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Ask HN: Why aren't we spending more time to research harnessing solar energy?
I just watched this movie
http://www.youtube.com/homeproject
This fact shocked me:
In one hour the sun gives the earth the same amount of energy as that consumed by all humanity in one year
(Fast forward to around 1:26:20)
That is a staggering amount of energy. Shouldn't we be spending more resources in trying to build, say a solar car, than an electric car?
- noodle 17y agoyes, we should. the issue is that its not just one technology that needs to improve for making solar energy viable to become the serious heavy power provider, but many different interlocking technologies. batteries, for example.
- vijayr 17y agoTrue. Tesla Motors got $465 mil loan from the US govt, what about the companies that are working to produce solar energy based products? Shouldn't the govt support them at least as much as they support companies like Tesla?
- noodle 17y agotesla is clearly a special case. the government doesn't normally hand out loans, and in this case it only handed out loans to financially viable car companies. other car companies got government loans that aren't as technologically cutting-edge.
- khafra 17y agoThe trouble with your example is that a car is not a dyson sphere. A car is a few square meters, which means that with a 30% efficient pv panel (double the efficiency of the current standard), you'd only be getting around 15hp at noon. That's enough to toddle around a closed track at 30mph in a carbon fiber frame built by a university, but not enough to outdo a bicycle in real-world applications. Fixed solar power plants are more promising, but they're not perfect--Sure, a square 100 miles on a side in Arizona could supply a lot of power, but not to New York or Seattle, even over the best HVDC lines. And 1,000 square miles is a helluva lot of monocrystalline silicon. Solar thermal looks more promising, especially for keeping the power going at night, but it's far from a panacea, and there's lots of companies working on it. I've invested in a few of them.
- frossie 17y agoYou are are right about that. Of course you could look at the question laterally - solar energy comes from fusion, so if we could master fusion, we would cut out the middle man. ITER is trying hard, but I can't help feeling that if we had a modern day Manhattan/Apollo type project for fusion energy we could make faster progress.
- papaf 17y agoThe amount of energy we can usably harness from the sun is a lot less than is radiated to the earth. Its useful to drive at night and on cloudy days. People also demand similar performance from their future vehicles as they get now. If you're interested in these sort of questions, I highly recommend the following book which I got a few days ago. I'm finding it both sobering and exciting: http://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-Air/dp/0954452933/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246389614&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-Air/dp/...