The looming expiration of a crucial renewable energy investment tax credit doesn’t seem to have spooked investors. Silicon Valley thin-film solar startup Nanosolar said Wednesday that it has secured another $300 million in funding and is jumping into the Big Solar game as well.
Writing on the Nanosolar blog, CEO Martin Roscheisen said that the latest financing round – the company’s funding now totals half a billion dollars – comes from oldline utility AES (AES), French utility giant EDF and the Carlyle Group, among other investors. Nanosolar, which prints solar cells on flexible materials, will supply solar panels to the newly formed AES Solar, which will build medium-scale – up to 50 megawatts – photovoltaic power plants.
The Nanosolar news is just the latest of a spate of deals to take solar panels off rooftops and plant them on the ground to generate massive megawattage. Two weeks ago, thin-film solar startup Optisolar won a contract from utility PG&E (PCG) for a 550-megawatt PV solar power plant while SunPower (SPWR) will build a 250-megawatt photovoltaic solar farm for the utility. Leading thin-film company First Solar (FSLR), meanwhile, has inked deals over the past few months to build smaller-scale PV power plants for Southern California Edison (EIX) and Sempre (SRE). And thin-film solar company Energy Conversion Devices is assembling a 12-megawatt array for a General Motors plant in Spain.
Green Wombat 
Utilities sometimes had to purchase electricity from other utiliites to keep up with peak hour demands as their capacities are used up. Utilities with spare electricity sold to utility buyers at outrageous rates usually up to 50 times or even 100 times the going rate. This is the primary reason why utilities are ordering modest sized solar array installations to spare themselves from having to build another full blown fossil fuel powerplant with all the permits and regulations piled on top in order to meet rising demands. Solar arrays is a great quick fix or stop gap to save themselves from paying insane peak hour prices to other utilites usually found in the deserts and swamplands wherever few people live. I dont think that solar arrays will be expanded to compete against tradtional building block patterns of fossil fuel powerplants preferred by utilities whenever to meet core demand in the future. Solar and wind is now useful to save peak hour expenses that is not economical . How much business will pose to solar and wind business by utilites looking for quick additions to avert peak hour purchases from other idle utilites . Many solar business are now approaching gigawatt manufacturing capacities each. Will some of them continue to add manufacturing capacities beyond its first gigawatt like ten gigawatt or one hundred gigawatt?
Let me explain a bit more in depth about utilites’ dilemma.. You see a new fossil fuel or even nuclear or hydro power dam are usually at least one gigawatt hour generator or good for one million households. So in some areas , populations do grow but not by one million households in a year . Normally a population area usually metropolitian areas while growing like hot usually gain by 50 thousand households or so a year. So it is not economical for such utility to add a whole gigawatt hour powerplant and watch it being soaked up over a decade or longer. So utiiities choose solar arrays that usually yield less than 100 megawatt hours as a stop gap measure to save utilities a lot of money from being used to spend to buy electricity from adjoining utilities where there is sparse populations or even declining populations. It is much cheaper to build capacities especially in smaller increments . Utilities is not going to install small gas turbines that can yield comparable electricity as solar arrays all over the areas as they are too unwieldy to manage individually. even diesel generators that creates too much fumes in clsoe proximities..
Any of you who probably fantasize about all solar and wind power in America meaning replacing all existing fossil fuel and nuclear powerplants with solar and windpower need to wake up now. It takes a godawful lot of real estate even in the boonies to site a major solar or wind power system. A 500 megawatt solar array would take up 15000 acres or two square miles of land or more maybe four square miles not to mention the real effective yield of wind and solar after minus the dark hours and dead wind times through the years. So to effectively replace an average gigawatt coal or natural gas powerplant , one will need to find ten to fifteen square miles of real estate to set up an effective equivalent of solar array or wind towers. There will be a lot of fightings over the uses of land by ranchers, farmers, and hermits…
We can float solar and wind power out in the ocean, who knows should not be difficult as water comprises over two/third of Earth surface. We will only have ship captains and yacht snobs to deal with..
Would you guys short stocks like ENER? I don’t get why anyone would pay $80 for this hype??
Ultimately, all moving vehicles and all edifices on earth can be powered by electricity that does not use fossil fuels as their source of power. Cars can plug into the grid, and homes, factories, offices, et all also plug into the grid that are created by power plants not fueled by oil, gas, coal, or nuclear. This is the 20 year vision. Even fuel driven power plants can be weaned off that fuel.
Simple question for all who think that baseload fossil or Nukes can be completely done away with: Where are you going to get your electric supply when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing? Are you going to fund infrastructure to move electrons from one end of the country to the other at a moments notice? And have you heard of line loss?
@gumby
…So to effectively replace an average gigawatt coal or natural gas powerplant , one will need to find ten to fifteen square miles of real estate to set up an effective equivalent of solar array or wind towers…
Not true. Higher yield PV cells are in production and there are even cells in manufacture that accept multiple wavelengths (which means higher yield) all of which amounts to smaller footprints for equivalent yields. Infrared (thermal) equates to roughly 1 kw / sq meter. There are several thermal towers currently producing electricity in california in the megawatt range.
@people pointing out the large footprint of these solar plants.
Obviously fossil fuel plants were not as effecient as they are today either. This is precisely why these types of investments need to be made and improve the technology. It’s high time we got serious about alternative fuels, which is bringing them closer to grid parity each and every day.
Gumby I will agree with some of what you said but it is pretty obvious that you don’t fully understand how the power industry works. First off in California, where both you and I live, we don’t often see new power plants that are a gigawatt in size. The main reason the utilities are looking so hard at wind and solar is that they are mandated to do so. In California we are not allowed to build new nuclear, until the issue of waste is worked out (doubt it will happen even then) and not allowed to build or purchase new coal power either. We are allowed to build gas turbines, and the utilities love them, but gas prices are very volatile. On a little side note a solar hybrid gas turbine was recently approved in my home town of Victorville and I see they just applied with the California Energy Commission to build one in Palmdale.
Now I operate a solar-thermal power plant, so I am a little biased towards the technology but I really don’t feel that land issues should be a problem. In reality it is a big problem but we really would need to use only a tiny amount of the desert. Water and transmission issues are large but I feel could be overcome. I am more skeptical about the large PV power plants. They take more land and I feel that cold do some mean things to the power grid. In a solar thermal plant a large single cloud will cause electrical output to slowly dip and slowly rise again when it passes. A PV plant could go from full production to almost zero in a matter of minutes and back to full production. This could cause grid instability or at the very least cause the utility to buy expensive power from outside sources. I believe in California this is capped at $1000 a MW. This is a huge amount of money but not quite 50 or 100 times.
Now really for wind and solar to ever be a major part of our energy picture we are going to have to find a way to efficiently store electricity. Some of the new smart grid technology may help if we go to electric vehicles, by charging them when there is an excess of power production, but the thing the utilities need is reliably. All of these problems can be overcome but we are not ready to run the country on wind or solar at the moment. I am also a big fan of nuclear power but, like most things in life, it is not as easy as simply starting to build them. Costs, public acceptance, qualified people and reactor production capacity are all huge issues.
“Where are you going to get your electric supply when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing?”
If cars use the grid, there will 50& less use of carbon based fuel, freeing it up for society.
If power plants also devise new ways of developing electricity without such fuel, then they can also move off of carbons as original source of power. Thus in 20 years we have 80% of power plants non fossil or nuclear, and moving vehicles 100%.
The whole world is determined to find solutions. In a world of terrorism and weapons proliferation, the drive for nuclear will constantly be held back. New clean technologies are also on the rise.
Last time I checked, the sun was shining in NV,AZ,and the Eastern counties of California nearly every day of the year! With real estate and land plunging in value in these areas, it shouldn’t be too difficult to obtain land in the desert for a solar farm. The significant news yesterday on “net metering” allowing customers who produce renewable energy to get credit for sending their excess power to Florida’s power grid will be adopted in every state in the country real soon. The future is electric cars being powered by solar energy, as clean as it gets and total self-sufficient. Forget about T.Boone Picken’s CNG, we only have a 6 year supply of proven reserves in the country and it’s not worth the massive investment for such a short term plan. The only guarantee that I can give you is that the sun will rise in the morning and sunlight will never be a commodity 😉
My concern is still “who owns the power?” With the advent of nano-ink thin film technology, we’re losing the option of building our own roof-top residential collection systems and being “off the grid.” For instance, NanoSolar once promised residential availability. Now they’ve put all their eggs in the megawatt power grid basket. When big-solar owns the power generation capability, they’ll still charge what the traffic will bear.