Solar Energy Drawbacks
Solar panels may become our main sources of electric power in years to come. Today they’re just one of electricity sources that we use as alternatives to fossil fuels. In future we’ll move into direction of renewable energy we should have a look at benefits and limitations of all of them. Below I’ll just focus on the drawbacks of solar panels.
Firs thing. Using them we rely on the weather. If the sky is cloudy or polluted, it’s going to decrease amount of energy that battery will be able to receive. In most cloudy days it can even go down to zero. We don’t really want to feel that that if we can heat our home, or even watch TV depends on how clear the sky is.
Second thing. What flows out from the previous one – these panels only work during the day. Of course we will store the power we gathered last day using our backup battery system or net metering… but in some places on the earth day is really short. What then? And in winter days are shorter everywhere… The more advanced this methods of storage will become, the more reliable these systems will be.
Third issue. At the moment the initial cost of installing such a system is high. Too high for most of us. Primary reason for that is that semi-conducting materials we use in their construction are so expensive. When more and more people will decide to install solar panel, prices will eventually drop down for sure. Everything becomes cheaper when it’s more popular. If more people will be interested in buying it, there will be more competition out there on the market, and competition cuts prices down. But here and now their prices are just too high.
Fourth thing. You need some space to put your solar batteries on it. It’s not a problem if you own a house – you get on the roof and put them there. But so many people in the earth stay in the blocks of flats – and there is only one roof for few dozens of people there. One solar panel will not collect enough of energy for all of them. The good solution of this problem would be if we’d build big solar batteries located in remote areas that would collect great amounts of power. This energy would be then distributed to such blocks of flats. But this again would be quite expensive, and today it’s just a futurology
Above I briefly described are main limitations of solar energy panels that we’re facing today. Only when we know them we can do something to overcome them. Or to find other free energy generator that will be easier accessible.