what can you tell me about origin's silver technology?

[hughthompson]

SLIVER technology
A revolutionary step in the development of Solar Photovoltaics

The award-winning SLIVER technology was invented and developed at the Australian National University’s Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems with financial support from Origin. A dedicated research and pilot manufacturing facility is located at Regency Park in Adelaide, South Australia.

Origin Energy Ltd and Micron Technology, Inc. have now formed a 50:50 joint venture, Transform Solar , with a focus on the development of the SLIVER photovoltaic technology.
how come this is not on Desert Knowledge Australia technologies?
hugh

[Keefwivanef]

What I can tell you is that this technology has been talked about for a very long time
http://www.originenergy.com.au/news/art ... leases/233

New Sliver CellTM offers revolution in solar power Print articleEmail article
ASX/Media Releases
28 Nov 2002



A joint venture between the Australian National University and Origin Energy has developed a new type of solar cell with the potential to revolutionise the global solar power industry.

Director of the ANU Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems, Professor Andrew Blakers today unveiled the Sliver CellTM, which uses just one tenth of the costly silicon used in conventional solar panels while matching power, performance and efficiency.

Professor Blakers said, "A solar panel using Sliver CellTM technology needs the equivalent of two silicon wafers to convert sunlight to 140 watts of power. By comparison, a conventional solar panel needs about 60 silicon wafers to achieve this performance.

"By dramatically reducing the amount of expensive pure silicon, the largest cost in solar panels today, this new technology represents a major advance in solar power technology."

Origin Energy's Executive General Manager, Generation, Andrew Stock said, "Origin Energy has worked with ANU's Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems for several years, investing more than $6 million in research to discover a way to harness the sun's power at much lower cost.
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Back in 2002 regular silicon panels were much more expensive than they are now and a plethora of start-up companies claimed that their widgets would overcome the so called silicon shortage and provide power much cheaper than old fashioned silicon "flatties"

Now that good quality fully proven conventional solar panels are available at a much lower price than before it looks as though none of those start-up companies are really able to deliver on their fanciful promises.

Origin is a publicly listed company.
It is probably that press releases like the one above will have been quite beneficial to the share price.

Real solar panel manufacturers actually turn out product (such as the ones being trialled at the Desert Knowledge test site.
Some other companies are more interested in sharemarket shenanigans than in actually producing a product.

My advice....don't wait too long for the next gee whizz solar widget.....buy one of the tried and tested flat panels that are now available at quite reasonable prices.

[Keefwivanef]

Update....
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/06/2 ... _Container



jono wrote on 06/24/2010 05:31:20 AM:
This is a novel idea ... dabble in solar, hire a few workers and then sell the company or send jobs overseas. It is the Micron way.

For being an Idaho company generously subsidized by the State, Micron doesn't have much loyalty to former employees or being a stable partner in the community. Do we ever learn?


Oh dear....here we go again!