Whatever Happened to Low-Cost Solar Power?
By Jim Beacon
February 1, 2009
Stan Ovshinsky with a roll of 'solar laminate'
The Dream betrayed?
In 2002, when he was 80 years old, the widely-acknowledged genius and inventor Stan Ovshinsky spent over $50 million dollars to build a huge factory in Aubrun Hills, Michigan. It had one purpose: to mass-produce his breakthrough solar panel technology. At the time Ovshinsky was eager to tell everyone about how his thin flexible ’solar laminate’ was not only better in many ways compared to other existing types of solar cells, but that his new factory — with its production line longer than a football field — proved they could be made much faster and for less than half the cost!
In public interviews and videos, Stan stated his intention was to launch a solar power revolution — to build more factories and quickly mass produce a lot of his low-cost ’solar laminate’ — to finally enable millions of average people to afford the dream of residential solar power without having to take out a second mortgage.
So… here we are… six years later. The good news is that four more of those huge factories have actually been built. The Ovshinsky solar panels, sold under the brand name Uni-Solar, have been on-the-shelf retail products for over two years now. But something went terribly wrong on the way to the market:
The promise of Ovshinsky’s new low-cost solar power technology has been betrayed by corporate greed and the bottom-line mentality of simply doing business as usual. Yes, today you can buy Ovshinsky panels. But you won’t pay half the price of what other solar panels cost as Stan promised. No, instead you will pay the SAME price — and often a higher price — on a per watt basis.
At least that’s the case as far as I’ve been able to discover. If I’m wrong, somebody please send me an email and tell me where I can buy them at the promised low cost.
But the betrayal of Stan’s plan is worse than just another example of ordinary garden variety of green greed. That’s because for the last 30 years the painfully slow, labor-intensive process of making traditional solar panels with their heavy glass covers, rigid frames, and electronic-grade silicon — all resulting in a very high price tag — has been the big roadblock to widespread public adoption of residential solar power. Stan Ovshinsky broke that bottleneck over 6 years ago — and just in time — but where are our low-cost solar panels now when we need them the most?
Factory floor at a Uni-Solar plant
Uni-Solar (United Solar Ovonics) is the company Stan founded to turn his dream into a reality and they own and manufacture the solar laminate technology. Uni-Solar now operates 5 huge factories in North America and they are busy cranking out Ovshinsky panels by the acre — about 500,000 watts worth of cells every day. But Stan no longer runs the company. He stepped down in early 2007 and his retirement coincided with the beginning of large-scale commercial distribution (and pricing) of Uni-Solar products. How much of his retirement was due to age and health and how much was due to corporate politics no one knows, but it’s a damn shame he left the helm at such a crucial time.
Sadly, the company Stan Ovshinsky founded to manufacture his solar revolution now appears to have decided that just because they can make solar panels faster — at less than half the cost of anyone else — that is no reason why they should pass those cost savings on to the rest of the world.
Sure, their logic is easy enough to understand: With demand for solar panels skyrocketing from people with plenty of money to spend, they can sell the entire output of their factories for a premium price. Why should they only charge a reasonable profit and sell them for far less? In the world of business, dominated by accountants and the bottom line, it’s hard to argue with that kind of purely financial logic. But I can still condemn it, particularly when the real-world results of that self-serving logic are so clearly wrong and adversely affect so many people (not to mention the future of the world we all live in — including the Uni-Solar board of directors and their families).
At first I was hopeful that it was just a matter time… of Uni-Solar merely needing to ramp up production, get more factories built, develop a network of retail dealers, etc. and then they would bring the price down dramatically. But according to the Uni-Solar website, their output of solar laminate has soared in just four years — from 28 million watts worth of panels per year in 2004 to a total production capacity of 182 million watts of panels per year in 2008. They also have plans to be cranking out 300 million watts worth of panels per year just two years from now. Yet the price of their product has not come down. In fact, it seems to have crept upwards a bit.
From the beginning, it was clear that Stan Ovshinsky did not invent an improved and much cheaper solar power technology just to make money — he already had plenty of that from other sources, like royalties on the NiMh battery he invented. No, he did not spend a big chunk of his own personal fortune to build that first factory just to get richer — he did it because he was knew that quickly providing affordable solar energy is the single most important key to turning back global warming, ending the oil wars and building a better world.
Isn’t that goal another kind of ‘bottom line’ — one that should also be observed?
Now that the Ovshinsky solar panels are available for retail purchase, I find it heart-breaking not to be able to come out 100% behind them because they really are fantastic — everything Stan promised, except for the price. I’m sure many people will be perplexed by my attitude. After all, “The best products always cost more.” Right?
Certainly that’s what we’ve been told all our lives. But in truth that belief often does not reflect the actual manufacturing cost behind a high price tag — as Ovshinsky demonstrated when he built that factory in 2002 and mass-produced his solar laminate for less than half the cost of other solar cells. But since we consumers have been conditioned to believe that the better product must always carry a premium price, the Uni-Solar executives apparently see no reason not to conduct business as usual, forget all that jazz about saving the planet while we still have time, and simply charge whatever the market will bear.
Oh, sure, it all makes perfect financial sense. But in the long run… in the global framework… what their decision really means is that millions of people will NOT be able to put Stan’s low-cost solar panels on their roofs anytime soon.
And wasn’t that the whole point?
— Jim Beacon
Related links to this story —
A good overview of Stan’s work and the benefits of his solar laminate technology:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=51559
The history of the development of Stan’s first factory:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06332/741837-28.stm
A good series of additional Ovshinsky videos:
http://www.itsmynet.info/tag/Ovshinsky
The Uni-Solar website:
http://www.uni-solar.com/interior.asp?id=102
The best price on solar laminate panels I’ve been able to find so far:
http://www.affordable-solar.com/solar.panels.htm
Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy, Green Hype, Solar Power, The Politics of Green
Pat Richards :
March 29th, 2009 at 1:02 am
It’s a shame, but it does look like the game plan is to be make EVERYTHING in the “new green economy” cost a whole lot more than it should. Not just solar panels. Right now, with the U.S. government and governments all over the world looking to spend trillions of dollars on alternative energy, improving the energy efficiency of buildings and preparing massive tax credits for green builders, it seems visions of sugar plums are dancing in the heads ALL of the manufacturers and suppliers.
I can see only one silver lining, which is that right now (before all those government billions start flowing) the economy has gone into a deep recession and so, at least at the online stores, prices on green products have fallen as the consumer has cut back. This is particularly true with solar panels, where the price-per-watt seems to have dropped from an average of $6.50 per watt to about $5.00 per watt in the last few months alone. That’s about a 23% price reduction for many panels (not all have dropped, though). Even the price of the UniSolar panels mentioned in this article have dropped by about 15% recently. Still not exactly “low-cost”, but a better buy than they were 8 months ago when gasoline was $4.00 a gallon.
I’m thinking that anyone who has the money to spend on solar should buy now, before the prices start climbing back up as the government-funded projects start kicking in.
ECD Fan :
November 15th, 2009 at 2:43 am
(partially edited)
…your production and shipment numbers are all wrong. In calendar 2008, Unisolar reported production of 113MW and shipments of 109MW, nowhere near your imaginary 182MW capacity. Currently, the nameplate capacity is 150MW (the 28MW Auburn Hills was taken offline), but it is not utilized (in the current, December 2009 quarter, the company will be running at 1/2 capacity). For the whole calendar 2009, production will be about 110MW and shipments will be about 70MW. The previous plans for capacity expansion have been put on hold.
Jim Beacon :
November 16th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
ECD Fan:
I haven’t had time to check your recent full-year 2009 production figures and other actions at Uni-Solar. If correct, they do indeed paint a dismal picture. My post was originally written in mid-2008 (even though it did not get posted here until Feb 2009) so I had to use the 2007 figures and projections from the company. I will look into the current situation at Uni-Solar and add to the post.
Your information underscores the point of my article: That Stan Ovshinsky’s dream has been “betrayed” by the business-as-usual mindset and decisions of the executives running Uni-Solar. It should be noted that Stan was forced out of all active participation in running the company 3 years ago, just as the first full-scale factory was about to come online and so is not responsible for the company being unable (or unwilling) to properly bring his solar laminate to market. For what I know of the materials and manufacturing process required to make the Ovshinsky laminate, a properly structured and well run company should have been able to manufacture it for less than half of the 2002-cost of traditional crystalline solar panels. The fact that the those running the company have not done this, for whatever reason, is a tragedy.
I left out your personal comments about Ovshinsky because they serve no purpose in this dissucssion. As for comparing theoretical efficiency factors vs. the real-world power production capabilities between thin-film and crystalline solar panels, that debate continues and has been covered by others more expert than I. Some examples:
http://www.pv.kaneka.co.jp/why/index.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/05/thin-film-solar-vs-crystalline.php
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/05/solar-shootout-in-the-san-joaquin-valley
http://solar.coolerplanet.com/News/5280901-crystalline-vs.-thin-film-solar-cells,-and-the-winner-is.aspx
http://www.homepower.com/view/?file=HP127_pg98_Weliczko
http://www.electroroof.com/Analysis/ElectroRoofData200403.pdf
http://solarcostarica.com/pdf/Brochures/Uni-Solar%20vs%20Crystal%20Tech%20-%202%20Sided%20-%202.08.pdf
solar panel construction :
January 14th, 2010 at 2:07 pm
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Jim Beacon :
January 14th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
It is true that you can save money by making your own solar panels. There are a couple of BIG “Yeah, but…” issues that go along with that statement:
1) While building a solar panel yourself is not rocket science, it does require that you be good at soldering, handy with tools and have some experience with assembling electrical components. It’s really not something a person with no experience in the above should try — unless they just want to mess around and see what happens.
2) It is critical that every single connection in a panel be absolutely right, otherwise the panel will either not work at all or will work very poorly. Again, some experience in this kind of soldering and assembly work can make all the difference.
3) One of the biggest problems with home-made solar panels failing is that they are not properly sealed against the weather. Remember, these will be sitting outside — probably on the roof — 24 hours a day all year round. If a little water get under your protective glass cover, the panel can be quickly ruined. So you have to do your work well enough to prevent that. Weather-proofing the panel to last for 15 to 25 years has proven to be one of the toughest things for the commercial panel manufacturers to get right.
4) While the Do It Yourself course recommended in the comment above does look to be one of the better ones around (most of them are pretty useless), I have never been able to find the individual solar cells needed to build a panel for anywhere near as cheap as all of the DIY sites claim they can be purchased. And I’ve looked. I think the best you can do by making your own is to cut the cost by 50% over the cost of a commercial product. Not bad, but you have to do all the work and:
5) You get NO WARRANTY. Commercial solar panels all come with a 15 to 25 year warranty on their rated power output. So, maybe you can save 50% if you have the time to build your own panels (and get it right), but the chances are your home-made panels will not last anything like 15 to 25 years. So, if you have to replace them even once during that time, any savings are lost.
6) If you want to get the state and federal rebates, refunds and tax credits being offered for home solar power systems, you can’t build the panels yourself. You have to purchase them from a commercial manufacturer and — in most cases — the installation must be done by a certified solar panel installer/electrician. Without those kind of official receipts you aren’t going to be able to get any of the rebates, refunds or tax credits.
6) Having said all that, I do think this instruction and education kit is well done and the price of $49 (including the videos) is reasonable. I wouldn’t pay much more for it, however. Even if you don’t end up building your own panels, for those who don’t know much about this subject, it is a good way to learn about home solar panel power systems. You can find out all the stuff in this kit for free by searching around on the web — most of the web sites selling the panels and accessories have good FAQ and tutorial pages — but getting it all in one package may be a preferable way to go for some people.