Solar Power To Provide Abundant Energy Soon

 Solar Energy  

Solar power has been doubling every two years for the past 30 years and the price has been falling dramatically. The technology is now set to dramatically change the world.

Some experts say today that solar power does not present any realistic chance of becoming a major source of energy for the world.  As Vivek Wadhwa points out in a piece for the Washington Post, this 'expert analysis' is similar to what some analysts were saying about cellular phones in the 1980's - in that case the report from McKinsey & Company was dead wrong.

After decades of development, solar power presently barely supplies one percent of the world’s energy needs.  Critics claim that solar is inefficient, too expensive to install, and unreliable, and will fail without government subsidies.

As anyone familiar with exponential growth is aware, one percent means halfway to 100 percent. Solar power has been doubling every two years for the past 30 years and the price has been falling dramatically.

New advances using graphene and other nanotechnology methods hold the promise for even more extreme gains in solar collection and power storage.

Related articles Japan Planning To Harvest Solar Energy from Space  New Battery Could Help Solar and Wind Energy Power the Grid  Inexpensive, Flexible Solar Panels Developed

According to Ray Kurzweil, solar energy is less than 14 years away from meeting 100 percent of today’s energy needs. Even then, we will be using only one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the Earth.

In places such as Germany, Spain, Portugal, Australia, and the Southwest United States, residential-scale solar production has already reached “grid parity” with average residential electricity prices.  In those areas it costs no more in the long term to install solar panels than to buy electricity from utility companies.

The prices of solar panels have fallen 75 percent in the past five years alone and will fall much further as the technologies to create them improve and scale of production increases.  By 2020, solar energy will be price-competitive with energy generated from fossil fuels on an unsubsidized basis in most parts of the world.  Within the next decade, it will cost a fraction of what fossil fuel-based alternatives do.

The average cost of solar panels has gone from $76.67/watt in 1977 to just $0.613/watt today according to PVinsights.

As Wadhwa explains, there is little doubt that we are heading into an era of unlimited and almost free clean energy.  This has profound implications.

The disruption will affect of the entire fossil-fuel industry, starting with utility companies. Countries such as Germany, China, and Japan are leading the charge in the adoption of clean energies.  Solar installations still depend on other power sources to supply energy when the sun isn’t shining, but battery-storage technologies will improve so much over the next two decades that homes won’t be dependent on the utility companies.

Today, the batteries needed to store a sufficient amount of solar energy are far too large for mass adoption by residential home users. However, Solar City and Tesla are now rumored to be working together to dramatically scale down the size of batteries.

Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind both companies, recently said Tesla is using SolarCity’s customers as a base to discover how to make battery packs that are small enough, light enough and powerful enough that they might one day sit comfortably in your garage, a mere four inches from the wall.

"The 'we have done it like this for a century' value chain in developed electricity markets will be turned upside down within the next 10-20 years, driven by solar and batteries."

Major companies like Walmart, IKEA, Google, Apple, Facebook, Costco, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Staples, and many others are starting to go solar in a big way.

A UBS study said it well: "Our view is that the 'we have done it like this for a century' value chain in developed electricity markets will be turned upside down within the next 10-20 years, driven by solar and batteries." The report also states that:

By 2025, everybody will be able to produce and store power. And it will be green and cost competitive, i.e., not more expensive or even cheaper than buying power from utilities. It is also the most efficient way to produce power where it is consumed, because transmission losses will be minimized. Power will no longer be something that is consumed in a 'dumb' way. Homes and grids will be smart, aligning the demand profile with supply from (volatile) renewables."

The environment will also benefit from the vast reduction of fossil fuels, which will also boost most sectors of the economy.  Electric cars will become cheaper to operate than fossil-fuel-burning ones, projects Wadhwa:

We will be able to create unlimited clean water — by boiling ocean water and condensing it.  With inexpensive energy, our farmers can also grow hydroponic fruits and vegetables in vertical farms located near consumers.  Imagine skyscrapers located in cities that grow food in glass buildings without the need for pesticides, and that recycle nutrients and materials to ensure there is no ecological impact.  We will have the energy needed to 3D-print our everyday goods and to heat our homes.

Solar energy has the potential to be a central driving factor in creating a world of Abundance, written about by Peter Diamandis.  Perhaps more importantly, as Diamandis points out in the video below, solar has the promise to be a great force for global democratization, because the countries that presently have the least economic power, have the most sunshine.

By 33rd Square

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