2. Everyone loves solar (they can’t see). Over 10 million Americans live within five kilometers of a utility-scale solar project. Last year, researchers at the University of Berkeley carried out the first national survey of these households. The smallest projects (under 2 megawatts) had five times as many positive comments as negative. But as solar farms grow, that balance reverses. Those living near to the largest solar arrays (100 megawatts or more) were 12 times more likely to express negative attitudes than positive ones. These attitudes can easily translate to political action—at least 15% of counties in the US have effectively halted new utility-scale solar, wind, or both, according to an analysis by USA Today in February.
3. Solar power can be contagious. On a neighborhood scale, solar panels spread like salmonella at a block party. Solar contagion is the observation that installing a few panels has a noticeable effect on driving adoption nearly. Every panel installed means that utilities need to generate and transmit less power, and this in turn helps the low-carbon transition even in places that remain focused on fossil fuels. Increased uptake then pushes prices down further, creating a virtuous feedback loop across the photovoltaic industry.
• • •
What To Keep An Eye On
1. The biggest of the big. The world’s biggest solar facility is currently the Bhadla Solar Park in the Thar desert of Rajasthan, India. It covers 56 square kilometers and has a capacity of 2.2 gigawatts, the same as a couple of typical nuclear power stations. Larger and more powerful solar farms are being planned, none more ambitious than the 20 gigawatt orbiting solar space stations envisioned by start-up Virtus Solis. But don’t get too excited. Read this sobering analysis in IEEE Spectrum to find out why such concepts are likely to remain strictly science fiction for the foreseeable future.
2. The smallest of the small. There’s plenty of room at the bottom for solar powered gadgets. Ultra-thin flexible and transparent cells are coming soon, enabling solar-powered clothing and windows. Further down the road to commercialization are new materials that should enable a host of low-power gadgets (think remote controls and thermostats) to draw all the power they need from ambient and indoor lighting, even LEDs, and never need a battery change.
3. A short supply of rooftops? It might sound like a distant risk, but the scale of the energy transition is so immense that even if PV panels were installed on every suitable US rooftop, it would only account for 40% of the nation’s energy needs. Despite hand-wringing about sprawling solar farms replacing actual agriculture, the situation there is much less serious. A mere 1% of US farmland could provide up to 20% of the country’s electricity, and that’s before considering the many benefits of agrivoltaics, which combine power generation with crops or pasture, potentially boosting food production. Another win-win could be topping irrigation canals with solar panels, saving millions of cubic meters of fresh water and enabling farmers to phase out dirty old diesel water pumps.
This post was originally published on 3rd party site mentioned in the title of this site
