The Future of Solar Electricity

[Ferdinand Gnadt]

Dear community members,

Within the context of a research seminar by the Institute of Technology and Innovation Management at the Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg, we are investigating the potential of online communities as an instrument for the prediction of future developments and trends in the renewable energy sector. Undoubtedly some passionate practitioners like you, have a deep knowledge of current developments, feasible technological improvements and imaginable future developments of technology, society and politics concerning the renewables. Therefore, we hope to win you over as participants of a lively discussion.


THE PROCEDURE

First phase
What will solar power generation look like in the year 2030?
This phase is a brainstorming on the future development of solar power. There are no limits set, so feel free to present any idea or thought which you consider possible, practicability will be discussed later. You may bring up every subtopic that is the most interesting for you, be it a specific technical innovation, a new semiconductor material, the future importance of solar electricity within the renewable energy mix in general or an expectation of coming governmental incentives.

Second phase
Depending on the number of presented ideas, we may cluster them regarding specific topics as far as possible. Subsequently we will discuss the presented ideas and concepts aiming to deepen and evolve them collaboratively towards comprehensive future scenarios.


CONFIDENTIALITY
We want to encourage you to participate without doubts and assure you that every posted idea or concept will only be used for academic analysis without any commercial exploitation by the moderators.


We are looking forward to your discussions!
The stage is yours!

[Alton Root]

Great topic to discuss...
Now a day, In many place solar power is in use. But only we need to give some help to improve the solar power usage.

[Alton Root]

In UK, they are made a Solar Farm. 14,000 homes connected with this farm and get electricity read more https://goo.gl/zfqK4W

[Green Match]

The growing presence of Online Communities for the public has had an exponential growth with the Internet of Things being popular in Smart Cities. Smart Cities are powerful innovations to help communitie advance together. Look which cities have began their projects with their open data community: [Mod: Advertisement link removed]

[CSV architect]

From my perspective, the latest innovations in civil engineering are Style and design is not compromised by the emphasis on efficiency and energy savings on sustainable architecture. In fact, Solar Electricity places great emphasis on innovation at all levels, including design and style. Many sustainable buildings are known to be striking and awesome in looks. The innovation of solar extends well beyond the technology of the field.

[Joe Blake]

A project called STUCCO in Sydney, New South Wales, looks fairly promising.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-08/stucco-student-housing-installs-shared-solar-battery-system/8103298

It gives students affordable housing with reduced power costs thanks to community owned and shared infrastructure.

Other communities are now off the drawing board and supplying locally generated green energy via microgrids.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-17/green-energy-for-new-white-gum-valley-residents/6553896

https://arena.gov.au/projects/solar-and-storage-trial-at-alkimos-beach-residential-development/

In view of recent cyber attacks world wide, including it appears against electricity infrastructure, I'd suggest that microgrids are a good defence against such attacks, as the number of people affected by a grid failure would be minimal, compared to an event such as the September 2016 event when the entire state of South Australia was blacked out due to a weather event.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_South_Australian_blackout

[Rob Beckers]

Good to see Australia is taking the lead in this! I too believe distributed generation and micro-grids are the way of the future. It's a solution for poor grid infrastructure (as we have in North America) that offers greening up the power supply at the same time. It's also a possible solution for countries that do not have much power infrastructure yet, to avoid the very costly high-power distribution grid.

At this point the weak link is in storage. There is still no good way to store large amounts of energy that is cost-efficient, and energy-efficient. Without good storage micro-grids are problematic.

-RoB-

[Ashish Bhatia]

Hi All,

Here is a Concept which helps to Implement Solar Energy in Very Less & at the Same Time, Around the World:idea::idea::idea:

Pictorial View
https://youtu.be/iQwhWgXmKQk

Detailed with Calculation :-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPQ1glAY_Tw&t=1s

OR

http://lightenmyways.blogspot.com

Regards
Ashish

[Mabel Smith]

The amount of solar power added worldwide soared by some 50% last year because of a sun rush in the US and China.

New solar photovoltaic capacity installed in 2016 reached more than 76 gigawatts, a dramatic increase on the 50GW installed the year before. China and the US led the surge, with both countries almost doubling the amount of solar they added in 2015, according to data compiled by Europe’s solar power trade body.

Globally there is now 305GW of solar power capacity, up from around 50GW in 2010 and virtually nothing at the turn of the millennium.

[Mabel Smith]

We in our college to portray solar as future best energy done a projects related to solar power named solar powered mobile charger which is mini project and solar powered automatic irrigation system which is my major project...

[Awais Butt]

Dear community members,

Within the context of a research seminar by the Institute of Technology and Innovation Management at the Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg, we are investigating the potential of online communities as an instrument for the prediction of future developments and trends in the renewable energy sector. Undoubtedly some passionate practitioners like you, have a deep knowledge of current developments, feasible technological improvements and imaginable future developments of technology, society and politics concerning the renewables. Therefore, we hope to win you over as participants of a lively discussion.


THE PROCEDURE

First phase
What will solar power generation look like in the year 2030?
This phase is a brainstorming on the future development of solar power. There are no limits set, so feel free to present any idea or thought which you consider possible, practicability will be discussed later. You may bring up every subtopic that is the most interesting for you, be it a specific technical innovation, a new semiconductor material, the future importance of solar electricity within the renewable energy mix in general or an expectation of coming governmental incentives.

Second phase
Depending on the number of presented ideas, we may cluster them regarding specific topics as far as possible. Subsequently we will discuss the presented ideas and concepts aiming to deepen and evolve them collaboratively towards comprehensive future scenarios.


CONFIDENTIALITY
We want to encourage you to participate without doubts and assure you that every posted idea or concept will only be used for academic analysis without any commercial exploitation by the moderators.


We are looking forward to your discussions!
The stage is yours!

The role solar energy will play in the battle against global warming is one of the biggest reasons solar energy is here to stay and expand in the future. Electricity is a necessity to sustain our way of life and continued economic growth not only in the United States but worldwide as well.

A MIT study on the future of solar energy states:

“About two-thirds of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are associated with electricity generation, heating, and transportation. We already know how to use solar energy to generate electricity with very low CO2 emissions, and we know how to use electricity to provide heat and surface transportation services. …the solar resource is enormous, dwarfing both global energy consumption and the potential scales of other renewable energy sources. A plausible way to reduce global CO2 emissions despite growth in energy consumption would be to increase dramatically the use of solar energy to generate electricity and to rely more on electricity for heating and transportation.”

If you ask me, where are we right now in terms of solar advancement then my answer would be "Solar energy has been with us for some time. It’s no longer unusual to see rooftop solar panels or larger solar farms. With technology development, solar panels have become widely used and it isn’t just clean energy enthusiasts who install them: people are installing them as a form of investment ."

And WHERE ARE WE GOING, then my answer would be "With the new administration that denies climate change and that isn’t too keen on supporting Eco-friendly energy sources, people are worried what the future will hold for the solar power industry.

[Admin: Gratuitous advertising removed]

[Brittany LeMoine]

There's still a lot of focus on roof panels when people talk about solar energy. Individual panels like this seem to be the common idea of solar power generation, even though utility-scale is a much better option, economically. Seeing some of the projects that companies like 7X Energy have done: [Admin: Gratuitous back-link removed], I really think that that's the way solar energy production will be going in the future. If solar energy support is continued, we should see more big utility companies switching over to using the energy developed by these large utility-scale solar energy companies.

[Joe Blake]

Brittany,

Whilst it may on the face of it appear that large scale solar generation is more economically viable, some places, like Australia, have governments that are so openly anti-renewable/ pro-fossil fuelled energy* that I would be either sitting in the dark or paying exorbitant power costs if I hadn't taken the leap, on my on behalf, and installed 3.2 kW of PV and batteries in 2009. Those companies trying to establish large scale PV farms are finding it a Sisyphean task here.

*https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-08/scott-morrison-holds-a-lump-of-coal-in-parliament/11091818

[Ralph Day]

And in my little splat on the globe (Ontario Canada) our feed in tarriff system was torpedoed by a conservative government (just over a year elected). Contracts still honoured so far...except for the wind farm in my County that was shut down before it was commissioned, by one of that govt's first pieces of legislation. Shame, shame.

Still 10 years on my contract (see sig). Hope the insanity doesn't affect that. It's embarrassing to be part of the stupid electorate, isn't it Joe?

Ralph

[Joe Blake]

Don't get me started, Ralph. If you haven't seen the news here of late, we're in the midst of a murderous drought, with maximum temperature records being shattered, our "bushfire season" has started a month earlier than normal and there have been literally hundreds of fires up and down the eastern states. Six people have died (so far) and countless properties lost, and when people started pressing the politicians to do something about climate change, we were told "now is not the time to talk about it".

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/17/if-you-cant-talk-about-climate-when-the-country-is-burning-when-can-you

Think our Prime Monster - er Minister, Scott Morrison needs a new nickname - "Nero". Yesterday he announced a multi billion dollar splurge to boost the economy:

https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/government-to-bring-forward-infrastructure-spending-to-help-stimulate-the-economy/news-story/a4dcfa611441aaaa185496309ca082f2

Just what we need??? :mad::mad::mad: Don't think so, Nero.

[Ralph Day]

Wow Joe, just Wow! You have an entirely different breed of politician in Oz. My condolences.

Ralph