A Short Solar Energy Primer

A Short Solar Energy Primer

A Short Solar Energy Primer

There are two interesting facts about solar energy that people don't often consider.

First, all energy on earth is solar energy in one form or another. The only difference is that solar electricity uses this energy immediately, while other forms lock it away until it is released through combustion (such as burning of coal, oil or wood).

Second, the idea of using sunlight as a direct energy source is far from new. Methods of employing direct sunlight as a form of utility energy have been the object of experimentation for at least 2,000 years. However, the idea of solar electricity is a fairly new concept that only got traction about sixty years ago. It was in the late 1940s that the first practical solar cells were finally developed.

For many years, the cost of solar electric power made it impractical to use on a large scale, despite the fact that the earth's surface receives 1,000 kilowatts of energy per square yard of surface every sunny day. The methods and materials required to manufacture the panels were initially very expensive, meaning that solar electricity cost several times what consumers paid for utility energy from oil and coal-fired plants.

That gap is closing rapidly however, partially due to cheaper and more efficient methods of manufacturing solar panels and partially due to increased efficiency of the panels themselves. Current trends indicate that solar electricity will reach grid parity meaning that it will be competitive price-wise with other forms of electrical energy by the year 2020.

Currently, the major challenge facing the solar energy industry (aside from the oil and coal industries and their Washington D.C. lobbyists) is how to get electricity from a generating plant to the communities that need it. The locations in the U.S. that are most suitable for producing solar electricity are far from most major population centers (the exception being those in the Southwest such as Las Vegas and Phoenix) and would require massive and expensive infrastructure projects in order to connect them to the existing grid.

The most likely solution is to install miniature solar generation equipment on individual buildings and homes as has been done in Germany for several years. This would provide an added benefit to homeowners who could feed their excess electricity back into the grid and actually be paid for it, effectively brining their solar energy costs to zero.

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