How to Detect a Solar Scam
Thankfully, this isn’t about CitizenRE. Instead, we have the DBK Corporation, “The Energy Family - Low Cost Electricity”…
Step 1: Anything ridiculous?
DBK has a goal of 1,000,000 megawatts of solar by the end of 2007 (at least CitizenRE had the sense to wait until 2025). For reference, there were about 5900 megawatts of solar in the whole world in 2005.
Step 2: Anything strange?
Their “new” solar panel has a reported 70% efficiency, a 312% increase over the standard 17%. Look here, they can prove it with fancy language (”multi-junction”) and show you that it puts out 2.8 amps with a fancy meter. For reference, the theoretical limit for photovoltaic efficiency is around 45%.
Step 3: Anything impossible?
It only takes one solar panel to power your whole house. Nothing says powerful like a single solar panel on a gravel roof (picture above). No doubt, that’s powering the whole building. For reference, it would take 6-8 solar panels to generate what they are claiming for their single smaller panel, and it would take 15-20 to offset 50% of the average American home.
Step 4: Anything fishy?
All of their break-through technology costs half as much as their “competitors.” For reference, a 3 kilowatt residential solar system might cost $24,000 before incentives and $14,500 thousand after (really depends on your location and available incentives).
Step 5: Review
No basis in reality. Miraculous technology. Half the cost. It’s gotta be legit! Give them your credit card!
Solar energy works but is expensive. So is a hybrid car. So are new windows and a high efficiency furnace. None are your first choices for reducing energy use and environmental impact when money matters - do the simple, low-cost things first. Use your brain in making decisions.
There are reasons it sounds too good to be true…
On a related note, excessive exclamation points (!!!) have a clear inverse correlation with reputability. This company “Parts on Sale” is a good example. Unbeknownst to most people, they have dozens of sister websites for different cities and states across the country. Google “Florida Solar Rebates” and they are number one, with a different website but plenty of !!!. They have the exact same website for Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, Sacramento, Texas, etc. with plenty of !!! If you have a good product at a good price, you don’t need !!!.(!)
February 22, 2007 at 1:43 pm
[Editor's Note: I stand corrected on two points. World wide capacity was around 4300 MW in 2004 and grew 1560 MW in 2005 to a total of about 5900 MW (this has been corrected above). The current world record for cell efficiency was announced last December at 40.6% using a multi-junction concentrator cell. I'll be waiting for DBK's Nobel Prize announcement...]
Certainly DBK has all of the hallmarks of a scam, and their 1,000,000 MW goal by the end of 2007 is laughable if for no other reason than that it amounts to 20% of the new capacity the entire world will need over the next 20 years. Even if they could make that much by the end of the year, they would sell only a small fraction of it.
So I don’t really disagree with the substance of your comments. I do, however, have a couple of nitpicks. First, I think you misread the Solarbuzz article you linked to (that, or I misread what you wrote about it). It says that the amount of PV installed in the world in 2005 was 1460 MW. That is only the amount that was put into service for the first time in 2005, it is not the total amount actually operating worldwide. That total, at the end of 2005, was a bit above 5000 MW. Still tiny compared to a million, but much larger than 1460 MW.
Second, the theoretical limit for photovoltaic efficiency really depends on exactly what sort of device you assume. A plain old silicon solar cell has a theoretical limit of about 29%. A single-junction solar cell made of an arbitrary, idealized material has a theoretical limit of about 41%. An ideal two-junction cell has a theoretical limit of about 56%, three-junction about 64%, four-junction about 69%, on up to an infinite number of junctions (after all, we’re talking theory here) with a limit of about 87%. While the five-junction cell that DBK claims to have would appear not to violate the laws of thermodynamics on the basis of a 70% efficiency alone, in order to achieve such an efficiency it would have to be made from five materials so close to ideal that suitable materials are unlikely to even exist, let alone be assembled nearly perfectly at half the cost of conventional PV materials. I can’t see any way that they could possibly even come close to justifying their claim, and I would be that skeptical even if they weren’t claiming low cost and had the money-is-no-object budget of a defense contractor.
It is possible that they’re convinced their product is genuine because they simply don’t know how to make the electrical measurements properly or they’ve set up their solar simulator improperly. That has happened before. However, the photo of the module on their web site is quite clearly a multicrystalline silicon PV module, or at least some sort of cast material (though it looks exactly like cast silicon). A cast material of any sort is far, far, far from the ideal material I described above — it will be full of impurities, and the grain boundaries will wreak havoc electronically — so if it’s an active part of the solar cell the 70% claim is utterly and completely hosed. I suppose they could claim it’s only a substrate and plays no role electronically, but if that were the case then the substrate would not be visible — at 70% efficiency, not enough visible light could possibly pass through the cell and escape to make the substrate stand out so clearly.
I’ll tell you one thing: If, by some miracle, they can back up their claims, the module in the photo is not their actual product, and folks from the company will win at least one Nobel Prize. If you can engineer not one, but five, perfect materials, assemble them in layers without introducing defects into neighboring layers, and make a working solar panel with 70% efficiency from them at half the cost of conventional panels, well, it wouldn’t surprise me if you get three Nobel Prizes.
February 22, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Note, that they are selling franchises… that is their angle.
My advise - do not buy one! (please)
As solar gets popular we will be seeing more and more of these scams.
The solar industry and solar advocates must be diligent and get the word out before the public is sucker into a sour deal, and the image of solar electric systems drops a notch.
My tip for the day is AMAT (they look like the real thing when it comes to reducing panel cost over the near term).
Thanks Sir Solar Kismet!
n
May 22, 2007 at 6:25 pm
[Editor's Note: There's no such thing as a 3000 watt panel, much less a 1500 watt one...that's the point. We'll throw rocks but they won't break anything because there's nothing to break. It's a scam (or a severe misunderstanding of physics).]
HAS ANYONE TESTED THE 3000 WATT PANEL?AND IF SO WHAT WAS THE OUT COME? OR ARE WE JUST GONNA THROW ROCKS ?
June 19, 2007 at 3:58 am
[Editor's Note: If the fact that their "solar division" website doesn't work is any indication, I'd stop payment.]
Dear Editor,
Dbk corp.is giving us dealership for india,they are asking 200000$deposit for and today i came across your web site and feeling very scare,please advice me,should we stop all the transactiom.
Thanks
July 11, 2007 at 1:30 am
Hi Folks
Here is a solar scammer that just can’t help himself
http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=102146&messages=54&page=1
What an idiot!
Keef
November 27, 2007 at 5:51 pm
We were scammed by DBK. They kept our $4000. and even put in writing that we would get our money back in 10-12 days. That was 4 months ago and they don’t even acknowledge us anymore or respond to our emails or phone calls. Please save your money and don’t do business with them.
May 25, 2008 at 12:27 am
partsonsale might use a lot of exclamation points, but I’ve been shopping for months and they’ve got the best prices out there for the products that they offer and they’ve got a pretty good rating with the BBB. I always check with the Better Business Bureau before buying anything on nthe net. They’re also listed on many of the solar manufacturer’s websites, so I’m probably going to buy my system from them.
June 26, 2008 at 1:35 am
How can a 1.3 m2 module produce 3000 W STC when the STC irradiance is 1000 W / m2 ? even if the module had an efficiency of 100% it could only yield 1300W!!!!
When trying to scam people they should at least do their maths correctly and give plausible numbers!!!! in their claim (70%) 1300 x 0.7 = 910 W STC would have at least been consistent.
A way To produce 3000 W on such a small module would be by concentrating more than 13 suns on the entire surface (which optically requires a huge fresnel lens ~ 17 m2) and using high end 17% Mono crystalline cells.
This is doable in theory using fresnel lenses and dual axis tracking of the sun. However, Such concentration would rise the cells temperature so much that they would lose most of their voltage…
To conclude: a 3000W module might happen sooner or later but it sure wouldn’t look like the cheap poly crystalline they show on their picture and it will require great advances in heat dissipation… A company called SUNRGI seems to be on the right path….
Unfortunately, by scamming people, DBK will give solar a bad name….