Tech | September 05, 2009 | 10 comments

The latest solar can go on everything from your home to your car to yourself

source: http://www.alternet.org/environment/142128/no_more_clunky_rooftop_panels:_the_latest_solar_c...

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Thin-film solar is revolutionizing the renewables industry. How soon can you get in on the action?

Going solar used to mean spending a fortune to purchase massive, unwieldy panels that came with high production and labor costs, as well as low efficiency performance. But that era of renewable energy is coming to a close and being replaced by a lighter, cheaper, more flexible model, thanks to thin-film PV cells.

Solar companies now employ a roll-to-roll manufacturing process that uses non-silicon alternatives such as copper, indium, gallium and selenium to print up cells the way the Federal Reserve Bank prints money. An apt comparison, given that the thin-film niche is expected to corral around 20 percent (and growing) of the overall solar market, which itself is expected to swell to more than $50 billion by 2015.

What's the payoff? A revolutionized energy market, where thin-film solar cells can be placed on everything from your house and car to your person to literally empower your life.

"Thin-film technology has played a significant role in driving down the cost of solar across the industry," American Solar Energy Society Director of Communications Neal Lurie explained to AlterNet. "A couple of years ago, when much of the industry was facing shortages of polysilicon commonly used to produce photovoltaic solar panels, First Solar leapfrogged the industry by producing thin-film solar with a completely different technology, using cadmium telluride.

"While this thin-film approach was less efficient than the more traditional crystalline silicon, it could be produced at much lower costs, more than making up for the lower efficiency. This put downward price pressures across the entire industry, forcing manufacturers to develop efficiencies throughout the entire supply chain. The end result? Lower solar costs for consumers across the globe."

The globe responded in kind. In mid-August, the U.S. Department of Energy and Department of the Treasury kicked off a $2.3 billion campaign to give away tax credits to clean-energy equipment manufacturers. That alone could create more than 100,000 jobs in America, which has more or less outsourced the majority of its conventional manufacturing base to China and other cheap-labor titans.
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