13 ms·

The key part is: > But he soon discovered that the shade from the towering panels above the soil actually helped the plants thrive. That intermittent shade als

The key part is: > But he soon discovered that the shade from the towering panels above the soil actually helped the plants thrive. That intermittent shade also meant a lot less evaporation of coveted irrigation water. And in turn the evaporation actually helped keep the sun-baked solar panels cooler, making them more efficient. Solar panels are still way over hyped in a stupid marginalist way, but polyculture has always been a good idea :).

poulsbohemian 5y ago
> Solar panels are still way over hyped in a stupid marginalist way Talk more about this, I’d be very interested to understand your thoughts
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  How's what I wrote in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29219258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29219258 ? Conversely see what I wrote in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29212004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29212004 about more capital intensive power generation that if done at a good scale would drown current demand.
cedilla 5y ago
Solar is hardly over-hyped. It has always over-delivered since the first panels were built in the 19th century. No one predicted such a success and so incredibly low prices even 20 years ago. Could you explain what you mean by "hyped in a marginalist way"?
- glogla 5y ago
  I've seen a lot of suggestions that solar can be used as the only energy source for humanity, that we don't need anything else, just build more solar! That's not realistic. Of course, the limitations that solar has are very much solvable, and having solar is better than not having it. Solar is important, and it is our future. But the solutions to solar's limitations seem to be in their infancy (new types of storage), hard to scale (battery storage), not really helpful (just build more coal and gas peakers!) or not considered at all. Which does not inspire confidence.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    You see this quite a lot. There does come a point where adding more solar … when a certain percentage of your production is already solar … there comes a point where more solar is a whole lot more expensive and less reasonable. But that’s really more of a “80% of our power is solar” problem and the US isn’t even at 3%. The percentage of usage which could be handled by solar is usually far underestimated. We don’t need to care about limitations of solar for a long long time.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      I agree, however your point about 3% isn’t quite true. Look at the last 12 months rolling and estimated total solar and divide by total electricity and you get about 3.7%: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01 https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
    - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
      Would 80% be ideal? I would imagine Solar would start getting iffy over 50%. Presumably you want a lot of hydroelectric, wind, and nuclear so you don't need a lot of batteries, and you have enough sources of power when the sun isn't shining. Maybe I'm being un-imaginative - but is anyone envisioning a global energy grid so we could have solar energy from Australia and Sahara shipped to North America during our night - and back to Asia and Europe from the Southwest during our day?? ^ This seems nonsense science fiction.
      - ac29 5y ago
        > Would 80% be ideal? I would imagine Solar would start getting iffy over 50%. Depends on how much storage you have. There is very, very little right now so even 50% might be a stretch. > Maybe I'm being un-imaginative - but is anyone envisioning a global energy grid so we could have solar energy from Australia and Sahara shipped to North America during our night - and back to Asia and Europe from the Southwest during our day?? I'd think you'd need a relatively inexpensive superconducting cable for that to make any sense. Running cables between continents has been a thing for over 150 years, but I'd think resistance losses would make it wildly impractical to power, say, Los Angeles with solar power collected in Australia.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  > low prices This is the stupid marginal ism I am talking about. Cranking out more solar panels is easy. Actually making the grids larger or have more storage requires the type of planning competence and cordination we suck at. Solar panels are popular precisely because they don't require that planning competence and coordination. So if we go full solar wind, we will slam into a wall we are utterly unprepared for, despite, yes, getting better at solar and wind themselves with volume.
  - Tade0 5y ago
    Going full solar and wind is going to take some time(20 year-ish?) and in the meantime energy storage will get there in terms of scale and cost. LiFePO4 packs already started trading below $100/kWh in 2020: https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/a-no-go-fantasy-writing-go-in-ruby-with-ruby-next https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/a-no-go-fantasy-writing-... CATL is pushing sodium-ion batteries: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/catls-new-sodium-ion-battery-help-ease-lithium-shortages-2021-08-03/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/catls-new-sodium-ion... You don't even need a lot of storage to greatly increase maximum stable solar and wind share. Exiting times ahead of us.
    - zdragnar 5y ago
      Our electric grids aren't designed for distributed generation- they are centrally planned and maintained. Every person that generates their own electricity stops paying their fair share of maintaining the grid, forcing poorer people who cannot afford their own rooftops to subsidize them. It is actually quite regressive- the denser the population center, the less electricity per person can be generated by solar. The electricity might be free, but the cost of maintaining the grid never goes away.
      - ajbourg 5y ago
        > Every person that generates their own electricity stops paying their fair share of maintaining the grid This isn't true, at least not in Colorado. I pay a number of fees for maintaining the grid and these aren't going away when I have my net meter installed later this week. (hopefully)
- amelius 5y ago
  Building and shipping solar panels costs energy and material resources.
  - tsol 5y ago
    Doesn't everything? It's not an issue so long as across it's life it results in less carbon production than alternative sources do per kW
  - Lio 5y ago
    That’s true but it’s also true for fossil and nuclear fuels.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    And in a 100% solar economy, the energy to build and ship the panels would be solar. This is fine, as they output enough energy to make themselves in 1-4 years depending on which study you look at.
    - amelius 5y ago
      Using energy still generates heat, as per the laws of thermodynamics.
      - ben_w 5y ago
        Yes, and?
        drdeca 5y ago
        Perhaps they are mixing up the “there is therefore a maximum safe rate of worldwide energy use (however far away we are from that)” point with the “CO2 emissions from fossil fuels contribute to greenhouse effect” point, and... ok, I’m not sure either
      - PeterisP 5y ago
        Converting sunlight to electric energy and then using that energy generates the exact same amount of heat as if that sunlight was simply absorbed by the ground without the solar panel being in the way, as per the laws of thermodynamics.
- diogenescynic 5y ago
  Solar still relies on fossil fuels (coal!) and other rare earth metals that will be not be sustainable for many years (if ever). Solar prices are dropping, but I don't see how we ever fully divest from fossil fuels.
  - stephen_g 5y ago
    That's not true - basically no commercial solar panels contain rare earth metals (the place they're actually used is in permanent magnets in electric motors and generators for things like electric cars and wind turbines, maybe you were confusing that? But there's a lot of interest in eliminating those, e.g. e-motors). Solar panels don't rely on fossil fuels either - perhaps you're confused by reporting that currently they're produced using a fair bit of energy from coal etc.? But that is reducing and improving all the time as grids get greener.
    - diogenescynic 5y ago
      No, they directly use coal and silicon to produce solar panels. And panels only last ~10 years. So there is a constant need for fossil fuels. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335083312_Why_do_we_burn_coal_and_trees_to_make_solar_panels https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335083312_Why_do_we...
  - kragen 5y ago
    None of this is correct.
- samstave 5y ago
  >>since the first panels were built in the 19th century. ? Any interesting things to point me at on this topic? --- This says 1954 https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200904/physicshistory.cfm https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200904/physicshisto... --- Let me know if you have something else.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Non-silicon cells are older, but still fall in the 20th century[1]. Maybe copper oxide cells are older still? [1] https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/10/how-to-build-a-low-tech-solar-panel.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/10/how-to-build-a-low...
  - tim333 5y ago
    >Charles Fritts installed the first solar panels on New York City rooftop in 1884 >created the first solar cell by coating selenium with a thin layer of gold from https://brewminate.com/a-brief-history-of-solar-panels-since-the-19th-century/ https://brewminate.com/a-brief-history-of-solar-panels-since...
- batushka3 5y ago
  EU is experiencing surge in electricity prices, thanks to green idiocity. Wind and solar subsidized so heavy, nuclear closing, coal bad. But double the price of electricity is fine!
  - ntp85 5y ago
    This is fundamentally wrong on so many levels. Let's just pretend you would have any resemblance of a point there: Firstly, renewables are much cheaper than fossil or nuclear power - both in construction and operation. Secondly, the surging electricity prices, at least speaking for Germany here, are a result of the idiotic "EEG-Umlage".
  - brabel 5y ago
    The price surge is mostly due to natural gas prices and increased, unexpected higher demand [1]. Countries that have access to renewables are actually doing much better than others! > Since most countries still rely on fossil fuels to meet all their power demands, the final price of electricity is often set by the price of coal or natural gas. If gas becomes more expensive, electricity bills inevitably go up, even if clean, cheaper sources also contribute to the total energy supply. [1] https://www.euronews.com/2021/10/28/why-europe-s-energy-prices-are-soaring-and-could-get-much-worse https://www.euronews.com/2021/10/28/why-europe-s-energy-pric...
  - nextaccountic 5y ago
    > coal bad I agree on nuclear, but let's talk coal. Your point is that coal is good?
  - akie 5y ago
    That's a completely false statement. Nothing about it is true. The whole world is experiencing surges in electricity prices, not just the EU. Even within the EU, countries like France, which gets up to 70% of its energy from nuclear power, has rising electricity prices. Subsidizing wind and solar has nothing to do with this. Stop spreading lies.
yardie 5y ago
> Solar panels are still way over hyped It literally turns abundantly free solar energy into electricity. Where is the hype?
- bobsmooth 5y ago
  What do you do when it's cloudy?
  - buchanaf 5y ago
    Use other forms of electricity generation?
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    In addition to using other forms of energy, you can also over provision. Solar panels still work when it’s cloudy. They just don’t produce as much power. And with a grid you can average cloud cover over a large area.
  - maccolgan 5y ago
    That's why we have an electricity grid, it's not cloudly all the time all across the world, so even if we went full solar I don't see how it'd be problematic.
  - themeiguoren 5y ago
    Thankfully when it’s cloudy, your peak loads from AC are a lot lower.
- rozab 5y ago
  Current solar panels are almost 20% efficient. Even in the most outrageous sci-fi scenario, they could only hope to be 5x more efficient than they are currently, and in any case would require significant land use. Compared to nuclear or geothermal, the ceiling is so much lower. And then we get all the vaporware viral ops like solar freaking roadways and those water bottles that magically refill from the air with a tiny solar panel, ignoring the laws of thermodynamics but making hella kickstarter bux
anonuser123456 5y ago
>Solar panels are still way over hyped in a stupid marginalist way Solar panels are powered by fusion, of course they are hyped.
- ruined 5y ago
  who the fuck is scraeming "AGRIVOLTAICS" at my house. show yourself, coward. fusion energy will never take off
gremloni 5y ago
I feel like you posted your whole comment just to inject that last line in.
missinfo 5y ago
The hype is going to die down the more we see landscapes and entire mountains being covered with non-recyclable, toxic panels: https://twitter.com/ScienceIsNew/status/1458512267150966786 https://twitter.com/ScienceIsNew/status/1458512267150966786 It strikes me as environmental vandalism. Solar panels make sense on roofs, not so much on landscapes. Maybe the desert, but you have transmission loss and still have to deal with the large amount of toxic landfill they generate. Nuclear makes much more sense for anything approaching base load.
- ben_w 5y ago
  Putting them in landfill implies is it harder to turn old PV into new PV than to build new PV literally out of rock. This does not seem plausible in long-term (short term, sometime has to actually build a factory to do it), and if it was true then we would’ve just substituted one polluting non-renewable (fossils) for another.
- thinkcontext 5y ago
  I assume you wring your hands just as much for mountain removal for coal? Or the coal ash ponds so toxic they kill workers by the dozen when they need to be cleaned up? Or the millions of lives whose health is damaged by fossil fuel externalities? By all means we should have frank discussions of the externalities of various technologies.
  - missinfo 5y ago
    Correct, coal is worse. But notice I said nuclear is the way to go.
adminscoffee 5y ago
a lot of pressure to not go solar and the whole overhype movement i've seen was mainly endorsed by those with vested interest in other forms of energy. big oil, coal, nuclear etc. there's a lot of energy we are not harvesting due to battery technology. hell we can honestly pull energy out of the air during a storm, it would make the area safer because lightning itself could be used as a way to charge up batteries. but the batteries are just not there, there are very cheap ways of storing energy though, gravity being one of those primitive technologies. pumping water up a spout etc. but i don't think solar itself will be all we need, i agree with that part. but we have a lot of unused energy that we can take advantage of if people allow their mind to explore new sources of renewables

poulsbohemian 5y ago

> Solar panels are still way over hyped in a stupid marginalist way Talk more about this, I’d be very interested to understand your thoughts

Ericson2314 5y ago
How's what I wrote in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29219258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29219258 ? Conversely see what I wrote in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29212004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29212004 about more capital intensive power generation that if done at a good scale would drown current demand.

cedilla 5y ago

Solar is hardly over-hyped. It has always over-delivered since the first panels were built in the 19th century. No one predicted such a success and so incredibly low prices even 20 years ago. Could you explain what you mean by "hyped in a marginalist way"?

glogla 5y ago
I've seen a lot of suggestions that solar can be used as the only energy source for humanity, that we don't need anything else, just build more solar! That's not realistic. Of course, the limitations that solar has are very much solvable, and having solar is better than not having it. Solar is important, and it is our future. But the solutions to solar's limitations seem to be in their infancy (new types of storage), hard to scale (battery storage), not really helpful (just build more coal and gas peakers!) or not considered at all. Which does not inspire confidence.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  You see this quite a lot. There does come a point where adding more solar … when a certain percentage of your production is already solar … there comes a point where more solar is a whole lot more expensive and less reasonable. But that’s really more of a “80% of our power is solar” problem and the US isn’t even at 3%. The percentage of usage which could be handled by solar is usually far underestimated. We don’t need to care about limitations of solar for a long long time.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    I agree, however your point about 3% isn’t quite true. Look at the last 12 months rolling and estimated total solar and divide by total electricity and you get about 3.7%: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01 https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    Would 80% be ideal? I would imagine Solar would start getting iffy over 50%. Presumably you want a lot of hydroelectric, wind, and nuclear so you don't need a lot of batteries, and you have enough sources of power when the sun isn't shining. Maybe I'm being un-imaginative - but is anyone envisioning a global energy grid so we could have solar energy from Australia and Sahara shipped to North America during our night - and back to Asia and Europe from the Southwest during our day?? ^ This seems nonsense science fiction.
    - ac29 5y ago
      > Would 80% be ideal? I would imagine Solar would start getting iffy over 50%. Depends on how much storage you have. There is very, very little right now so even 50% might be a stretch. > Maybe I'm being un-imaginative - but is anyone envisioning a global energy grid so we could have solar energy from Australia and Sahara shipped to North America during our night - and back to Asia and Europe from the Southwest during our day?? I'd think you'd need a relatively inexpensive superconducting cable for that to make any sense. Running cables between continents has been a thing for over 150 years, but I'd think resistance losses would make it wildly impractical to power, say, Los Angeles with solar power collected in Australia.
Ericson2314 5y ago
> low prices This is the stupid marginal ism I am talking about. Cranking out more solar panels is easy. Actually making the grids larger or have more storage requires the type of planning competence and cordination we suck at. Solar panels are popular precisely because they don't require that planning competence and coordination. So if we go full solar wind, we will slam into a wall we are utterly unprepared for, despite, yes, getting better at solar and wind themselves with volume.
- Tade0 5y ago
  Going full solar and wind is going to take some time(20 year-ish?) and in the meantime energy storage will get there in terms of scale and cost. LiFePO4 packs already started trading below $100/kWh in 2020: https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/a-no-go-fantasy-writing-go-in-ruby-with-ruby-next https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/a-no-go-fantasy-writing-... CATL is pushing sodium-ion batteries: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/catls-new-sodium-ion-battery-help-ease-lithium-shortages-2021-08-03/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/catls-new-sodium-ion... You don't even need a lot of storage to greatly increase maximum stable solar and wind share. Exiting times ahead of us.
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    Our electric grids aren't designed for distributed generation- they are centrally planned and maintained. Every person that generates their own electricity stops paying their fair share of maintaining the grid, forcing poorer people who cannot afford their own rooftops to subsidize them. It is actually quite regressive- the denser the population center, the less electricity per person can be generated by solar. The electricity might be free, but the cost of maintaining the grid never goes away.
    - ajbourg 5y ago
      > Every person that generates their own electricity stops paying their fair share of maintaining the grid This isn't true, at least not in Colorado. I pay a number of fees for maintaining the grid and these aren't going away when I have my net meter installed later this week. (hopefully)
amelius 5y ago
Building and shipping solar panels costs energy and material resources.
- tsol 5y ago
  Doesn't everything? It's not an issue so long as across it's life it results in less carbon production than alternative sources do per kW
- Lio 5y ago
  That’s true but it’s also true for fossil and nuclear fuels.
- ben_w 5y ago
  And in a 100% solar economy, the energy to build and ship the panels would be solar. This is fine, as they output enough energy to make themselves in 1-4 years depending on which study you look at.
  - amelius 5y ago
    Using energy still generates heat, as per the laws of thermodynamics.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      Yes, and?
      - drdeca 5y ago
        Perhaps they are mixing up the “there is therefore a maximum safe rate of worldwide energy use (however far away we are from that)” point with the “CO2 emissions from fossil fuels contribute to greenhouse effect” point, and... ok, I’m not sure either
    - PeterisP 5y ago
      Converting sunlight to electric energy and then using that energy generates the exact same amount of heat as if that sunlight was simply absorbed by the ground without the solar panel being in the way, as per the laws of thermodynamics.
diogenescynic 5y ago
Solar still relies on fossil fuels (coal!) and other rare earth metals that will be not be sustainable for many years (if ever). Solar prices are dropping, but I don't see how we ever fully divest from fossil fuels.
- stephen_g 5y ago
  That's not true - basically no commercial solar panels contain rare earth metals (the place they're actually used is in permanent magnets in electric motors and generators for things like electric cars and wind turbines, maybe you were confusing that? But there's a lot of interest in eliminating those, e.g. e-motors). Solar panels don't rely on fossil fuels either - perhaps you're confused by reporting that currently they're produced using a fair bit of energy from coal etc.? But that is reducing and improving all the time as grids get greener.
  - diogenescynic 5y ago
    No, they directly use coal and silicon to produce solar panels. And panels only last ~10 years. So there is a constant need for fossil fuels. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335083312_Why_do_we_burn_coal_and_trees_to_make_solar_panels https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335083312_Why_do_we...
- kragen 5y ago
  None of this is correct.
samstave 5y ago
>>since the first panels were built in the 19th century. ? Any interesting things to point me at on this topic? --- This says 1954 https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200904/physicshistory.cfm https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200904/physicshisto... --- Let me know if you have something else.
- adrianN 5y ago
  Non-silicon cells are older, but still fall in the 20th century[1]. Maybe copper oxide cells are older still? [1] https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/10/how-to-build-a-low-tech-solar-panel.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/10/how-to-build-a-low...
- tim333 5y ago
  >Charles Fritts installed the first solar panels on New York City rooftop in 1884 >created the first solar cell by coating selenium with a thin layer of gold from https://brewminate.com/a-brief-history-of-solar-panels-since-the-19th-century/ https://brewminate.com/a-brief-history-of-solar-panels-since...
batushka3 5y ago
EU is experiencing surge in electricity prices, thanks to green idiocity. Wind and solar subsidized so heavy, nuclear closing, coal bad. But double the price of electricity is fine!
- ntp85 5y ago
  This is fundamentally wrong on so many levels. Let's just pretend you would have any resemblance of a point there: Firstly, renewables are much cheaper than fossil or nuclear power - both in construction and operation. Secondly, the surging electricity prices, at least speaking for Germany here, are a result of the idiotic "EEG-Umlage".
- brabel 5y ago
  The price surge is mostly due to natural gas prices and increased, unexpected higher demand [1]. Countries that have access to renewables are actually doing much better than others! > Since most countries still rely on fossil fuels to meet all their power demands, the final price of electricity is often set by the price of coal or natural gas. If gas becomes more expensive, electricity bills inevitably go up, even if clean, cheaper sources also contribute to the total energy supply. [1] https://www.euronews.com/2021/10/28/why-europe-s-energy-prices-are-soaring-and-could-get-much-worse https://www.euronews.com/2021/10/28/why-europe-s-energy-pric...
- nextaccountic 5y ago
  > coal bad I agree on nuclear, but let's talk coal. Your point is that coal is good?
- akie 5y ago
  That's a completely false statement. Nothing about it is true. The whole world is experiencing surges in electricity prices, not just the EU. Even within the EU, countries like France, which gets up to 70% of its energy from nuclear power, has rising electricity prices. Subsidizing wind and solar has nothing to do with this. Stop spreading lies.

yardie 5y ago

> Solar panels are still way over hyped It literally turns abundantly free solar energy into electricity. Where is the hype?

bobsmooth 5y ago
What do you do when it's cloudy?
- buchanaf 5y ago
  Use other forms of electricity generation?
- nicoburns 5y ago
  In addition to using other forms of energy, you can also over provision. Solar panels still work when it’s cloudy. They just don’t produce as much power. And with a grid you can average cloud cover over a large area.
- maccolgan 5y ago
  That's why we have an electricity grid, it's not cloudly all the time all across the world, so even if we went full solar I don't see how it'd be problematic.
- themeiguoren 5y ago
  Thankfully when it’s cloudy, your peak loads from AC are a lot lower.
rozab 5y ago
Current solar panels are almost 20% efficient. Even in the most outrageous sci-fi scenario, they could only hope to be 5x more efficient than they are currently, and in any case would require significant land use. Compared to nuclear or geothermal, the ceiling is so much lower. And then we get all the vaporware viral ops like solar freaking roadways and those water bottles that magically refill from the air with a tiny solar panel, ignoring the laws of thermodynamics but making hella kickstarter bux

anonuser123456 5y ago

>Solar panels are still way over hyped in a stupid marginalist way Solar panels are powered by fusion, of course they are hyped.

ruined 5y ago
who the fuck is scraeming "AGRIVOLTAICS" at my house. show yourself, coward. fusion energy will never take off

gremloni 5y ago

I feel like you posted your whole comment just to inject that last line in.

missinfo 5y ago

The hype is going to die down the more we see landscapes and entire mountains being covered with non-recyclable, toxic panels: https://twitter.com/ScienceIsNew/status/1458512267150966786 https://twitter.com/ScienceIsNew/status/1458512267150966786 It strikes me as environmental vandalism. Solar panels make sense on roofs, not so much on landscapes. Maybe the desert, but you have transmission loss and still have to deal with the large amount of toxic landfill they generate. Nuclear makes much more sense for anything approaching base load.

ben_w 5y ago
Putting them in landfill implies is it harder to turn old PV into new PV than to build new PV literally out of rock. This does not seem plausible in long-term (short term, sometime has to actually build a factory to do it), and if it was true then we would’ve just substituted one polluting non-renewable (fossils) for another.
thinkcontext 5y ago
I assume you wring your hands just as much for mountain removal for coal? Or the coal ash ponds so toxic they kill workers by the dozen when they need to be cleaned up? Or the millions of lives whose health is damaged by fossil fuel externalities? By all means we should have frank discussions of the externalities of various technologies.
- missinfo 5y ago
  Correct, coal is worse. But notice I said nuclear is the way to go.

adminscoffee 5y ago

a lot of pressure to not go solar and the whole overhype movement i've seen was mainly endorsed by those with vested interest in other forms of energy. big oil, coal, nuclear etc. there's a lot of energy we are not harvesting due to battery technology. hell we can honestly pull energy out of the air during a storm, it would make the area safer because lightning itself could be used as a way to charge up batteries. but the batteries are just not there, there are very cheap ways of storing energy though, gravity being one of those primitive technologies. pumping water up a spout etc. but i don't think solar itself will be all we need, i agree with that part. but we have a lot of unused energy that we can take advantage of if people allow their mind to explore new sources of renewables