NanoSolar: No longer vaporware!

We've talked oh so much about NanoSolar in the last year. The company's recipe for succes includes: promising technology, outstanding government grants, and exceptional commitments from smart investors.

But could NanoSolar move from the lab into a $100 million manufacturing plant?

Well, it's happened. The 200,000-square-foot factory is online and producing cells. And apparently, despite the initial costs, it's producing cells cheaper than anyone else can produce them.

The secret is a new technique for printing solar panels. Instead of producing a huge sheet of single-crystal silicon (extremely expensive), NanoSolar actually prints a mixture of rare metals in an extremely thin layer on a substrate (in the beginning, a strip of aluminum).

The result are solar panels that are less efficient, but can be produced much more quickly and cheaply than silicon solar panels. The first batch of NanoSolar panels is destined for a solar power plant in Germany (where there are very progressive solar subsidies).

Already, NanoSolar says that it can sell panels for roughly $1 per watt, which will result in $2-per-watt installations. Suddenly, that starts to look a lot like the $2.1 per watt that it costs to build a coal plant.

And that is extremely exciting news.

Via NYTimes