Solar power 'cheap as the grid'

A new manufacturing process allows solar cells to be produced cheap enough to be competitive with traditional electricity generation, according to the Californian developer.

Nanosolar, founded five years ago with the aid of an investment from Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, plans to make solar panels cheap enough to be installed on every rooftop.

The company plans to set up a factory turning out enough solar panels a year to generate 430megawatts - enough to power 325,000 homes, according to a report at SiliconValley.com .

How much power the same number of panels would generate in Britain, as opposed to sunny California, is another question.

But Nanosolar says it plans to complement rather than replace traditional grid-delivered electricity.

A statement on its site says the technology will enable 'hybrid energy buildings, synergistically switching between clean locally produced solar energy... and grid-delivered back-end power.'

Few details are given about the solar panels, except that they exploit recent advances in nano structures - and that they are printed 'using a high-yield, high-throughput thin-film process.'

'For the first time, this makes it possible to simply print solar cells that are efficient and durable, and fundamentally change the cost efficiency and volume availability of solar electricity,' the company statement says.

It adds: 'We are currently focused on building the world's largest thin-film solar factory while investing heavily into ascertaining that our products have everything they need to be durable for decades.'

The idea of printing electronics is by no means new. Circuit boards have been printed for decades and UK companies such as Plastic Logic and Cambridge Display Technology have printed transistor arrays using polymer semiconductors that can be made up into inks.

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