Guess what’s dropping in price!

August 26th, 2009

Solar panels, that’s what!
And according to the manufacturers, they will continue dropping in price for the next 2 years as the global demand increases. With all fuss about greenhouse gases and the environmentalists’ yelling, the demand for solar power is soaring around the world.

What’s going on in the solar energy world?
The world is in the midst of an explosion of knowledge and production in solar energy. It was never completely ignored, but it seems to have been pushed onto the backburner for years. I had the feeling that everyone know that we could make energy from the sun but that making it from the moon, Lunar energy, would be was more of a challenge so we concentrated on that. Now in the greenhouse gas crisis, solar is the energy of the future.

The cost of solar panels
The lower the cost of the solar panel, the lower the cost of the energy it produces.
The main raw material of the panels is silicon and the price of silicon is relatively high, despite having fallen sharply since last year. There are other factors as well. These panels, which are known as PV (for photo-voltaic) panels, convert sunlight directly into 12 volt electricity. In order to make this electricity usable it has then to be converted to 120 or 220 volts before one can run the washing machine or TV set. These energy conversion devices have a price too.

Photovoltaics
PV production has been doubling every 2 years, increasing by an average of 48 percent each year since 2002, making it the world’s fastest-growing energy technology. Photovoltaics is not a new technology – remember those little solar powered calculators and watches that came onto the market years and years ago – they were the forerunner of the PV age. Since those days many new devices have been invented to generate low voltage electricity. One sees many of them along the sides of highways – a pole with a small solar panel on the top supplying power to an emergency telephone is a common sight.

The solar power competition
The competition in the energy business is fierce. Coal and gas remain at the top of the power generating list. Both of these are bad news for the environmentalists, but they are tried and tested materials and firm favorites. Most countries are still doubtful about solar. Many countries, of course, cannot use solar because of the few days in the year when there is plentiful sunlight. The UK and the Northern countries of Europe have this problem. Countries of the Middle East, Africa, India and Australia are the countries that fall right into the solar energy market.

The storage problem
One major problem in the solar energy business still waiting to be solved is the matter of storing electricity. It’s all very well producing electricity while the sun is shining. But the storage of energy for use at night-time when the sun isn’t shining is still not cheaply available.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 1:25 am and is filed under Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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