Kyocera announced a plan to double their Solar Panel production by 2011.  The $250 Million investment will increase annual capacity from 240 megawatts of panels annually to 500 million megawatts in the next three years.  Eventhough the plant ran at 75% of capacity due to a shortage of of silicon wafers, used to manufature photovoltaices and as the bases for chips.  This shortage is expect to end in 2008.

The increase in production in the next couple of years has been widely anticipated for a couple of years as a result of expansion by silcon wafer suppliers to meet rapidly increasing demand. While it’s clear that the sales of panels will increase, it’ unclear if the increased supply will help reduce the street price. It’s my opinion, that demand will outstrip capacity until the majority of buildings worldwide are outfitted with panels.  The question isn’t whether to use solar panels, the only question is when is energy payback rate is high enough

Last week 2 german solar manufacturers opened US offices, with a goal of participating in the US market. The first to announce, SolarMarkt, of Freiburg Germany: A subsidiary based in Oakland California to help bring there solar cell products to the US.  The second German solar company to announce a new US presence, CENTROSOLAR from Munich will establish a subsidiary based in Phoenix Arizona, to mark its entry into the US market.

The market for photo electric generation is rapidly expanding and even accelerating as fear of both global warming and rising prices for hydrocarbon fuel sources, combines with expanded and improved manufacturing to spur growth in demand.

The Germans are Coming - Welcome to America, come soak in the sun.

For anyone into Photovoltaics and from the midwest, it’s not surprising to hear that there is a solar soul in Detroit.  The Solar Soul of Detroit is none other than Stan Ovshinsky, founder and leader(he recently stepped down as president) of Engery Conversion Devices, now Ovonics of Rochester Michigan. Today Ovonics and Ovshinsky are focused on battery, fuel cell and hydrogen storage technology.

Energy Conversion Devices was once, best known as the company that built a nearly $1 billion solar panel manufacturing for a consortium of oil companies, who later abandoned the project, leaving ECD as sole owner of this new breakthru for manuafacturing an “endless” ribbon of flexible solar panels, at the lowest prices yet.

 Less well know is that Ovshinsky patented the materials and process of applying the photosensitive metalic coatings used in laser printer drum to capture output, collect toner and deposit onto the paper where heat fuses the toner and paper. This technology was licensed by Canon Corp. and used to create the first cartridge based laser printer offered to consumers, in the early 1980s.

Though originally from Akron Ohio, Stan Ovshinksy, now 85, never finished school and was trained as a machinist and earned his first patent in that field.  Since then he’s become a force in materials, electricity and more.  Britain’s Economist Magazine asked if he was “The Edison of Our Age”.  He is the Solar Soul of Detroit.

Well, maybe not my weight problem or disease, or war, but it can solve pollution and green house gas emissions.  As always, i preface this next party by saying: Assuming the Manufacturing and Delivery of Solar Cells is Environmentally neutral.

Solar electricity is the cleanest, least dangerous source of electricity on the planet earth.  Solar does not, energy from weather and gravitational forces, reducing the flow and affect of that phenomenon downstream, the way, wind, wave and current schemes do. In other words, if you take energy from the gulf stream, less warm current ends up in Europe, for example, causing cooling and a new ice age.  Solar appears to have no such deleterious effect.

Rather than absorbing and transfering the energy of motion, solar cells use the Photovoltaic effect to convert the suns energy into a stream of electrons to power our world. A solar cell, which most resembles an integrated circuit (the silicon wafer inside, the hard package we think of as the chip) like those in our computers, phones and TVs, can produce electricity for decades.  Today there are a variety of solar electric panels that allow homes and businesses to be powered via solar electricity.  Due to the existence of night and cloudy days it is paramount that solar powered buildings are connected to the power grid in a two way relationship, to insure the buildings are powered 24/7 without the financial and resource costs required of storage batteries .  Additionally, solar has the potential to solve the most pressing electric problem throughout the world: surges in electric uses in response to hot weather.  Solar electric buildings reduce the draw on the grid and help provide additional power during daytime surges, reducing the need for additional fixed power plants by the grid operators.

Solar Electricity Solves All! - Well a lot.  We just solved the need for more power plants, help reduced the amount of power generated from hydrocarbons and help make homes and buildings that are more able to handle disruptions in service by the electric grid providers. 

Click here for: More on the Science of Solar Electricity

A Sun Powered Dream that is coming true today. 

Little Miss Sunshine