Two minutes: in order to power the plethora of human activities for an entire year, all it takes is harnessing the power of the sunshine that reaches earth for a mere 120 seconds. The potential energy emitted by the sun is so enormous that many believe it will inevitably become the primary energy source of the future. A portion of those many believe still further that the future may be unreachable so long as there is a vested interest in keeping fossils alive.
The irony is that a fossil fuel is basically solar energy wrapped in extraordinarily inefficient packaging. Fossils contain energy that originated in ancient photosynthesis, but it took hundreds of millions of years for those fruits to ripen. Meanwhile, technology has enabled civilization to skip the middleman and harness the sun’s energy directly through solar panels but, it seems, too many pockets are lined with the fate of coal, natural gas and petroleum. These include the Texas billionaires and the Saudi princes, sure, but also John and Jane, little Sarah and John Junior. The fossil fuel industry employs millions of people worldwide, and over 2 million in the United States alone.
But if the bottom line is all that matters, solar is making a compelling argument. In the early 2000’s, when solar panels first became available to the public, only the ultra-wealthy and solar fanatics were willing to fork up the high sticker price for the luxury of having large, bulky panels attached to their roofs. Since then, a couple things coalesced to make solar energy more economically feasible for a larger swath of the public. First and foremost, the public became galvanized after the negative repercussions of carbon emissions were more widely publicized. Once climate change became an acceptable dish to pass around the dinner table, technological innovation and institutional support converted solar energy into real world energy.
Just as the computer chip has shrunk to microscopic levels while becoming exponentially more powerful, solar technology has improved by leaps and bounds over the past few years. In the photovoltaic sphere (where the radiation of the sun is converted directly into electricity), solar panel efficiency has reached a peak of around 23%; though that means that a whopping 77% of the potential energy is lost, it’s still a massive improvement over the 5% efficiency rate that was common to see in the mid-2000’s.
The other method of harnessing the sun’s rays is concentrated solar power (CSP), where the heat generated by sunlight is used to create steam that powers an electric generating turbine. This technology too has seen some exciting innovation recently, like the Shams-1 power plant in the United Arab Emirates. With an output capacity of 100 MW and the ability to power 20 thousand homes, it is among the largest solar power plants of its kind in the world. Still more remarkable is that the United Arab Emirates, one of the highest producers of oil in the world, has committed to following up with a Shams-2 and Shams-3 power plant.
This goes to show that support for solar energy is at an all-time high. The demand is there, and so it must follow that the supply catches up- if only the technology would allow it. Some argue that capturing the thermal energy of the sun is currently more pragmatic than converting solar radiation into electricity, because scientists have yet to figure out an efficient way of storing the electricity once it’s produced. Photovoltaic solar panels are limited to producing electricity that can be consumed right away, or else it would have to be stored in an expensive battery, lest it overload the grid. Tesla (the luxury electric car manufacturer) is the biggest and one of the only players in the commercial battery storage market, but the expectation is for more to join the battery pack soon and thereby drive prices down.
While the engineers think up solutions for the storage problem, some interesting and fun innovations are popping up in other spheres, a testament to solar’s ever increasing mass market appeal. Recently a textile designer and a chemist teamed up to create solar textiles, which could have applications for such items as window curtains and car seat upholstery- fabrics that are often in the light of the sun’s rays and could therefore be put to good use. There’s also the shamelessly skin-deep invention of solar panels that can blend into the color of the roof they sit on. The MIT startup that creates these fashionable panels hope it will make solar more attractive for consumers for whom appearance is a sticking point.
It has never been cheaper, easier and, frankly, more necessary to get solar panels, and the numbers certainly reflect this excitement; Apple (the multinational technology corporation) recently made the biggest purchase of solar energy to date: 130 megawatts for $850 million. Governments, too, are a strong advocate of solar and are making it even easier for their citizens to join in on the momentum. In the United States, for example, the solar tax credit- more formally known as the Investment Tax Credit (ITC)- allows homeowners and businesses to deduct 30% of the cost of installing a solar system. There’s even a deep reservoir of state and local incentives to fish through. If you live in the States, checkout this site to find out what’s available to help make your transition to solar a seamless experience. You got nothing to loose, and the life-giving force of the sun to gain!
