No One Denies That Solar Is Making Huge Inroads Into The Energy Scene But How Far Can It Go?
I came across this article recently where David Roberts tries to make the claim that in the distant future solar energy will dominate all other forms of energy.
My thoughts are that there are many future technologies in the pipe so to speak. The ones that win will win an a combination of economics and of convenience.
While solar is a definite contender, the green energy battle has barely begun. It’s too early to pick a runaway winner
Let’s take a closer look at David’s prediction.
Here it is: solar photovoltaic (PV) power is eventually going to dominate global energy. The question is not if, but when.
The main reason is pretty simple: solar PV is different from every other source of electricity, in ways that make it uniquely well-suited to 21st-century needs. (Among those needs I count abundance, resilience, and sustainability.)
Coal plants, gas plants, nuclear plants, and concentrated solar power plants are all just different ways of boiling water to produce steam that spins a turbine. Wind power harnesses the wind to spin a turbine. Hydropower dams use flowing water to crank a turbine. These spinning turbines, in turn, provide mechanical force to an electric generator, which translates it into electrical current (this is done by moving electrical conductors through magnetic fields.
Solar PV works differently: it converts sunlight directly into electricity. Photons of light excite the surface of a semiconductor, knocking electrons loose to become part of a charged electrical field, generating electromotive force that can be tapped by wires.
This difference sounds technical, but it is enormously consequential. It brings three obvious advantages, often touted by solar proponents.
First, a solar cell has no moving parts, so operation and maintenance costs tend to be very low. It has to be kept clean, but that’s about it.
Second, a solar cell requires no fuel — so fuel costs are zero. Once the initial investment is paid off, and subtracting modest O&M costs, the power produced is free.
And third, a solar cell generates power without any pollution.
Solar is the only truly distributed electricity source
Solar PV’s unique way of generating power has another important consequence: it can be highly distributed. Many utilities currently rely on big solar — constructing fields of panels miles long — but solar can also scale down to feet, even inches. Anywhere sun hits, some of it can be harvested for energy.
How solar power could become a dominant energy source
So let’s try to think beyond the limitations of today’s PV to a possible future — after another, say, 20 or 30 years of intense research, development, and deployment.
Imagine small, modular, highly efficient solar cells embedded in all newly built infrastructure as a matter of course — buildings, bridges, parking lots, vehicles. Solar PV would no longer be a category of product in itself, but a routine feature of other products. As energy storage also gets cheaper, smaller, and better integrated, it will be worthwhile to capture and discharge small amounts of energy continuously.
A future with distributed energy could look radically different from today
One often hears energy experts talk about “distributed energy,” but insofar as that refers to electricity, it usually just means smaller gas or wind turbines scattered about — except in the case of solar PV. Only solar PV has the potential to eventually diffuse into infrastructure, to become a pervasive and unremarkable feature of the built environment.
That will make for a far, far more resilient energy system than today’s grid, which can be brought down by cascading failures emanating from a single point of vulnerability, a single line or substation. An intelligent grid in which everyone is always producing, consuming, and sharing energy at once cannot be crippled by the failure of one or a small group of nodes or lines. It simply routes around them.
David thinks in just a matter of time before solar is totally dominant.
What do yo think?
David expands on the ideas quoted in the original article.
