John, from an energy point of view, it is not a winning argument (particularly that many people will tell you that the life time of a solar cell can exceed 50 years). The energy required to produce a solar cell is "collected" back within less than about 5 years or so. Solar cells are now made by edge defined growth methods, much cheaper than the slicing of Si boules, almost all the Si is consumed (rather than 50% thrown away in kerf losses in boules based solar cells).
Strangely enough, most of the energy is used in making the polysilicon feeding the edge defined process.
Despite its financial returns inefficiencies, I think that the solar cell business will slowly grow, but not so much because of its energy efficiency, but because of its other "side benefits". Having said that, I usually classify the solar cell together with GaAs, and "advanced Ceramics" the materials of the future 15 years ago, the material of the future today, and probably the material of the future in another 10 years <VBG>.
Zeev
Zeev |
