AVA Solar breakthrough ?!

Interesting news here on solar energy...

Produced at less than $1 per watt, the panels will dramatically reduce the cost of generating solar electricity and could power homes and businesses around the globe with clean energy for roughly the same cost as traditionally generated electricity. The technology is yet another example of Colorado State's leadership in cutting-edge research in the area of alternative energy solutions and sustainability; more than 80 faculty members on campus from all eight colleges are involved in clean energy research, including 25 in the College of Engineering.

"Professor Sampath's technology has global reach and local impact, which is part of our strategic mission at Colorado State University," said Larry Edward Penley, president of Colorado State University. "He is solving a huge global challenge while at the same time providing jobs for the region's economy. Clean energy research is one of CSU's strengths, which is why we've formed an academic Clean Energy Supercluster to begin to rapidly move these types of technological advancements into the commercial market."

Sampath has developed a continuous, automated manufacturing process for solar panels using glass coating with a cadmium telluride thin film instead of the standard high-cost crystalline silicon. Because the process produces high efficiency devices (ranging from 11 percent to 13 percent) at a very high rate and yield, it can be done much more cheaply than with existing technologies. The cost to the consumer could be as low as $2 per watt, about half the current cost of solar panels, and competitive with cost of power from the electrical grid in many parts of the world. In addition, this solar technology need not be tied to a grid, so it can be affordably installed and operated in nearly any location.

Source: http://www.avasolar.com/news/pressDisplay.php?i=12

More info / discussion:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/23/1639205&from=rss

For example, a very rough calculation in that discussion:

Lets see. Assume the competing cost is at present 10 to 25 cents per KW-hour. We'll use the upper end because future power prices will rise whereas the Solar panel is a fixed cost.

So let's see the solar panels are 100000 cents per KiloWatt. if the last 4000 then that's breakeven. We'll assume that the power is available 10 hours per day. That's not realistic for individual use but perhaps with batteries, and selling back to the grid this could be done. So 4000 hours is 400 days. Or about 1 year. Not too bad.

Now that ignores the efficiency of either pushing back to the grid or battery storage. Let's assume 50% loss. Then this is 2 years to payback on the cells. But now we also have to payback on the batteries. Let's assume the batteries needed const aout the same as the solar cells. That would double this payback to 4 years.

Finally this is assuming capital is free. Assume one borrows at 8 % interest. Then this another 5 months to payback.

So the whole operation needs to run undegraded for 4 to 4.5 years I estimate for break even.

That figure could be cut in half if one could sell back to the grid rather than batteries. ( Fine--as long as there is a grid and every one does not do that!. )

If the cells were down to 50% effiency after 4 years then this extends out to ~7 years to payback. If one cannot get that watt for the full ten hours then this gets even longer.

It sounds to me, roughly speaking that at 1 dollar per what things are in the ballpark for breakeven.

Let's hope these figures can indeed be achieved once this goes into mass production...