With so many auto-makers throwing their hats into the electric car ring, cleanly producing electricity cheaply becomes even more important. While the oft-touted nuclear solution seems to be getting a lot more expensive, solar is set to get a lot cheaper. Days after IBM announced it is moving into the thin-film solar power arena, Nanosolar CEO, Martin Roscheisen, remembered his own CIGS solar power company had achieved a remarkable milestone recently and shared some impressive video of the worlds first 1 GW production tool on his blog.

The 1GW CIGS coating machine cost $1.65 million and currently spits out solar goodness at a rate of 100 feet-per-minute. That's about 20 times faster than the high-vacuum process with a machine about 10 times cheaper. Roscheisen claims that, in principle, they could speed it up to 2000 feet-per-minute and says the coating should be even better. Since the target price point for Nanosolar panels has often been mentioned as $1 per watt., we say, "Crank those puppies out!". Check out the video after the jump.