How many square meters of photovoltaic glass are there per ton

Elsewhere on pv magazine... The Chinese government has revealed that the nation's solar glass capacity has reached 64,000 metric tons per day, while State Grid Corp. of China has announced plans to allocate CNY 26.07 billion ($4.3 billion) for solar incentives.

The Chinese government has revealed that the nation's solar glass capacity has reached 64,000 metric tons per day, while State Grid Corp. of China has announced plans to allocate CNY 26.07 billion ($4.3 billion) for solar incentives. A production line at Jolywood's new cell factory.

It also revealed that 313 production lines with a combined capacity of 59,000 MT are currently operational. In the first half of the year, the average price of solar glass with thicknesses of 2 mm and 3.2 mm were CNY 20.9 ($0.31) and CNY 27.1 per square meter, respectively.

By 2020, 8.3 billion square meters of flat glass will be installed annually in new buildings worldwide, according to the Freedonia Group. That area, covered in standard solar panels in the ideal orientation, could produce more than a terawatt at peak output, and over one year it could generate some 2,190 terawatt-hours.

Thus, for each square meter of a solar module, 2 of glass is required. Other thin film modules are a mix, some using two plates of glass for each module, some only a single plate, or some other type of substrate. Thin-film PV production is expected to continue to grow faster than the industry as a whole due to lower production costs.

But it's not hard to estimate what the output could be. Normally, around 1,000 watts per square meter of solar energy falls on Earth's surface. If a solar window is 50 percent transparent, it will absorb 500 W/m 2. The record efficiency for an organic photovoltaic cell—the percentage of light power converted to electrical—stands at 11.5 percent.