Why Can’t Solar Energy Completely Represent Coal Energy?
Solar energy is clean energy from the sun, it is astonishing. It has become the cheapest way to generate electricity. But yet it produces only 3% percent of the world's electricity. Why aren't we using more of it?
Is it because of the price? Let's take a look at how much the price of solar has fallen. In the last fifteen years, the unit price of solar power has drop-in impressive speed. The modern-day solar cell made from silicon was invented in the US in 1954. Back then, it mainly got used in the space industry and was still super expensive. But as the technology progressed, prices started to fall. In 2000, Germany passed a law to boost renewable energy development. This was big because it put a fixed price on energy generated from sources like wind. That gave people and companies a reason to set up solar panels. And for them to do that, someone needed to build these solar panels. China really pumped out the solar cells. China now is the biggest producer of solar panels, about 70% of the world's production. China makes the price cut down 95% than 15 years ago.
So, it's not the price problem. Why not use solar energy to cut off all these dirty power plants? One of the big problems is storage. Solar power only works when the sun is shining. When it's cloudy or even worse-dark, even the best solar cells are pretty useless. But nighttime is the time we need it the most.
In the morning, when most people get up and get ready, we need energy. And in the evening when we back home, it is the time we need energy. Solar energy can only be produced in the daytime. While traditional power plants suck at ramping up this quickly. That means you have to keep them running at a certain output all day. That means the energy plant will end up with actually more power produced in the middle of the day than is used.
The other problem is that there are limits to how much energy you can put into the grid. Too much solar could overpower it, so it needs to be thrown away.
Luckily, we can count on lithium batteries since lithium batteries progressed fast and have been successfully used in cars. We can store solar energy in batteries and use it whenever we need it.
Although solar energy can't completely represent coal power, it takes an important role in energy and increasingly countries put forward measures to develop clean energy, especially solar energy. Companies leverage solar energy to save electricity costs from the grid and keep working when there is an outage, which can also protect their costly equipment.
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