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Solar Could Lead In Power Production By 2050
Lucas123 writes Solar power could be the leading source of electricity compared with other renewables and conventional sources of power, such as oil and coal, according to a pair of reports from the International Energy Agency. PV panels could produce 16% of the world's electricity, while solar thermal electricity (STE) is on track to produce 11%. At the end of 2013, there had been 137GW of solar capacity deployed around the world. Each day, an additional 100MW of power is deployed. One reason solar is so promising is plummeting prices for photovoltaic cells and new technologies that promise greater solar panel efficiency. For example, MIT just published a report on a new material that could be ideal for converting solar energy into heat by tuning the material's spectrum of absorption. Ohio State University just announced what it's referring to as the world's first solar battery, which integrates PV with storage at a microscopic level. "We've integrated both functions into one device. Any time you can do that, you reduce cost," said Yiying Wu, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State.
of making it difficult for homeowners to utilize this technology thanks to the regulatory capture of giant utility companies. http://www.law360.com/articles/573896/enviros-blast-pa-limits-on-customer-solar-generation http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/as-hawaii-demands-utility-reform-thousands-of-solar-installers-are-laid-off This along with downgrading of utilities stock by one of these banks or analysts (I can't recall which right now), we are going to see utility companies use their political connections to stifle this until they can have full control of the solar electricity production.
From the article. "IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven stressed in a statement that her agency's two reports do not represent a forecast. "
The report said "if you wanted to try to have more solar, here's what you would try, and here's what the (devastating) consequences would be. They absolutely did not in any way say that would happen or should happen.
Solar Could be 50+% of production, but only around 35% of energy usage. AKA, we'd be wasting power because we are installing too much solar power while we have no good way to store the power, a new solar station only reduces hydrocarbon use by around 60% per watt in places with existing solar power usage due to the need to idle hydrocarbon plants but the inability to fully shut them down. These returns are diminishing. We need to end all solar subsidies and instead focus on energy storage, not tomorrow but right this second.* Don't let help them open more solar power plants till we can store the power. Am researching tech that won't at best be commercially viable for 10-20 years. It's nuclear resonance fluorescence.
*This is the problem with government subsidies, they start usually doing good they continue until they are bad. Politicians start getting kick backs and thus can't end the subsidies because then they would get the kickbacks.