makes the economics of solar worse.
Solar, as an industrial supplier of power for the grid will need technology that is vastly more cost effective than anything currently on the horizon.
¢ is cents
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile the concept that sun doesn't always shine or the wind doesn't always blow and therefore expensive fossil fuel power plant backups are required is only partially true. If you keep the contribution of these sources to the power grid below a certain % (I've heard the figure to be around 15% each) then the backups are not required or at least only on a smaller scale. Obviously if the US was getting 30% of its power from solar and wind power we'd be better off.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@lamorpa: French word for grapefruit: pamplemousse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy does the French word for something always sound cooler?
@nekote: your arguments sound very convincing, until one remembers that solar power plants are actually currently up and running and contributing, with more on the way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've read similar sounding arguments about wind, and of course wind is in fact up and running too with more on the way.
It's like trying to argue that something which is sitting there in plain view in fact can't possibly exist.
Hey Bigbopper
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"@nekote: your arguments sound very convincing, until one remembers that solar power plants are actually currently up and running and contributing, with more on the way."
Try more like .07% of the energy in the US
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/10/shedding_some_light_on_solar_power.html
Yup there are real wind and solar systems working but they are totally dependent on subsidies at an enormous cost. That cost, now extremely low from Chinese dumping after the collapse of the Euro subsidy scam has nowhere to go but up. There is no point in further subsidy other than R&D on newer approaches.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReal wind projects cost currently 15 cents a kwh and real solar 50 cents a kwh plus a further 20 cents a kwh for 5 times sized transmission lines and gas backup. Replacing the gas backup with green storage adds a further buck and half.
This compares to new nuclear at 3 cents a kwh.
Here is the real cost of a REAL solar system just installed by the expert engineers at Duke energy.
Google "biofuelswatch.com/solar-farm-starts-operation"
$43 a watt average, 18% capacity factor, 50 cents a kwh at Dukes discount rate.
The cost of the assembled mass produced cost of the glass and aluminum is actually greater than the cost the solar cells. Currently with the collapse of the world solar market and Chinese dumping fire sale solar panel prices are now less per sq foot than a similarly constructed mass produced skylite at Home Depot. As solar cell manufacturing costs go down it has little effect on the installed cost as installation and structure are 6 times cell cost and as the excess in the market solar cell capacity disappears.
Currently installed cost averages $7 a watt peak that's over 40 cents kwh at 5% money,.
Google "eetd.lbl.gov/newsarchivesnewssolarcostdecline"
The assumed twenty year warranty life of the Walmart quality cheap Chinese panels built by the usual fly by nights is a joke all will have seal failure long before warranty life.
The cost of installing solar is $4 to 5 a peak watt and increasing every year even as panel costs decrease.
With the $hundred's of billions already spent on solar PV there are no further economies of scale happenin.
In any event why don't we just let the Chinese, Europeans, spend the money coming up building today's worthless ultra expensive solar. We can spend ours on R&D trying for that big efficiency/cost breakthrough.
Or better yet spend it on Gen IV nukes that can actually solve our energy problems instead of this demonic waste of precious time and treasure in our fast approaching civilization ending AGW struggle.
Google "bravenewclimate.com/2011/09/28/why-obama-should-meet-till"
Google "bravenewclimate.com/2011/10/01/petition-white-house-ifr"
And the LFTR thorium machine
Google "nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2011/10/petitions-to-white-house"
Whatever happens the key to the future of energy is the decentralization of power generation. Too much money is wasted in subsidized schemes. If people could generate more power from home, things would be a lot better. There are plenty of guides out there on how to achieve this. Here for example is a good impartial review site on some of these guides: http://www.diyenergyathome.com/index.php/category/home-energy-guides/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell of course at one time oil only provided 0.07% of our energy needs too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Dept. of Energy has made a convincing argument that we can easily provide 20% of our electricity generation with wind by 2020. The report is available on their website. This is by no means the upper limit for wind or for renewable energy sources in general.
Wind is not "totally dependent on subsidies at enormous cost". Wind-generated electricity is not enormously more expensive than electricity generated from fossil fuel combustion. Plus, fossil fuels are also subsidized. Oil companies receive substantial subsidies from the government.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSomething else to consider: if alternative/renewable energy was an expensive scam with no benefits, why would China be aggressively pursuing it? You don't think they're doing it just to look good at the next climate summit, do you? They are suffering the consequences of over-reliance on fossil fuels, namely extreme pollution and environmental degradation. They really don't give a you know what about global warming. They recognize that alternative/renewable energy sources are important in terms of quality of life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYeah, like the Internet or Space Flight or satellites, microprocessors or RADAR or the Interstate Highway system... ALL of those products have been dismal failures, right?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe speaker was saying that in the medium to long term, we can either keep spending money to import oil or develop alternatives that allow us to spend that money on more productive investments. How hard is that to understand?
"Yup there are real wind and solar systems working but they are totally dependent on subsidies at an enormous cost."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYet you never mention the subsidies going towards dirty energy. How about the $10B per year from the government that goes towards fossil fuels or the negative externailities caused by pollution? How much would it cost to ensure a nuclear reactor if the Price Anderson Act wasn't there to put the government's money on the line in case of reactor accidents?
"That cost, now extremely low from Chinese dumping after the collapse of the Euro subsidy scam has nowhere to go but up."
Want to put your money where your mouth is? $1000 says that the solar industry AVERAGE cents / watt or cents / kWh will be lower 1, 5, or even 10 years from now. I'll take that bet any day of the week.
"plus a further 20 cents a kwh for 5 times sized transmission lines and gas backup. Replacing the gas backup with green storage adds a further buck and half."
Source? We're nowhere near the clean energy capacity where storage would be necessary and a little demand management and smart grid solutions can go a long way. Solar and wind output are predictable hours to days in advance and have seasonal signals that are even more predictable. If you find any of those "5x" power lines or whatever for me, you get a cookie.
"As solar cell manufacturing costs go down it has little effect on the installed cost as installation and structure are 6 times cell cost and as the excess in the market solar cell capacity disappears."
Source?
Seriously, a couple posts from "bravenewclimate" or whatever don't cut it.
"...The Dept. of Energy has made a convincing argument that we can easily provide 20% of our electricity generation with wind by 2020..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou mean the NREL - Renewable Energy Sales Dept. That report has been ripped to shreds, many times, like here:
http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2010/01/innumeracy-in-news.html
http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2010/03/foia-emails-nrel-colloborated-with-awea.html
Wind - is maximum in Spring & Fall when demand is lowest, and maximum at night when demand is lowest. So bigbopper, please explain with Wind Capacity Factor at 25%, and 20% Wind Electricity, that means that Wind Peaks will easily exceed TOTAL Electricity Production. So now that means you must shutdown Nuclear (20%) - which has ZERO CO2 & ZERO cost savings, spill all Hydro (6.5%) - again ZERO savings, and throw away anywhere from 20-50% of the Wind Peak Energy. There goes your capacity factor - up goes your already high cost - skyhigh.
And how do you think you can transmit that energy from prominent Wind Areas - of low power consumption (plains) to areas of high power consumption (East Coast)? Do you realize power transmission lines cost $1M per mile? An analysis of the just the cost of the supplying Australia with Wind & Solar Energy (one of the best locations on Earth) determined that just the Power Transmission Trunk lines would cost $180B, 50% more than the Total Nuclear option - $120B.
http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/lang_transmission_cost.pdf
Ridiculous, even 20% is NUTTY, a recipe for Economic Collapse.
"...if alternative/renewable energy was an expensive scam with no benefits, why would China be aggressively pursuing it..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey are now the #1 installer of Wind Energy in the World even though they have an abysmal 12% Capacity Factor. Only 72% of their Wind Turbines are even grid connected - the rest are doing what the Chinese call "sunbathing". There is not-a-chance-in-hell Wind Energy is profitable for China, except to facilitate exports. And most of them are being installed in the boonies, So in Mongolia - Wind blows you have refrigerator, lights, TV otherwise back to the radio & burning camel dung.
China is also doing the same with Solar, on a much smaller scale. Starting a new push to install Solar PV - they've been embarrassed by the fact that 99% of their Solar PV goes for export. Don't look too good when you won't use your own crap. Kinda sounds like China is pumping out Solar PV by the GW because there is a whole lot of GULLIBLE FOOLS and GREENIE NUTBALLS in the West who will buy the most expensive Energy Source Ever!
Meanwhile, the real Green Energy program in China is a massive expansion of Nuclear Energy.
"...How much would it cost to ensure a nuclear reactor if the Price Anderson Act wasn't there to put the government's money on the line in case of reactor accidents..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLiability Insurance? How about liability insurance for your substitute Carbon Capture & Storage? That's getting 100% coverage by the Canadian & Alberta gov't. With Liquid CO2 pipelines (thousands of miles of them) being a Terrorist's dream come true.
How about the $1B third party liability limit on the A380 - which is basically a targetable small Nuclear Bomb that can be delivered anywhere. 911 proved it can be done with > $50B in direct costs and > $1T in Economic Costs. Why is that OK?
How about your substitute NG power plant which blew up killing 6 and maiming 24 - the company just declared bankruptcy - end of story.
And what about your toxic Mega-Oil Spill Rigs with a liability cap of $85M. At least Nuclear is covered by $20B insurance pool in the USA. Last Gulf Oil spill rig was >$50B in damages, not counting the environmental destruction.
And what about your floating giant bomb LNG tankers - you think they have coverage for wiping out a city?
And why do your Coal, Oil and NG energy sources get to dump their waste into the air, water & land – killing at least 3 million people worldwide every year and much more with a potential Global Warming catastrophe – why do they get 100% liability protection?
And mines create $250M screwups (i.e. Royal Oak Mines) and just split off their profitable assets and then declare bankruptcy - been done many times. 100% taxpayer liability.
In South Florida passive solar water heat has been used for over 100 years. in fact, 100 year old units are still producing hot water even though they have had no maintenance during that time period! In Arizona and California passive solar heating has been used for years. All it took was committed architects or appropriate building codes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese techniques have been applied to other parts of the nation although at greater expense. Still, after the initial expense for larger water storage tanks or larger heat storage rocks or whatever, the maintenance costs become quite small. This would be far less than direct current high voltage wires to dams where water would be back pumped. Then the water would be released to run turbines to produce electricity as the need arose.
Right now the United States has the technology needed to heat most of its water and most of its buildings using sunlight directly without spending anywhere near the amount of money required for complex technology.
This article is another example of why after almost two decades of subscribing to Scientific American, I plan on letting it lapse. Solyndra cost US taxpayers something like $538 million dollars, really over $1 billion after we get through paying the interest to the Chinese government. The solar industry would not have any traction without the subsidies and putting them on other than new construction does not make sense. They are ugly, risk damaging roofs and in the northeast and upper midwest, are subject to the abuses of harsh winters. All this was done as it now seems in return for campaign donations. It's good that we got rid of congressional earmarks. It's sad that the executive branch has embraced them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is nothing scientific about this article. This magazine uses absolutes to describe science that is still in the hypothesis stage and even features a column devoted to trying to prove that God does not exist. What a sad state of affairs it has shrunk to.
I agree, none of those things are very desirable. I don't think the A380 is a "small nuke" or whatever, but government stepping in to shield industries from paying for their own liabilities artificially tilts the scales in their favor. Even though the Price Anderson Act hasn't had to pay out much, if any, damages so far, the fact that insuring a nuclear reactor via private industry is impossible shows that the risk they impose on society is remarkable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf energy sources competed on a more level playing field, the Market would make more efficient decisions and clean energy would be very cost competitive with our seemingly cheap and dirty energy we use currently.
It is illegal for an insurance company to insure against an accident which would bankrupt it no matter how unlikely - like welshing on a bet. That's why that chlorine gas storage facility over across from New York is limited to $150M in liability - a single terrist missile hit would wipe out New York City for decades.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe US nuclear industry has 10 times the insurance of any other power industry - $20B in a fund to date - against an impossible accident. Can you imagine what the insurance cost would be if we could sue Big Coal/Oil for all their air pollution deaths.
Interesting how the oil and coal industries are only responsible for negatives like air pollution and none of the positive benefits to society. It's hard to imagine what life would be like without the vast benefits of the energy indistries.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think Mr. Biello has spent too much time out in the sun. In this case, "Entrepreneur” must be the French word for crook! Does he fail to understand that almost 1/2 billion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money went down the drain? How do you blow through $440mm+ in less than 2 years and not produce a marketable product? As an aside, the major investor behind Solyndra was a major "bundler" (fund raiser) for the DNC and as such, may have received special consideration in getting the go-ahead for this boondoggle--despite the fact that the DOE analysts and managers had already made their case that it was a bad investment. Trying to paint a happy face on a concept you support doesn't change the facts--this was an exceedingly bad "investment" (I'm being generous with that term) and the government (Obama Administration) knew it in advance. For reasons yet to be determined, they decided to make it anyway.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Or better yet spend it on Gen IV nukes" BAD IDEA your 3 cents per kwh deceptive advertising is just the up front cost and conveniently ignores the very real costs borne by generations upon generations for nearly the next quarter million years who will have to guard and contain many tens of thousands of TONS of radwaste that your filthy industry has ALREADY created; and you want to add more to their burden? Let's get something straight: if it were only YOUR children that you were wanting to condemn to excess cancers, birth defects, life shortening, and other health problems due to excess radiation exposure, that would be one thing and Child Protective Services would deal with you appropriately. But you want to do it to EVERYBODY'S children for THOUSANDS of generations, a vicious crime upon humanity, and that is not acceptable even though Child Protective Services isn't empowered to stop you. The rest of us will however, humanity has fought psychopaths before and in the end always wins, even though you may do a lot of damage first. But until you can make your plutonium-containing waste safe and secure against natural disasters, criminals and terrorists, and just plain old accidents, ignorance, and stupidity for the next quarter million years, impossible tasks all, you are pimping the most irresponsible industry ever created, the worst example of soulless capitalism gone bad. For a few years of easy billions you want to foul the earth for what is essentially forever on a human time scale. The gall the nuclear industry has to market itself as "clean" exposes their hypocrisy and deceptiveness most clearly, for they have to know it is not. They just hope we believe their lies, well we don't anymore Bubba so you might as well close up your nuclear shop right now and get yourself some training in a respectable business where you don't have to hope your kids don't find out how you have been working to poison not only them, but their kids too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOver 100 million folks worldwide lost their lives from the effect of the coal pollution since Ghouls like noBrain here and fellow travellers with the support of their friends in the coal lobby were able to replace nuke power with coal. Those deaths continue at the rate of 3 million per every year noBrain and his horde of ghouls can delay the fossil to nuke conversion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no nuke WASTE. It is fuel enough to power the world a thousand years while being destroyed in gen IV reactors like India's new 500 MW first of 5 units. Ironically that is the only way to get rid of it. The tiny amount left is such a low level it can be returned to the mine shaft.
Get a clue ghoul.
LIAR there are tens of thousands of TONS of high level radwaste just in the U.S. alone, much of it in liquid form that has already seeped into the ground. Nobody has a good answer for what to do with it, and more leaks daily. It cannot be "destroyed" as fuel in new reactors, what a crock. Who do you think you're fooling with your industry lies?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGet this straight once and for all: just because coal is bad does not make nuclear a good thing, just like getting shot in the head does not make pancreatic cancer desirable. Unless you use the deceptive propaganda logic of the nuclear industry of course. You need to grow a conscience and learn to be a responsible human being.
Well it is halloween so having the ghoul's come out is expected I suppose.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll the world's nuke waste all perfectly would fit on a football ball while awaiting destruction in Gen IV reactors.
NoBrain's stack of corpses produced every year him and his kind can delay the coal to nuclear conversion would cover a football field to about the same depth when stacked like cordwood.
When noBrain can explain why folks in Ramsar, Iran who get a far higher radiation annual than a person living at Fukishima's front gate yet have a low incidence of cancer, he might at least be entitled to his ghoulish status.
Thin-film solar cells seemed bright with promise???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey do cost less, but they have twice lower efficiency than crystalline silicon cells. That's why thin film cells manufacturers usually don't state their efficiency (see for example
http://solar.smps.us/solar-panels-cost.html ). To be competitive, thin films have to cost half of silicon.
You don't know how much the forever nukes' storage cost?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, you are not adding the cost of mining and enriching it.
So, the real cost of nukes can't be estimated. Nukes may end up being thousands of times the cost of solar and wind together.
Add health care and accidents. Your brains failing you.
Solar and wind don't have the consequences that nukes have.
"First Solar's world-beating module" ???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow about "has spent nearly $254 million replacing customers' solar panels that didn't perform as promised." http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120228-718434.html
A "world beating module" wouldn't fail at high temperatures (like in the Arizona sun).
Alternative energy is meant to be a SUPPLEMENT to our present
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismeans of power generation.
After wasting a 100years, we now see the need for energy
storage.
Perhaps instead of bashing the efforts, one might attempt
to provide some insight as to how we might move forward.
Maybe these people make their money from big oil, natural gas, coal or are paid to be negative in the comments. OR maybe they are just not smart.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhatever, we keep making solar and wind energy better.
And it keeps producing clean power.
The cost of clean energy should not be a factor when the same
people have wasted money foolishly on granite counter tops, huge diamonds, luxury cars and other grandiose items...these people comments don't count.
How much $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ for life time storage
of the Nuke's WASTE?
These people are most likely paid to write negative comments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I see their names, it's always the same.
No one in their right mind can think nukes are cheap clean energy!
Ugly solar panels...keeps our water hot.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisand they are not UGLY.