By South Korea’s chaebols continue to push forward with their various “green technologies” manufacturing:
South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd and France’s Saint-Gobain announced that they will jointly build the largest thin-film solar cell plant in South Korea.
Investing about $99 million each, the partnership will be a 50-50 joint-venture to be called Hyundai Avancis. The first manufacturing facility for the joint venture will be designed identically to Saint-Gobain’s second thin-film solar plant currently under construction in Germany.
The plant will produce an annual volume of 850,000 modules based on CIGS thin-film technology. The site should be operational by Q2 12 and will supply the global market. Its modules will be marketed independently by the two firms.
Hyundai Heavy Industries has maintained a leading position in the world shipbuilding market. It is also manufacturing both advanced solar power and wind turbine system products. The company is said to be South Korea’s sole company that is able to produce entire solar value chain products ranging from polysilicon, solar cell and solar module all the way to power conditioning systems. [EET Asia]
4:19 am on October 18th, 2010 1
How sad. The Eco-Loons are at it again this time with solar energy! Solar is such a stupid idea. Coal is nearly FREE and we have a business catering to idiots willing to buy these crazy solar panels so they can increase my light bill – like power in Korea isn't enough.
Give me a break
10:03 am on October 18th, 2010 2
Coal is nearly free? And the sun isn't?
10:23 am on October 18th, 2010 3
Solar is good to use when you can get it without giving up another resource. Put it on roofs at locations with heavy sunlight, it'll reduce the net energy consumption. And yes Solar is expensive because the panels are expensive and tend to corrode / break over time. Same with wind and the turbines involved. Solar / wind isn't the answer to the USA's energy needs much less the entire world. If you were to cover the entire worlds available surface area with solar panels you still wouldn't have enough to power the USA, much less the rest of the world. And you kinda need that land for things like food and houses. In all honestly our planets own solar shield just deflects too much sunlight for it to be feasibly on the ground. Space is a different matter entirely.
1:08 pm on October 18th, 2010 4
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tony Z, Jeremy McNamara. Jeremy McNamara said: Hyundai to Build Largest Solar Cell Plant In South Korea | ROK Drop http://bit.ly/9l9S7H [...]
8:28 pm on October 18th, 2010 5
#4,
Never heard of homes fitted with solar panels putting power back into the grid?
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jul2…
4:13 am on October 19th, 2010 6
#3 I currently live in a country where companies will fit solar panels to your home's roof. The cost for each panel is $6,000.00 plus delivery and a $11,000.00 base installation fee. The average home requires 12 panels to power the house. There is no way you think spending $83,000.00 for a solar power system is economically advantageous over coal. I can pay my electric bill for 83 years and 4 months for the price of solar panels.
12:03 pm on October 19th, 2010 7
@5,
Unless your living like a an Amish in the desert, your net usage will be positive not negative over a 12 month period. Something as simple as heating your water for showers / cleaning or powering a mid sized TV use's quite a bit of power in relation to the amount generated by the panels.
Photovoltaic cells are just inefficient at converting light in such a wide and diffused spectrum that we receive on the surface of the planet. Thank our atmosphere for that.
12:58 am on October 20th, 2010 8
#7,
That's not quite true. A typical 1 square meter solar panel will produce about 1Kwh per day (sun's energy is 1Kwh/square meter, typical solar panel is about 15% efficient, multiply by number of average hours per day of clear daytime skies, take into account average temperature and latitude).
Average US house uses 9000Kwh/year. That's 25Kwh/day…25 square-meter panels would suffice per house.
8:33 am on October 20th, 2010 9
Remember, burning coal adds to the carbon above ground, and carbon in the air as carbon dioxide absorbs infrared.
5:36 pm on October 20th, 2010 10
@8
That is a false understanding. And where exactly would you get the power to run office buildings, military installations, city's and anything and everything non-residential. Home usage dwarfs when compared to total human usage. For example take a good hard look at how much energy is required to make produce aluminum. Aluminum plants are typically built next to dams, nuke plants or other sources of high on-demand power.
Its already been gone over by people much smarter then you and I. There isn't enough usable surface area on the planet to have solar power the USA, much less the world. Now stop thinking about rural homes and start thinking about population centers. Solar is ridiculously expensive for the power produced. It only makes sense when your talking about area's of high input light across a narrow spectrum.
And BTW its 10% not 15%. 15% is under ideal situations, something that doesn't happen often. If your going to build a power supply then you must assume less-then-optimal, unless you like brown outs.