[bobbtmann]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-28/shell-sees-solar-as-biggest-energy-source-after-exiting-industry.html

It's about time.

I'm still surprised at the opposition solar energy gets. It seems like everyone understands how useful it is (solar powered trickle chargers, solar powered water heaters, solar powered bobbing toys, etc), yet at the same time it's seen as not practical. It can never be scaled up to meet industrial demands. According to wikipedia, the sun's radius is 6.96342×105 km. How much scaling up do we need? The only limit is our technology, and that changes all the time.

The only sad thing about this is that the positive scenario still has solar becoming the main power source at 2070. That seems kind of late in the game for dealing with global warming.

[Dragon]

Fast enough. I'd like to see this "global warming" over here. It's only been 3 days since temperatures went above freezing. I hate winter, I'd gladly have above 0 temperatures through the whole year.

[Beskargam]

as long as fossil fuel emissions are cut by 85% by 2100

sides. its about time

[BloodEagle]

Did anyone ever get around that whole 'solar tech costs more energy to create than it will ever produce' thing?

[Aardwolf]

Rubbish. Solar cells can pay for themselves in a matter of days. The trouble isn't making them, it's installation, paperwork, etc.

[Dragon]

Well, the technology is improving, so it's getting better. Solar power is nice, because it's everywhere and it doesn't run out, so hopefully there won't be any squabbles over it (well, the British will have to import it, but that's it ). Also, it scales much better than nuclear power and doesn't require that much trained personnel to use. If it can be made cheaper, it'd be a good source for the next century, and after that we'll hopefully have fusion power.

[headdie]

Solar is brilliant in places where you can typically expect sunny weather for most of the year, but like Dragon says in countries like the UK where I am it is just too unpredictable to be viable, even a sunny day there are often hazes of cloud or there are huge chunks of cloud floating about, the only time we can expect consistent sunshine for a decent length of time (i.e. 2 weeks or more) is in the late summer and early autumn and even that is far from a guarantee.

In these regions other, non weather related sources need to be found for our long term bulk needs which imho is where fusion will come in handy when the large scale experiments of the next couple of decades will start coming into their own.

[Klaustrophobia]

Also, it scales much better than nuclear power

..... you mean, DOWN, right?


solar is great for little doodads that don't need much power like toys and calculators.  it's a good supplement for residential use.  it's possible, if inconvenient to use for some larger powered things that don't demand absolute uninterrupted power without a backup source.  but it will NEVER be a baseload.  there is a hard limit on the energy density of the sun that can never be exceeded, no matter how far technology progresses, which is around 1300 watts per meter.  that's if you collect and convert every single photon that is emitted from the sun to that one square meter.  the average microwave is 1100-1200 watts.  my hair dryer is 1600.

[Luis Dias]

Rubbish. Solar cells can pay for themselves in a matter of days.

lolwot

Solar is the most promising energy tech I have ever encountered. Emphasis on promising. It's still too expensive, and it has a wide range of technical problems, being the most heinous the fact that you need the sky to be up there with a clear sun powering up your tech. Which is something that isn't available during the night and cloudy days. It's intermittency issues are damning, and forces energy companies to have a thermal power plant (gas, coal) in the pipeline "just in case" solar is failing. Which kind of negates the entire point if you think about it. Yes, wind power is also extremely facepalmish in this.



So yeah, Solar is amazing. In two or three decades. No need to over-invest in silly non-functional energetic architectures that will only waste resources and piss off everyone when the blackouts turn out to be a lot more prevalent, etc.

edit: And what Klaus said.

[IronBeer]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but don't conventional solar cells require relatively large amounts of rather rare semiconductor materials? If that's true, the economic implications of such a fact would be significant, in a word.

[Luis Dias]

Materials research in solar panels is an area of extremely vibrant activity nowadays, so I don't think that's some kind of a show-stopper in the long term. But yes, that is a current barrier. *By current I don't mean "traditional solar panels". I mean cost-effective thin-film generation solar panels. "Traditional solar panels" are mostly using silicon.

[Black Wolf]

Batteries are also a massive issue for solar power. The ones we have are expensive, inefficient and environmentally terrible at end of life. There are some innovative ideas about, but nothing commercial yet. Sort out power storage, and renewables start to look more interesting. Until then, sign me up for nuclear.

[watsisname]

That too -- power storage technology is pretty hilariously inadequate.  I believe solar should be a large component of world energy production in the long term, but for right now I hope to nuclear to tide us over.  Wind seems to be proving itself in certain areas but it's almost certainly not going to be a main player.

Fast enough. I'd like to see this "global warming" over here. It's only been 3 days since temperatures went above freezing. I hate winter, I'd gladly have above 0 temperatures through the whole year.

 
I'm sure we can all cope with global economic and ecologic collapse so that you never have to worry about below-freezing temperatures in winter ever again. 

[bobbtmann]

I understand why people like nuclear, but nuclear power needs an exhaustible fuel source. How common is uranium? Is there going to be a peak uranium?

[Dark RevenantX]

At the current rate, a better power source or the end of civilization will happen before we even come close to exhausting Uranium.

Solar energy is extremely useful but, ultimately, terrestrial solar energy isn't enough.  Putting the solar arrays in space might do the trick, but we're way too early for that.

[Luis Dias]

I understand why people like nuclear, but nuclear power needs an exhaustible fuel source. How common is uranium? Is there going to be a peak uranium?

Short answer: No.

[666maslo666]

I understand why people like nuclear, but nuclear power needs an exhaustible fuel source. How common is uranium? Is there going to be a peak uranium?

Its possible we will hit peak uranium some time in the future (probably not this century though) if we continued to use current once-through light water reactors which extract at best just 0,7% of the energy potential of uranium and discard the rest as waste. If we develop breeder reactors (uranium or thorium based) capable of extracting all the energy then we will practically never run out of fuel. With breeders, there is enough U/Th to sustain our energy consumption for longer than the Sun will exist.

[The E]

Let me just drag something down from upthread.

Solar power is nice, because it's everywhere and it doesn't run out,

Yes, the sun shines everywhere. However, most of that energy is expended on clouds, making us rely on specific geographic features (such as clear skies for most of the year), which are not that common.

(well, the British will have to import it, but that's it )

So would the polish, french, germans, norwegians, americans, canadians, chinese..... the list goes on. Not every country has the kind of geographical features mentioned above that make Solar a good, viable contender for a major role in the energy generation business.

Oh, and btw, the only reason solar tech is where it is at is because of billions upon billions of government subsidies to make solar viable in an area where it really isn't (Namely, Germany). Solar works best in areas that are rather lacking in the necessary infrastructures for the moment (like, say, the Sahara).

Finally, I am going to predict that someone is going to say something about solar energy stations in space that beam down energy. Let me just point out that any beam capable of delivering a worthwhile energy load through the atmosphere to a receiving station closer to the ground is functionally indistinguishable from an orbital death ray.

[Luis Dias]

lol The_E, I think your prediction was made a little late. Check the thread

[MP-Ryan]

Seriously?  We're having this discussion again?

Until someone invents a solar colelction mechanism that doesn't require a traditional photovoltaic cell panel, it's a non-starter.  The materials are expensive, they can only be situationally-deployed based on local climate, they have a short finite life span, and they require significant storage capacity.

Meanwhile, both the panels and the batteries requiring mining, refining, and manufacture using heavy metals, and all three of those process have a larger AND more lasting environmental impact.  The mining alone is pretty brutal.

Meanwhile, LNG is actually quite a clean energy source, and while nuclear relies on mining as well, you need a lot less material to run a few nuclear power stations than you need to run sufficient photovoltaics to be a useful power source.  A nuclear plants last a lot longer than solar panels.

*shakes head*

A lot of my co-workers keep drinking the solar kool-aid too and it drives me nuts - solar is NOT environmentally-friendly and NOT practical as a long-term mass power source with the collection methods we are aware of.  Now, if someone comes up with a way to coat homes in chlorophyll and harvest that energy relatively cheaply, then we can talk about the usefulness of solar power.

Solar is not economically viable, and is heavily subsidized in every jurisdiction it's used in.