The challenges for solar power to gain widespread adoption is to have the cost of solar power achieve grid parity. This means that the cost of power generation through solar panel is equal to the cost of electricity generation from the grid. To reach grid parity, there must be sufficient market support and government incentives to spur entrepreneurs and company to continue to invest to upgrade the technology so that the cost of manufacturing solar panels continue to go down. The key challenges for solar power include:
Shortage in supply of silicon materials.
Silicon is critical for the manufacturing of photovoltaic cells. The limited supply and increasing cost of silicon raw material increases the cost of manufacturing. If the selling price of solar panels increases, the adoption of solar power will be slow. One of the greatest loss is in the waste associated with sawing silicon during conventional silicon wafer production technology. This loss, known as kerf loss determines the cost of manufacturing. If it can be reduced by more efficient process, it can cut down the use of silicon.
Government Incentives
Renewable energy especially solar power is subsidized heaviiy by government in several countries including Spain and Germany. It is this incentives and tax breaks provided that makes it cost efficient to adopt solar power. Any reduction or elimination of incentives can lead to a hindrance in growth of the PV industry. Recently, Germany is proposing to speed up the reduction of this incentive. Such news can easily cause the solar industry to scramble for help.
Improving performance
Solar cells onthe whole are still not very efficient. They convert about 10-15% of the sunlight that falls on it. Better technology that leads to better conversion can increase the output and thus lower the overall cost of electricity production.
Recycling really does make a difference. From 1990 to 2005, recycling efforts helped decrease the amount of trash going to US landfills by 9 million ton. This is data supplied by the Environmental Protection Agency. We can help the effort by focusing on 3 simple tips: recycle, reduce and reuse.
Recycle
Besides newspapers, cans and bottle, you can also recycle magazines, glossy inserts, "junk mail" and phone books. When you are cleaning up and organizing your bills, you can also recycle those bills and receipts though you might want to shred them first to prevent identity theft. Your pizza boxes, diaper box, Amazon cardboard boxes and paper cartons such as orange juice carton, milk cartons can also be recycled. Electronics goods such as cell phones and computers can also be recycled though they may be harder to do so via your standard Waste Management Company. You can try CollectiveGood.com to recycle your PDAs, phones and pagers.
Reduce
US is the greatest paper consumer as Americans uses more than 730 pounds of paper a year. One way to reduce is in the office and you can set your printer to print double side by default. Also, for non important document, you can use the blank side of old documents for scrap paper. These days, most major companies offer online statements and by avoiding paper statements sent to your home, you can help save a lot.
Reuse
Reusing help minimize wastes. Get creative with what you got in terms of reusing. You can use plastic shopping bags as thrash bag instead of buying new thrash bags. Also, paper bags can be used to collect yard waste to be recycled as compost materials.
Besides solar power, wind power is another renewable form of energy that is increasingly being used as an alternative source to generate electricy. Large wind turbines erected in wind farms with rows and rows of wind turbines capture wind energy and turn them into electricity. The problem with wind energy is that it is often not continuous unless at high altitude.The higher the wind speed, the more powerful the wind energy and hence the amount of electricity produced. This results in a bursty nature of power which then requires storage technology to smooth out the burst of energy into a more even flow of power. Wind power is less predicatable than solar power since wind power is more likely to vary with wider degree on a per hour basis and also it changes seasonally. Therefore, a wind turbine connected to the grid can present energy demand management challenges and storage solutions are needed.
Currently, Germany is the country with the largest installed base of wind turbine generating a total of about 22,000 Megawatt with the United States behind with an install base that generates 16,000 Megawatt. The total combined electricity generated by wind power is estimated at about 74,000 MW in 2008 and is expected to increase at about 21% per year. In the United States, California is one of the largest installers of wind turbine though it has recently being surpassed by Texas. The United States had a huge growth in wind power capacity since 2007.
Because of the intermittent nature of wind power, wind power can never displace fossil fuel since wind power cannot provide a continuous source of energy. However, it can certainly reduce fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions. However, it does require a large amount of land to site a wind farm as wind turbines should be sited at least some distance from each other and to operate with the most amount of efficiency. In general, each wind turbine will need about 0.1 square kilometer of land for itself.
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