SOLAR panels that generate electricity are bulky and expensive. But now an American company says it can provide unobtrusive photovoltaic panels at half the cost of traditional versions.
The new technology will be on show at this month's Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, where the US Department of Energy is building a solar-powered house. On the roof are 110 solar shingles supplied by Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) of Detroit, Michigan. "From the ground, it's hard to tell the difference between the asphalt shingles and the solar ones," says company chairman Robert Stempel.
Traditional photovoltaic cells are built by growing silicon crystals, slicing them into wafers 100 micrometres thick, and encasing them in glass. This process is now about as cheap as it is going to get, and assuming a cell lifetime of around twenty years, the electricity from crystalline cells is still roughly two or three times as ...
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