eli5: Why do we not run heavily on solar energy as a society or at least in sunny places?
In: 8
First, it’s expensive. It takes up quite a bit of area, needs some kind of support structure, and the panels themselves aren’t cheap. And maintenance is annoying because you need to track dozens of panels individually for just a home-sized one.
Second, and the largest reason it hasn’t been pushed harder is that it only works when the sun shines, which is a problem at night. Grid-scale energy storage is a massive problem that there aren’t any great solutions to (grid scale batteries are too expensive to be practical, and most other techs lose a very large portion of the power put in). So you still need other sources of power.
It’s still a developing tech though. 10 years ago, energy was cheap and solar panels were well beyond the average homeowner’s budget. Now, panels are cheap enough that a solar loan is often less than what the electric bill would be. In another 10 years, it may be a no-brainer to add it to almost any house or building, even if it isn’t able to utilize all the energy it produces.
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