burlmart wrote:
i got interested in solar energy in late 70's. so many naysayers convinced me that the sunshine was too diffuse, undependable, and too hard to store.
even if only some of the video speaker's ideas of future advances come true, it'll be big. for example, if car-on-demand replaces car ownership such that parking lots are empty, the acerage freed-up could be converted to solar energy collection.
And forty years after you first developed an interest in Solar it now accounts for approximately .6 Percent of the US energy production. If that percentage increases at a linear rate, in the year 6017 solar will finally produce over half the energy consumed in the America.
The fact is those issues that the naysayers pointed out are still the major issues today. Solar's small footprint is very much limited to the areas with high solar gain on a daily basis. Storage is still very much an insurmountable hurdle. Add to the hurdles the fact that the best storage systems use large amounts of rare earth metals (rare being the operative word) and solar isn't going to be a significant source of power anytime in the near future.
