Nanosolar's Breakthrough - Solar Now Cheaper than Coal! - Page 4

blackfoxtrade · #31 (**permalink**) 24th-December-2007, 07:44 PM

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Originally Posted by bruce

Quote:

Originally Posted by shutit

I would think that the first customer for this product would be the factories where the product is being produced. If these panels can produce electricity cheaper than coal than the best incentive to buy would be that they are reducing the cost of manufacturing them in the first place. The best demonstration of these panels would be producing power to manufacture future panels.

That would be pretty smart. Your right that would be great advertising for them to put it up on their own factory. It shows a lot of confidence in their product.

But they still need to make money and produce cashflow. You can't do that when you are selling stuff to your own company. And of course the demand is so big for these things that they really can't waste any more time.

LMagic007 · #32 (**permalink**) 25th-December-2007, 11:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by blackfoxtrade

Quote:

Originally Posted by bruce

Quote:

Originally Posted by shutit

I would think that the first customer for this product would be the factories where the product is being produced. If these panels can produce electricity cheaper than coal than the best incentive to buy would be that they are reducing the cost of manufacturing them in the first place. The best demonstration of these panels would be producing power to manufacture future panels.

That would be pretty smart. Your right that would be great advertising for them to put it up on their own factory. It shows a lot of confidence in their product.

But they still need to make money and produce cashflow. You can't do that when you are selling stuff to your own company. And of course the demand is so big for these things that they really can't waste any more time.

Yes the company needs to turn a profit, though I would suspect the company knows what it's doing. They have managed to get this far seemingly ahead of the competition. The company will probably make a heap of cash flow savings, by saving cash outflows to cover electricity bills from saving electricity costs from application of its technology at wholesale prices.

They could perhaps even right the whole cost off as an advertising expense rather than a capital deduction and thus get a 100% tax write off in year 1.

Nanosolar is also well funded by deep pockets of the likes of Google and other Silicon Valley companies etc...

I suspect though the act is also symbolic and psychological in nature, helping to re-enforce the companies own mantra of Nanosolar technology and walking the talk etc... both from employees and prospective product purchasers.

hoon · #33 (**permalink**) 29th-December-2007, 12:48 PM

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The holy grail of renewable energy came a step closer yesterday as thousands of mass-produced wafer-thin solar cells printed on aluminium film rolled off a production line in California, heralding what British scientists called "a revolution" in generating electricity.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...ed=environment

Great to see this news getting such mainstream coverage

draypoker · #34 (**permalink**) 29th-December-2007, 09:51 PM

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Originally Posted by sparky

NanoSolar's PowerSheet cells have reduced the cost of production from $3 a watt to a mere 30 cents per watt. This makes, for the first time in history, solar power cheaper than burning coal.

http://www.celsias.com/2007/11/23/na...per-than-coal/

We do need to know more about these products. One question in my mind is how long they will last. My traditional panels seem to have very long lifetimes.