From Guest Blogger Anica Oaks: How Improved Solar is Making a Huge Impact on the Green Movement
The green movement continues to grow, spurred by innovations in a variety of industries. Continued developments in the automobile, energy and recycling industries lead the way in influencing people to adopt a greener way of life. Many of these developments, such as advances in solar energy, have made its adoption cost-effective for individuals and businesses.
It’s Not Just for Rooftops
While many think of photovoltaic cells on a rooftop when they think of solar, advancements in the energy technology have expanded its common uses. Not only have design advancements dropped the cost of large-scale solar power systems, they’ve also dropped the cost of individual installations.
This means that electric companies can better afford construction of solar farms, which provide an affordable, clean energy alternative to their customers. Other developments have made household appliances like solar boilers and solar furnaces affordable alternatives. Solar has even moved into the automobile industry.
Schools like the University of Oklahoma, which houses one of the leading energy departments in the US, developed solar-powered cars. Its solar design team regularly competes with other universities in innovation contests. These teams devote themselves to improving drive time and speeds of solar cars, as well as to reducing development costs.
Currently, the OU solar vehicle costs $150,000 to build and can attain a top speed of 70 mph.
Green Building
The drop in cost of solar technologies increased its use in green or sustainable building. Rather than an afterthought by the homeowner, many builders now include solar in home design. By combining green building techniques and active solar systems, builders can craft zero energy homes.
A zero energy home produces as much energy as it consumes annually. Since solar homes produce their own energy, they produce no energy bills.
Communication Advancements
Communication advancements have also helped improve the uptake of solar technologies, especially in green building. Information dissemination once fell to the government, news media and a select few well-funded non-profits.
Affordable Internet access and texting opened the door for individuals, schools and organizations like Blue Sky Solar Energy to educate consumers via websites, texting and social media. These messages include information regarding solar advances, threats causing environmental degradation, and the environmental and financial benefits of adopting green technologies.
Innovation in the field of solar energy continues to drop the cost of its adoption. Communications advances enable individuals and a wide-range of organizations to disperse information regarding environmental issues and solar technologies to the general public. As solar advances continue, expect it to cut further inroads into wide spread adoption.
Anica,
I great to see you so enthusiastic about renewable energy and the the Solar Industry.
I suspect your interest is probably a little more invested than just an independent observer :)( but that’s okay, it’s important to be enthusiastic about where you work)
Solar Energy does have limitations, and potentially some very worrying environmental problems concerning panel disposal. Tesla is experiencing some negative feed back from customers who didn’t realize lithium batteries lose capacity each year of operation.
Many home Solar installations fall far short of expectations due to a myriad of problems and over optimism.
As for Solar cars, these little vehicles are gimmicks, experiments designed to publicize the potential of Solar. The technology could never power a real car in normal transport use.
Unfortunately, social media can be a double edged sword. It true social media can help publicize and help adoption of new technology, but it can also be used by advocates to raise unrealistic expectations and create myths.
Although solar panels have dropped in price due to better technology and mass production, the main driving force has been export price dumping sponsored by the government of the Peoples Republic of China coupled with Federal, State and local subsidies, incentives and tax credits.
When these subsidies are removed the Solar industry shrinks dramatically and investment for commercial projects disappears.
Manufacturing of solar panels involves creating a lot of highly toxic waste in the process which is more difficult to contain than waste from a thorium nuclear reactor. ( Silicon tetrachloride etc)That doesn’t include the problems of disposing the toxic waste from obsolete panels.
(actually, the whole solar process over 25 years produces 300,000 times more environmentally harmful toxic waste per watt of energy, than a thorium reactor).
That’s why China and similar third world countries are able to drop the price, they don’t worry too much about the costs of safe disposal.
But that’s not the only downside! The ticking time bomb is what to do with Billions of tones (that’s right billions, not millions ) of defunct Solar panels , each year .
No one has a real answer.
The solar industry claims by the time it become a problem in 20 years from now, technology with have been developed to recycle these obsolete panels.
Maybe that’s correct, I’m sure we all hope they’re right, but in event they get it wrong, we should start figuring out what to do with billions of tons of cadmium telluride, copper indium selenide, cadmium gallium (di)selenide, copper indium gallium (di)selenide, hexafluoroethane, lead, polyvinyl fluoride and crystalline silicon.
The logistical problems are staggering and as yet no real research has been compiled to study the future environmental effects.
Solar advocates and installation companies, (like Blue Sky) don’t really care! ( the problems 25 years away, and not theirs anyway).
Solar advocates persist with the myth that of solar panels remain functioning perfectly order for 70-150 years !
in fact solar panels are designed to last 25-30 years. When new a solar panels deteriorates about 1% per year, but as the years go by that rate accelerates until by the 15th year the rate is close to 10%. Some of t he older, higher quality panels can remain functioning at 15-20 % capacity after 25 years.
In 2015, the US Solar Energy Industries Association argued all the studies was incorrect, and in fact solar panels are “mainly made up of easy-to-recycle materials that can be successfully recovered and reused at the end of their useful life.”
When challenged to provide details, and relevant studies the Association replied it didn’t intend to debate with climate deniers !
Later in a more carefully thought out response, the US Solar Energy Industries Association is a statement acknowledging a problem could arise but was confident new recycling technology would be developed.
When asked what research the Association or it’s members was undertaking in regard to future disposal, the spokesperson replied that such information was confidential at this stage.
Every new technology has it’s downsides, and it’s up to governments, regulators and consumers to decide is the advantages are worth the negatives.
In the case of Solar, it would appear too little regard has gone into considering the downside.