

Richard Swanson: Solar Cells at the Cusp - cwan
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/10/swanson_solar_c.html

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MaysonL
Really good talk by a pioneer in the industry.

A few highlights.

1\. They recently installed a 2.6 GW project in Spain. In one year. For this
project, an approximately 20 person crew was installing 2 MW/day.

2\. Photovoltaic silicon areal production [sq in] surpassed chip silicon in
2000 - currently it's producing ~10X the area of chip silicon.

3\. In regard to the fluctuating nature of solar energy production, utilities
are coming to realize that it isn't really that bad or hard to deal with: for
decades they've been dealing with a fluctuating load from their customers -
solar is just another fluctuating load; only the sign is different. There are
areas in Germany and Japan where solar and wind make up over 20% of the grid,
with little difficulty experienced.

4\. In the past 20 years photovoltaic production has increased 200X: he
expects this rate to continue for another 20.

