I read elsewhere at the Oil Drum that this process will produce cells at 1/5 the current cost with the same efficiency.

Can anyone hazard an educated guess as to how that would translate into a final installed cost of a KWH?

Could this process cut the cost of solar electricity in half, day? If so, it sounds like we would be well on the road to a solar economy.

Right now, the primary focus seems to be on coming up with liquid alternatives to oil. I think this is a dead end, considering capacity, energy return issues, and global warming. A few more breakthroughs and maybe we can call the whole thing off, the liquid energy economy, that is. When push comes to shove, those who don't care about global warming will be pushing coal as the way to maintain what we like to call the American Way of Life.

t: While I agree that the oil is not the way of the future I don't think we are completely wasting our time by looking for liquid alternatives as long as they are at least carbon neutral. After all, the non-liquid energy carrier alternatives for transportation (electricity and hydrogen) both require more technological advances (especially hydrogen) I am a firm believer that almost all research has value since the value is almost never in the area that you intended in the first place.

Personally I can't wait to plaster my house with solar cells ... then I just have to wait for the rain to stop. Can I get small scale hydro from my downspouts? :)

Cervus,
A123 lithium battery is pretty promising so far. You only need a PHEV with electrical range of 50 mi or so, good for one or two day of commute. For longer driving, just use the gas engine. You don't need 300mi battery electric range.
Solar cell produces the most electricity in hot, bright days, which will be great to keep your house cool, and the factory and offices running. Excess solar electricity and concentrated solar heat of ~800-1000 degrees C can be used to produce hydrogen via high-temp solid oxide electrolysis (at a plant, not at your home) Hydrogen can be stored in the cryogenic liquid form at the plant, and distributed in gaseous form in pipeline to end-user facilities. New process of H2 electrolysis involving the energy from high-temp heat can cut the electricity used in hydrolysis in half, thus doubling hydrogen production efficiency, and promise to produce hydrogen at the cost of gasoline.

How to drive using Hydrogen? Use car (ICE-electric hybrid with tank-to-wheel of ~45% efficiency on hydrogen) that can run on both gasoline and hydrogen, or methane (renewable fuel) and hydrogen. Range on hydrogen need not be over 100mi, since you only use hydrogen for local driving or daily commute. For longer range, fill the car up with gasoline or methane gas in the same tank, and you can go 3-4 times as far. Or if Honda and GM can live up to their hydrogen fuelcell promise, expect fuelcell cars in less than 5-10 years.

Cervus - "T: Let me know when we have a battery that can give me a 300+ mile range, charge up in five minutes, and not cost $10,000 to replace when it wears out. Until then, nothing can beat the energy density and convenience of liquid fuels."

However we are finding that the price of this energy density and convenience may well be the Earth. The price of this could be global climate change and it may not be a price that you will pay - that could fall to others which makes our flagrant use of it even more culpible.

"What solar cells can't do is produce electricity when the sun isn't shining. Ergo, barring some miracle in massive energy storage, we will still need coal plants for nighttime generation at the very least."

Most of the power is not needed at night. Daytime peak power demand is often 60% more than nightime off-peak. Also we make very little effort to conserve this energy so our use of it is 40% or 50% higher than we could really do if we tried. Wind blows at night and there is no reason why gases (hydrogen) cannot be made from renewable energy to store and use. The same gases can be made from coal avoiding all the heavily polluting burning of coal. With greater penetration of BEVs and PHEVS their batteries can be used as a vast storage resource further reducing the requirement for 'backup' generators. There is no requirement to totally eliminate fossil fuels - just reduce and change their use to less than 30%.

As far as solar is concerned, there's also Stirling Energy Systems to consider.

Lots of direct responses here.

t: My primary focus is energy independence. To that end, I support wind, solar, TDP, nukes, xTL, biodiesel, butanol, OCS offshore oil drilling, coal, oil shale, anything. Climate is a very distant concern, since I've found evidence that the role of CO2 in climate forcings has been overstated. As Dr. Pielke says, "The primary focus on carbon dioxide inappropriately deemphasizes the first order importance of the other climate system heat system forcings (both cooling and warming forcings), as well as does not address the spatially complex, and incompletely understood actual pattern of global climate system heat changes."

I have my own hopes in terms of biofuels, namely in butanol and the vast potential in algal oils. But as I stated above, I'm not going to depend on quick viability. But until that day, Coal-to-Liquids/xTL is fine.

I don't see anything wrong with the American lifestyle, myself. The only way we're going to get these alternative energy sources is if we're wealthy enough to afford the R&D and investments in infrastructure changes (I'm talking private investment, here). Indeed, many of the advances in battery technology we've had the past ten years has been to support the increase in consumer electronics. Cell phones, laptops, iPods, have contributed to these advances because consumers want longer battery life.

Wanting what we want has positive effects as well.

Roger: I saw that article in SciAm. If they can find enough investment to make it work, more power to them.

Ender: However we are finding that the price of this energy density and convenience may well be the Earth.

Predictions of Doom like this are why I've distanced myself from the enivironmentalist movement. For the past 40 years there's been a lot of crying wolf for problems that have not materialized. Frankly, it's as much in our interest to prevent another Ice Age, so I'd rather err on the warm side. The IPCC itself has declined to study any potential postive effects from climate change, so that makes its conclusions suspect.

Whether humans are the cause or not, the climate changes. We either adapt or suffer. And humans are very adaptable.

Ergo, barring some miracle in massive energy storage, we will still need coal plants for nighttime generation at the very least.

Wind stops blowing at night? Rivers stop flowing? Waves stop... waving? Geothermal stops being hot?

Long distance electric vehicle won't become practical until the price will come way down, otherwise, you'll be investing too much on your vehicle's price while other options would be more economical. (PHEV, hydrogen/methane vehicle). For every BEV, you have enough raw material to make 20 HEV, and what's limiting HEV production right now is the availability of the battery pack.

If the past is an indicator, do not look for dramatic price reductions. Thin film silicon panels cost less to manufacture, but sell for about the same price per watt as wafer type panels. Some of that price is due to subsidies, some of it is to recover the development costs and some it is to fund future expansions.
They did have longevity problems with the TCO layers in the CIGS designs. The transparent zinc and tin oxide coatings did not last. If they have overcome this problem then they are on their way to competing. The fact that they raised this kind of capital is a good indicator that they did.

Cervus "Predictions of Doom like this are why I've distanced myself from the enivironmentalist movement. For the past 40 years there's been a lot of crying wolf for problems that have not materialized."

Perhaps however you or anyone else do not know what the consequences of our actions will be. While your answer is - keep on doing it and wait and see mine is more - how about we throttle back a bit, just in case, and see what happens.

Already the 3rd world is paying some of the price however it remains to be seen whether the climate change is severe enough to affect the affluent countries as well.

BTW crying wolf is not really a good analogy for you as the wolf does come in the end - you would be better with Chicken Little and the sky is falling.

Whether humans are the cause or not, the climate changes. We either adapt or suffer. And humans are very adaptable.

That's such a simple-minded copout. Humans aren't the only inhabitants of Earth, and the pace of change very much matters. The logic you're using is a hair breadth away from the conversation-stopping nihistic position of "we all die some day, so who cares".

The climate is changing rapidly and humans are the cause. This really isn't debatable any longer. People who realize the importance of this have moved beyond the "let's wait and see" stage long ago.

A little-appreciated fact is that once you've expended the energy needed to make hydrogen, you're 90% of the way toward making synthetic diesel--or nearly any other hydrocarbon you might require.

The reverse water-gas shift reaction, producing synthesis gas from hydrogen and CO2, is almost energy-neutral. And the Fischer-Tropsch reaction, producing high quality sulfer-free synthetic crude from synthesis gas, is actually exothermic. You can use the heat produced to generate modest amounts of power, or to distill seawater.

If Nanosolar's modules can really produce the same power at one-fifth the cost of conventional solar modules today, then we're almost home free. All we need is maybe a factor of two improvement in the specific capacity cost of electrolysis cells, so that it's economically feasible to operate them at a 50% capacity factor. Then hydrogen production becomes the perfect application for turning cheap "as available" renewable electricity into high quality liquid fuel.

For how climate change hysteria was created look, for example, at:

http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?ide=3

I see. So we should debate things like gravity, whether the sun rises in the east, etc, ad infinitum, otherwise we are succumbing to dogma?

Please. That's a Reductio Ad Absurdum argument.

I'm done here.