eli5: Why do we not run heavily on solar energy as a society or at least in sunny places?
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Solar panels haven’t been terribly efficient up until late, but moreso, you have to store solar energy if it is the main source of power, which makes it less efficient than it already was. That said it is way underutilized.
There are a few reasons why we don’t rely heavily on solar energy as a society, even in sunny places. One reason is that solar panels are relatively expensive to install and maintain, especially on a large scale. Additionally, solar energy is only available during the day, and it can be difficult to store the excess energy that is generated for use at night or on cloudy days. Finally, solar energy is not always reliable, as weather conditions can affect the amount of energy that is generated by solar panels. Overall, while solar energy is a clean and renewable source of energy, there are still challenges to using it as our primary source of power.
Solar power is not efficient enough(needs huge fields to generate sustainable electricity, , loses efficiency the moment dirt, debris and more either damages or covers those expensive panels and the panels are at the mercy of weather and the Solstices to even get 12h of strong productivity with 12 hours of weak to no productivity.
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.
> Why do we not run heavily on solar energy as a society or at least in sunny places?
What makes you think we don’t? [Rooftop solar water heating](https://previews.123rf.com/images/awlend/awlend1603/awlend160300005/55010410-solar-water-heating-systems-on-the-roofs-of-the-city-of-marmaris-turkey.jpg) is common in many parts of the world
We actually do a lot of solar PV in AZ. It’s one of the fastest growing sources of energy. In other locations, it has to do with economics.
Check out this interactive map that shows which energy source is cheapest in every county (LCOE). You can adjust variables like overnight (or setup) costs, lifetime of plant, and any CO2 taxes.
https://calculators.energy.utexas.edu/lcoe_map/#/county/tech
Energy producers rely on long-term resource plans, or in other words they plan for what they’ll need in 10-20 years. Solar has only really become commercially viable (meaning cheap and reliable) in the last few years, so we’re still catching up on updating our plans.
There’s also the issue of priorities. The number one priority is making sure you get power when you need it, the second priority is making sure it’s affordable, and the third is sustainability. Reliability is difficult and it gets more difficult the more you put inconsistent energy sources like solar and wind into the mix, so making the switch to renewables takes quite a bit of time and expense. We don’t really get second chances here, after all, because if we screw up and your power goes out for any major period of time, you could very well die.
Because both oil barons and politicians are greedy, spineless pigs?
Most people think home solar panels look ugly.
Sure there are issues with funding and efficiency, but both are being solved better than at any other time.
Aesthetics is a *very* large part of people’s decisions.
Because people and governments want cheap, clean, readily available energy but they are too short-sighted to invest in the energy infrastructure that facilitates such a system.
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