Solar power

 

Solar power

I love solar power.  It generates electricity with no moving parts (if you don’t count the electrons).  For our purposes, it is an unlimited resource.  Problem is, when the sun is not shining, solar is not producing electricity, and it is expensive to store electricity for when you need it later.  Battery technology is coming along nicely (think Tesla), but it is still very expensive and not practical on the scale of a power grid.  So solar is only part of our energy solution.  We need vastly better battery technology to store electricity, or……

 

We need a better grid.  Look at it this way.  Solar will produce electricity in one location for maybe 8 hours a day.  We can extend that by three hours or so by feeding solar electricity into the grid in New York to be used in California while it is still dark there, and vice-versa.  We don’t need better battery technology, we need a bigger grid.  When it’s dark in the U.S. the sun is shining somewhere else.  When the sun is too low in the northern hemisphere in the winter, it is just right in the southern hemisphere.  We need a global solution; a global power grid!  We don’t need to store solar energy overnight, we just need to move it efficiently from where it is light to where it is dark!

 

A global consortium.  Everybody plays that wants to.  Pay for what you take out; get paid for what you put in.  Problem solved.  You’re welcome.