The Solar Energy | Future Of Solar Is Bright
The Dark Side of Solar Power
is a sunny time for solar energy. In the US, the domestic installation of solar panels has been completely revived since the collapse of the Covid, with analysts predicting more than 19 gigawatts of total installed capacity compared to 13 gigawatts by the end of 2019. In the next 10 years, that number could quadruple, according to industry research data. And does not consider the further impact of the potential new rules and incentives introduced by the Green-Friendly Biden administration.
Solar’s epidemic-proof performance is largely on the Solar Investment Tax Credit, which reduces solar-related costs by 26% (from just 30% between 2006-2019) for all residential and commercial customers. After 2023, the tax credit will go down to 10% permanently for commercial installers and disappear completely for home buyers. Therefore, solar sales will probably heat up even more in the coming months, as buyers are in a race to get cash whenever possible.
Tax subsidies are not the only cause of solar explosions. The conversion efficiency of panels has improved by 0.5% per year over the last 10 years, although production costs (and thus prices) have fallen sharply, driven by several waves of product innovation, driven mainly by industry-influenced Chinese panel manufacturers. For end consumers, this is far less than the energy generated per kilowatt.
This is all big news, not just for industry but for everyone who recognizes the need to switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy for the future of our planet. But there is a huge caution that very few people are talking about.
Future of solar bright
The sun releases enough energy on the earth every second to meet the full human energy demand for more than two hours. Given that it is readily available and renewable, solar energy is an attractive source of energy. By 2018, however, less than two percent of the world’s energy came from solar energy. Historically, harvesting solar energy has been expensive and relatively inefficient. Although this small amount of solar consumption has improved over the past two decades, the amount of electricity collected from solar energy worldwide has increased 300-fold from 2000 to 2019. New technological advances over the last twenty years have driven this increased reliance on solar by reducing costs, and new technological developments promise to further increase these solar uses and reduce costs and increase the efficiency of solar panels.
Solar Cell: Costs, Challenges and Design
Over the last 20 years, the costs associated with solar cells, structures capable of converting light energy into electricity, have been steadily declining. The US government laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which studies solar cell technology, estimates contributors to the growing affordability of solar energy. They estimate the cost of hard, physical solar cell hardware, and soft costs, including labor or the cost of obtaining the necessary government permits (Figure 1). Soft costs have been reduced because there are more potential customers and more installation experts for new solar cells, so companies can build a larger number of solar cells and install them more easily. Hard cost is less than half of what it was in 2000, mainly due to declining material costs and increased capacity of light-capturing cells. Engineering More economical and efficient solar cells require careful consideration of the physics involved in solar capture in addition to innovative designs.
