This is an exciting product which has been in development for some time; previous technology has resulted in a cost of about $3/Watt, but coal fired power costs only a third of that; This new solar nanotechnology cuts production costs by 90%, which puts solar in competition with other power generation technologies.
Nanosolar Inc., a global leader in solar power innovation, and Beck Energy, a leading integrator of large-scale solar power systems, today announced that they have won a highly competitive public selection process for a solar power plant located on a former landfill owned by one of the largest waste management companies in Eastern Germany.
The project will employ the Nanosolar Utility Panel™ in combination with systems technology and services from Beck Energy. The initial size of the plant is 1MW, an amount sufficient to power approximately 400 homes. The Nanosolar Utility Panel™ is Nanosolar’s first product as part of its award-winning PowerSheet™ product line – recently named the Top Innovation of the Year 2007 by Popular Science Magazine – and the company’s solution for building solar power plants on free fields at the outskirts of towns and cities. “This is the first time that a solar electricity cell and panel has been designed entirely and specifically for utility-scale power generation,” said Martin Roscheisen, CEO of Nanosolar. “It will set the standard for green power generation at utility scale.”
Visit their website and look around. The founders of Google are investors.
Over the line, Smokey! 
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I love the idea of nanosolar power for individual homes rather than a power station supplying the electricity. This way we wouldn’t have to worry about power outages during violent storms! Storms will get worse in years to come. Water & sun will be the powerhouses of the near future. Epoch Technology Corp is producing HHO generators for many different applications. HHO is safe, cheap, efficient and easy to produce. It should be the fuel we’re all using in our cars now!! Another company to look at is Skyonic. They have devised a way of turning carbon dioxide into baking soda of the purest grade and plan to filter chimney stacks of 97% of poisonous gases as well as carbon dioxide.
“This way we wouldn’t have to worry about power outages during violent storms!”
There are two big obstacles to economical solar power. One is manufacturing costs, which Nanosolar is addressing. The other is storage cost: the expense of batteries to store the energy obtained during sunny hours. So no, Nanosolar isn’t addressing the storage problem to get through storms, when there isn’t much sunlight. It’s addressing the manufacturing cost.
As for Epoch, from what I’ve read, the advantage of their technology is that unlike other flammable gases, you can sidestep the need for storage by creating it on demand. But this doesn’t offer an advantage, of course, if your aim is to be mobile, like in a car. And it won’t really help in a home with electricity costs, because of the energy needed to create the hydrogen.
An example is a hydrogen fueling station being developed in Australia. Solar panels on your garage roof provide the energy to separate O and H, which are stored in the fueling station in your garage. You refuel your car from this station like at a gas station pump. Zero carbon footprint (aside from manufacture of the fueling station). But few people can afford the high cost of hydrogen-run cars. Again, the storage cost needs reduction.
If you can support your use of the word “cheap”, I’d like to hear your argument. So far I haven’t found any support for that claim. Thanks.
Charles,
From what I have read, Nanosolar is also the leader in Ion-Lithion batteries, however to me, right now the batteries are a non issue. Reason being, the power being produced during day light hours that is not used by your house can be resold onto the grid, which should off set much of your evening and nightly needs. Yes, I know that eventually the power companies will try to get out of these obligations, yet I think that will be far enough down the road that as more attention is turned to alternative methods, ways to store power will also advance.
As for the hydrogen, the on demand system to me seems to be a good option. How can this be achieved? There is a fiber tank designed for hydrogen cars. The tech is out there to make these into slide in units. (To be honest I do not know current costs)Also, I believe I have read that some of these cars can use a Aluminum divers tank which holds 3000 psi each…again to be honest, I do not know how much hydrogen is used to push a car. However if they can be made to a size to give you about 300 miles of distance, you can have a unit in your home to fill spare tanks to the required PSI and then shunt power to other location during the day while on solar or even at night with regular electricity as you will be owed from the grid. The cost will now be lower.
Honda has hydrogen filling stations in California at this time, that produces the hydrogen using solar. I do not live in California so do not know how much they charge. As you know, once this technology becomes more abundant, prices will come down as supply should reach a point to make demand reasonable.
Just some thoughts as to how this can reduce personal costs.