The panels are various new thin-film technologies that Chevron thinks could cost less than current thin film technologies or traditional crystalline silicon solar cells.
An interview published last year in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists detailed how at age 88, he was working on a new approach to photovoltaic thin-film production that he said would allow factories to make enough solar panels in a year to produce at least one gigawatt of electricity annually roughly the scale of a nuclear power plant at the price of coal.
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That is not great compared with the 20% and more achieved by a silicon-based solar cell, the 40% managed by a solar-thermal turbine, or even the 18-20% of one of the new generation of cheap and cheerful thin-film solar cells.
Zach McCue of Clean Ocean Action, a coalition of more than 130 environmental organizations in New Jersey and New York, said the manufacture of thin-film plastic bags consumes millions of trees and barrels of oil, takes up space in landfills for a long time and is harmful to marine life, especially birds and sea turtles that ingest the bags, or pieces of bags, or get entangled in them.
Just as telecom companies laid down billions of dollars worth of fibre-optic cables, environmental companies require large amounts of capital for building a wind farm or a tidal barrage or the patience to invest in new technologies, such as cellulosic ethanol or thin-film solar panels.
And the Energy Conversion exec adds that the company is working on new technology that should improve the conversion efficiency of its thin-film solar products.
If Apple does not receive the thin-film panels before that, it is highly unlikely that the new iPad will ship during the third quarter.
The company plans to use a thin film technology developed by a startup it bought in 2011 and begin shipping panels from the new factory in 2013.
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Even more fundamentally, the digital economy's infrastructure has advanced basic material science and classes of machine tools that have led directly to the new high-power electronics (enabling hybrids) and to big, cheap flat-panel, thin-film PVs (derived from the massive thin-film machines that make flat-panel-TVs).
It also likes companies that are working on making smaller batteries, like Qynergy, a New Mexico-based company working on radioisotope batteries, and Infinite Power Solutions, a Colorado developer of thin-film batteries that can power RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tracking chips.
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