Thin film $1 a watt
I borrowed this post from my friend, Deep Patel.
Posted by Deep Patel, 8 days ago. Apr 15
There has been so much buzz in the market about Nanosolar’s $1/Watt that I decided to touch up on this subject. I have actually spoken to residential consumers who have read the press about Nanosolar goal to deliver solar modules at $1/Watt (which is competitive to coal). When people ask me what I think about Nanosolar, I feel they are a great company, with a strong management team, and will be able to deliver on their promises, but everyone will not benefit from Nanosolar’s technology, especially homeowners. Nanosolar maybe able to offer very cheap thin film to the market but the only ones who will be able to benefit from the solar panels will be commercial enterprises who have A LOT of surface area to make up for the low efficiency put out by the Nanosolar panels. Residential home owners will not benefit from this because they just don’t have the roof space for Nanosolar’s solar panels to produce the energy they need. A residential home owner needs to shop for high efficiency solar panels that will produce the MOST energy per square feet versus the cheapest solution.
Lower Cost per Watt = Lower Efficiency = More surface are you need.
If you’re a homeowner, don’t dream about buying Nanosolar $1/Watt solar panels at Wal-Mart and hope to eliminate your entire bill, because it’s just not realistic.
End of Post
I concur with what Deep has to say on this subject. The $1 a watt figure doesn't take into account the total cost of the system. Even if Nanosolar can get their film down to this price point, the substantially larger arrays will require far more installation material, installation labor and roof space. Most of the systems we install are already constrained by roof space and we find the best value is a system with the highest watts per square foot which reduces the installation costs and the roof space required.
