Is Solar the Future of Energy?
I may be preaching to the choir here (I'm gonna start using these to up my game), but many of today's pioneers see solar as the future of energy.
Tesla, at the forefront of those pioneers, has just released its solar roof. This brings an important question to mind: is solar a viable source for the future of energy? Is it too early to say?
Lets not lose sight of the big picture guys: if not solar, what energy source can society use to hit the ground running into the future of sustainable energy.
Abso-fucking-lutely not. I'm a huge proponent for solar energy (biggest position in my PA is FSLR) but how could anyone possibly think a resource that generates power for less than half the day sustain society's constant needs for power. Also, solar would be beyond useless in the NW where it rains half the year. Solar's place in the energy world is to provide the grid with cheap power during peak times. Solar isn't all that efficient and requires a lot of space to generate any meaningful amount of power.
I think fusion is the ideal solution but the science is still decades away from being a viable option, but hydro and CCGT seem like viable alternatives in the meantime.
here's what the environmentalists forget: economics.
solar has a number of hurdles to overcome before it can overtake fossil fuels, namely storage (storing excess power), transportation (moving solar energy from places like Argentina to Iceland in December), output (can you power a 747 on solar?), extraction (how much time does it take to generate the equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline, for example? is it as efficiently extracted as oil, coal, etc.?)
all of those things lead to solar being a higher costing alternative. from an environmental perspective, solar is the best option, and I do think that the technology will get better, but it's WAY too early.
short answer to the question "is it the future?" YES, but probably not in our lifetime.
This.
MIT did a study on this about a year ago and found that at this point, the roadblock is investment (or willingness to invest), not necessarily the efficacy of solar.
I seem to recall reading, maybe in the Economist, that the storage ability of solar batteries has gotten life fivefold better in the last ten years. In other words, as solar gets adopted in more and more places, the investment necessary on the storage side is getting the technology there.
To the general point, solar is never going to be the only thing. But a combination of various renewables, combined with more efficient and longer lasting energy storage systems, is absolutely the future. Sure, the Pacific NW isn't going to go full solar any time soon, because it's always overcast. But solar, wind, hydroelectric, and tidal power? In combination can probably provide for energy needs.
And if you need to have a handful of fossil fuel powered plants for emergencies, so be it. Lets not let the perfect be the energy of the good - if 90% if power is being generated by renewables that's a massive improvement to the point of being an unqualified win.
The problem with current renewable technologies is that you need backup of non renewables that generally have to be online 24/7 to fill the void in the event of lower than projected generation numbers for the renewables.
Tesla's new Powerwall 2 has made significant improvements. I can definitely see Elon Musk driving battery technology innovation to the point where storing electricity no longer becomes an issue. He's obviously thought of this and is doing his best to come up with superior solutions. I'm optimistic.
Feel free to be as optimistic as you want, but I'm not sure that battery technology is necessarily the way to go here.
I've said this before (perhaps a different venue), and I'll say it again: I own a 6.7 kwh solar system -- in the Boston suburbs, this generates roughly 30 kwh per day from April - late October/early November. On average, my (fairly efficient) +/- 2,800 ft2 house sucks down about 21 of these per day, leaving me 9 left over. The Powerwall 2 holds 14 kwh...so it'd take about a day and a half to replenish. I rarely pay an electric bill during the summer and fall months, and the tax breaks available when I installed my SPWR system along with the 0.99% financing made this almost a steal.
The problem? That 14 kwh in the Powerwall 2 doesn't cover a day of usage, and there's a fairly substantial period of time where I wouldn't be able to replenish the battery (geography specific, I get that, but still...) I supposed I could always recharge from the grid, but that's not really the point of having a battery in the first place.
Alternatively, I can net meter and sell my excess back to the grid WITHOUT having to pony up $5k for a battery that wouldn't last me a day. I can instead take that $5k, buy a generator that would serve my needs, have an electrician come over and install a transfer switch and wiring, buy and fill 2x 5-gallon gas cans and some fuel stabilizer, and still have enough left over to buy a new top-of-the-line Macbook Pro with all the bells and whistles I'd never use.
The only way the value proposition tips in favor of a battery pack like this is: 1) The end of net metering. 2) A battery that can hold ~50-60 kwh at a reasonable price. 3) I can find a way to cut my electric usage down even farther (but given how "green" my Environmentalist wife has made our house, this would also kinda defeat the purpose as I'd have to push my electric water and clothes dryer to gas or some other alternative...which again, isn't really the point)
Tesla's genius has been to re-package alternatives into something people are willing to buy. Go back a few years and look at the different electric cars that were available...they were golf carts with solar panels. Solar panels also look like shiiiit, so don't tell me anyone was going to spend to spend $150-200k on a remodel or who knows how much on a new home and put an eye sore on their roof for all to see--enter solar panels that look like an actual roof while simultaneously tackling technological issues in the process.
It's a game changer. Just like the GUI was a game changer for the PC.
forget solar, when we're a stage 1 society and grab energy from a star (or is that stage 2 i forget) then we'll really be talking, an iphone charge will last for 3 days!
That’s Kardashev Type I civilization.
I think you need to take a step up -- renewables are the future, but not necessarily any one modality (similar to our energy usage now)
The sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. Between the two, however, and using some hydropower, we could likely find a way to meet the vast majority of our energy needs with a non-renewable backup.
As some others have said, some of the keys are economics. We already have refineries and pipelines in place that are assets we can still use quite a bit. Shifting to renewables will require investment in that infrastructure that will take a while. I think we will get there eventually.
and lets not forget: there have been solar shingles available for a fair amount of time. They've just been 1) expensive and 2) not manufactured by an Elon Musk entity. He wasn't first to this party, even if we think of Mr. Musk as the lone innovator in this world.
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Id assume nuclear would be the best. But a lot of my job is analyzing solar companies we work with so I am cheering for them.
Nuclear. /thread
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I'm still pretty heavily invested in Oil and Gas because I just don't buy the narrative that these companies will go the way of the do-do anytime soon. That doesn't mean that I don't think renewables will be a much bigger portion of power generation globally than they currently are and that certain companies in that space won't pay off handsomely for long-term holders. I just think that O&G will always be necessary because historically, energy consumption doesn't decrease - it only increases due to population growth. Even if you take the bear case that some of the largest, democratic nations in the world are having a depopulation crisis, I think a lot of that will be offset by the world in general growing richer (and America declining in relative importance - but that's a topic for another thread) and requiring larger consumption of energy in absolute terms. For example, I'm pretty sure nobody sees coal as the major source of energy production, but I've read that total coal consumption is still larger in absolute terms, even though it's diminished in relative importance.
So to answer your question OP, I do think that solar will be increasingly important and be "the future" in that sense. That said, if you're asking because you're considering going all-in on solar as an investment based on it's rosy industry outlook, I'd probably say be selective with your bets and to be weary of some of the hype around green energy in general. I personally think there'll be plenty of opportunities in the energy space to make money beyond just green companies.
Invest in nuclear power, the cleanest and most efficient fuel source with broad applications today. Continue to develop capabilities in solar, wind, and hydro, as well as battery tech and T&D infrastructure, while slowly phasing out legacy sources (starting with coal, the worst offender, and ending with natural gas, one of the better sources that’s currently practical).
Legacy energy sources aren’t going away any time soon, but eventually they will - we should be trying to improve the practicality of renewables while acknowledging that they aren’t going to be a panacea nor can we flip the switch overnight.
50 years from now, I’d love to see the bulk of energy globally coming from renewables with nuclear supplementing when they aren’t feasible
The countries that adopt solar will be crushed by those who did not.
Solar is feasible in lower latitude areas to serve as a municipal or secondary power source. It is retarded to try to run a modern economy on it. The only feasible non-fossil fuel energies are the big geologic ones (hydro, geothermal) and nuclear.
Solar will only work in combination with a significant decrease in the cost of storage (I.e. batteries) given its only available fort roughly half the day
Define “future”? Nuclear fusion is the future of energy. Everything else is intermediate technology.
this
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