Korean Breakthrough in Solar Energy?
by Brendon Carr
Today’s Chosun Ilbo trumpets that “A team of Korean researchers has developed a cutting-edge solar cell that might help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.”
The “Korean breakthrough” is a plastic solar cell that has 6.5% efficiency in converting sunlight to electricity, and at a significant cost advantage to silicon-based solar cells. According to the Chosun:
Existing solar cells that use silicon semiconductors cost US$2.30 to generate one watt of electricity, which is three to 10 times higher than the production cost of thermal or hydro power. The new plastic solar cell costs just ten cents per watt… [The inventors say they’re going to] improve the efficiency up to 15 percent, and [are] in talks to join hands with domestic electronics companies to market the solar cell by 2012.
I’m not exactly sure how to parse this, because I’d be expecting costs quoted in dollars/cents per kilowatt/hour of energy produced.
This is very interesting news. There is a lot of alternative-energy activity here in Korea, which has negligible (if any) domestic energy resources. My partner Doil Son and I just wrapped up a US$145 million project for our client SunTechnics, a subsidiary of Germany’s Conergy Group, an alternative-energy conglomerate, which will see Korea construct the world’s biggest photovoltaic power plant in South Cholla Province. Although we’re sure the “world’s biggest” project will be—perhaps it already has been—eclipsed by another large-scale solar generation plant (maybe even here in Korea), we’re really going to see a lot of solar-plant construction here if the plastic solar-cell breakthrough can be commercialized quickly. Korea may become a hub of alternative energy. Since being the center of the universe—any universe—is attractive to Koreans, let’s keep our fingers crossed.
This discovery is also reported in non-Korean press, with slightly different spin on “ownership” of the breakthrough, or indeed whether it is a breakthrough.
But even if this changes everything, we’ll still need petroleum—that’s where plastic comes from. Or maybe we can recycle old water bottles to make the solar cells.
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