Introduction to Solar – Video

Transcript:

[Dr. Scott W. Tinker] Solar’s main advantage and disadvantage is that it gets all its energy from the sun. To generate electricity, solar panels just need sunlight. The fuel is free, and panels are simple to build. The technology is common and manufacturing is standardized. These make solar a cheap way to generate power today, and the panels are lightweight, easy to install, and modular, meaning solar systems can be very small. Or they can be scaled reasonably quickly for large projects all while producing zero emissions at the generation source. Many benefits, but they come with many challenges. Large solar plants cover enormous areas of land that displace wildlife and makes it difficult to use for other purposes. The panels themselves are inefficient at making electricity, to improve the materials would be expensive. They wear out, and need to be disposed of in landfills. The plastic and chemicals in them have serious environmental impacts. But solar’s biggest challenge is the sun, it can’t make power without it. No power at night, little in the morning and evening, harder at high latitudes or when it’s cloudy. This means solar needs an electricity source to back up its intermittent output. This can be a battery system or a grid connection to on demand generation like natural gas or hydro, both of which limit solars uses and eliminate its cost advantage. So, solar is emission free, but scaling it up has an environmental impact, and solar is cheap at the source, until back up electricity makes it expensive to the customer.