Producing solar panels on Mars - what is minimal process required, and the mass to import it?

On Mars any initial colony will be power limited. Power sources can be brought from Earth, but any power generation capacity would reduce the mass available for other, more useful cargo.

Alternatively, you could produce solar panels locally. It feels like it should be doable locally. The primary materials required by mass are silicon, a frame and supports, and some form of conductor. Martian regolith includes all three. In this situation you wouldn't be attempting high efficiency cells, but a minimal viable product. As long as the marginal import mass of each watt was less than 100g, you're still beating the best fission power we're likely to send (kilopower - amazing NASA project).

Possible process: Wash reolith with water to remove perchlorates and water soluble salts. Reclaim the water via distillation.

Smelt the result with carbon monoxide, to remove both the iron oxides and impurities less reactive than Carbon.

Continue heating the remainder and use electrolysis on the melted liquid to produce Aluminium metal, liquid silicon and oxygen.

It sounds perfectly plausible, especially if you import the material for doping the silicon - you only need trace amounts.

So it sounds perfectly feasible. The materials are mostly available. Question is - given that all the above is true, what's the minimum practical mass required to set up a minimal product production facility?

Or would we be better off importing rolls of very thin film solar panel, mm thick, and producing frames and wires locally?

posted about 5 years ago

user2702772‭

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