John & Angela wrote:
2. Storage. The sun doesn't shine at night and although the storage technology is now becoming mature the production (read factories) still has to catch up and will also be hard to sustain.
John, I'm curious: What massive storage capacity for the output from solar farms is large enough to supply whole cities at night and during long cloudy periods is becoming mature?
The only storage methodology I know of large enough is for the solar farms when the sun is shining to run electric pumps that pump water up into a reservoir so that water coming down from the reservoir can then turn those same electric pump motors as generators to provide huge amounts of power at night and during long cloudy periods. We live close to one of those large electrical energy storage reservoirs.
Using local solar arrays to keep charged local arrays of lithium or similar technology batteries so as to power mobile devices, electric trains/trucks/cars, and individual buildings is one thing ... but storing energy for massive population centers probably is a whole different ball game. IMHO, that's the real challenge in using solar to really get us off fossil fuels withouut increasing the use of nuclear fission reactors.
So far I'm not a fan of localized solar energy creation and storage systems ever being able to supply the world's large scale energy needs. Centralized and massive solar energy collection and storage is probably the final approach that must be used. (That is until, and if, science can someday tame nuclear fusion.)
