Polymer Solar Cells Connected To Grid And Are Greener Than Semiconductors

Posted on 27. Apr, 2009 by Ross in Energy News, Plastics

Danish company Risø DTU is the first in the world to connect polymer solar cells to the grid: a massive milestone in advancing the green energy revolution.

Commercial and domestic solar power generation has been rapidly growing over recent years, as well as commanding massive amounts of attention from green journalists and climate change activists. Underlying the growth has been a tactical acceptance of the damaging cost to the environment of solar cell production due to the process of manufacturing semiconductors - a problem also shared by LED lighting. Gargantuan amounts of energy and waste water are consumed in addition to large amounts of toxic materials, forcing environmetanlists into a (sometimes unknowing) choice between two evils.

Polymer semiconductor solar cells offer an alternative solution to solid-state semiconductor cells with a far smaller environmental production footprint. A comparatively infant technology, polymer solar cells have come on leaps and bounds in the last couple of years and now the first instance of a demonstration plant has been built at the headquarters of Risø DTU. The director of Risø DTU, Henrik Bindslev, commented:

“The demonstration is an excellent example of how cooperation between research and industry promotes technology development and creates the initial basis for implementing new technology in society.”

The polymer sheets are rolled out and laid onto large panels which are mounted upon trackers to follow the movement of sun. Risø presented the polymer solar cells at the Roskilde Festival in cooperation with Mekoprint A / S. At that time the price was 4.500 € / W, but a huge effort made the price go down to 22 € / W in January 2009 and further down to 15 € / W in March 2009. At the end of 2009 the price is expected to be 4-5 € / W. These huge price drops potentially put the technology on course to meet the best price effectiveness of solid-state semiconductor cells - currently 1 € / W - sometime in the next couple of years.

Image by schwarzerkater at Flickr