The Truth About Solar

you'll walk even TV hi welcome to another ColdFusion video our Sun is amazing when you think about it light from the Sun travels millions of miles across space through our atmosphere and to us providing warmth visual light and vital energy for plants on this earth imagine if we could utilize this energy from the Sun in a meaningful significant way this is what solar power aims to do we've been previously taken for a ride by bogus concepts like solar roadways but what is the truth about solar can it really change the world in this video we'll take a look at the current state of solar power it actually seems like a solar movement is beginning let's get straight into it firstly let's see what we're working with what is the raw input energy from the Sun absorbed by the earth the total energy absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere land and sea is around 3.8 5euro joules per year that sounds like gibberish right so how much energy is that really well just one hour of this energy exposure is more energy than the entire world consumes in one year or to put it another way one years of this exposure from the Sun contains twice as much energy than we'll ever be gained from all the Earth's non-renewable resources like coal oil natural gas and mined uranium combined so that's a lot of energy but obviously we can only use a fraction of it taking into account installation cloud cover and land that's usable by humans etc we can use about 0.4 to 13% of this raw energy from the Sun all right so how fast is the solar revolution happening the growth of solar power adaptation has actually been happening pretty fast about 40% per year since the year 2000 for some perspective we're currently generating over ninety seven times more energy from solar than in 2004 although this sounds like a lot right now total solar energy is still just over 1% of global production but the rate of increase is encouraging in fact a 2014 study by the International Energy Agency projected that solar power could supply 27 percent of global electricity generation by 2050 alright so I know what some of you are thinking that's all a load of rubbish Solar is too expensive and only works when it's sunny so it's useless in half the world while this used to be true in the past couple of years some of the common arguments against solar are starting to fall so is it too expensive let's take a look at the current state of cost adjusting for inflation the cost of a solar module per watt was 96 dollars in the mid-1970s now thanks to technological advancements and economies of scale the cost is now 36 cents per watt today on the same train of thought let's take a look at some interesting breaking stories in relation to the falling costs of solar from around the world in the country of Chile their northern grid solar panels generated more electricity than was consumed locally closing the price of electricity to go down to zero while this is great for consumers Solar investors are losing money making it a disaster for them the problem was caused by too many solar developers being in the same place with no means of transmitting excess electricity to another grid a similar thing happened in Germany and their energy prices went negative due to an overabundance of energy from solar in addition to traditional nuclear and coal power on a similar thread Apple's new solar farms are generating more energy than the company can use so it's starting to sell the excess energy under a new company called Apple energy but still on the topic of falling costs Bloomberg has issued a report stating that the prices of solar could soon rival traditional coal China is leading the way in solar cell production and could be looking at costs as low as 8 cents per kilowatt hour according to the chairman of trying the world's largest solar panel manufacturer and one last interesting fact in relation to solar panel costs since 2012 solar cells have been given a Moore's Law equivalent called Swanson's law it states that solar cell cost will have every 10 years as global shipments increase all right this all sounds great but the party for solar is over as soon as the clouds come out well this may not be entirely true according to this guy anyway well on this question of our energy bills which is the huge bullet a huge political topic here now have we got it wrong in terms of where we are sourcing our energy mark my words solar will be the single largest producer of energy in the UK long term and you may say well isn't it rather it may be cloudy around here I was going to say a benign site yes and even though it's cloudy you still get probably 80 to 90% of the energy coming through the clouds it's just that you don't have that bright point source of a of a Sun and a way to appreciate this perhaps is to look at the fact that plants are essentially a solar-powered chemical reaction and UK is a very green country but that's not all this year scientists have made solar panels that produce energy from both sunlight and rain a step in the direction of all year-round solar energy generation while we're on the topic of breakthroughs let's move on a little bit and take a look at some new solar breakthroughs from this year alone first we have MIT building 3d solar cells to offer a more stable output for different angles of the Sun they achieved anywhere from two to twenty times the power output of a standard flat cell this particular 3d setup works so well because its design was optimized by a computer algorithm mit has also created solar cells as thin as a soap bubble this next breakthrough is probably my favorite because it involves a start-up just finding a better way to do things Vera Scott has absorption coefficient that is much higher than silicon cell it can absorb all the income sunlight in a layer that is finner than the human hair the cells are super light flexible don't crack like the traditional ones and can work in artificial light as they can be easily manufactured from readily accessible materials production is surprisingly cheap the printing method chosen by olga Milankovitch is stable and reproducible this offers the possibility of scaling the manufacturing process the foil will prolong the life of batteries used in popular electronic devices a mobile tablet or laptop will charge even when exposed to artificial sources of light traditional solar cells will be replaced with technologically advanced foils tightly attached to the roof they may come in a wide range of colors to match the building's design providing the household with electric power these guys are still getting venture capital but it could really push the state of the art of solar forward if they succeed taking a quick look at solar transport there's an autonomous boat called Scout that will be the first solid vehicle to cross the Atlantic and there's also an experimental aircraft called Solar Impulse that is currently flying around the world only using solar power and lastly Toyota released an updated version of the Prius with a solar panel roof that actually helps power the car this time okay so this is all great but we can't end the video without talking about some of the downsides what are the drawbacks of solar the main problems for solar power are as follows naturally on any particular day energy demand fluctuates and one of the problems of solar is that it's not easy to adjust the output to match these fluctuations for example peak demand happens at night in a household and this is the opposite time to win there's peak energy input from the Sun battery systems like tesla powerwall that stored the energy and released it at a later time can help and in fact what few people notice is that batteries like this are now much safer better for the environment and cheaper thanks to the rise of electric vehicles despite this more time is still needed to production is large enough to make this kind of energy storage technology ubiquitous the second problem with solar is that the best panels are currently about 30 to 35 percent efficient even though traditional coal is less than 50 percent efficient there is still a way to go in solar efficiency but this should surely improve as the technology comes along in coming years and lastly a problem with solar is that older electrical grids like those in the United States and other countries would require a great deal of capital investments in infrastructure upgrades to make them compatible with large-scale solar energy okay so what's the conclusion that we can make here while there are some kinks still left in solar and it's not perfect there's plenty of smart people working on the problem and with a global growth rate of about 40 percent year-on-year progress is being made in addition to this governments have a renewed sense of urgency for solar Germany wants to be 35% solar powered by 2020 China wants to be 20% by 2030 and the City of Sydney in Australia wants to be a hundred percent solar powered by 2030 and this isn't to mention devise plans to build the biggest and cheapest solar tower in the world the point of this video isn't so much a matter of every breakthrough that you've seen here today reaching full-scale production but the thing you should take away and what I'm trying to show you in this video is that these breakthrough events are happening in a lot of places with increasing frequency - this only means that the forces of industry progress in solar cells are likely to be strong and going forward and this is exciting and just to finish off I think there's something intrinsically charming about solar that idea of gaining usable energy from the Sun for free anyway thanks for watching guys I hope you learnt a thing or two feel free to give this video a thumbs up if you liked it and subscribe if you need to the channel this has been to gogo you've been watching ColdFusion cheers guys and I'll catch you again soon for the next video have a good one ColdFusion it's me thinking you

Channel: ColdFusion

Views: 3,971,369

Rating: 4.8356771 out of 5

Keywords: Coldfusion, TV, Dagogo, Altraide, Technology, Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook, Tesla

Id: nabM5MGq_NY

Length: 11min 3sec (663 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 22 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/retrofuturejon]

coldfusion has crazy informative videos

[u/HumanWithCauses]

Usually anything that has "the truth" in the title is far from it, but this was a great video by ColdFusion which covered most of the aspects of solar.

[u/0235]

Free energy from the sun. No wonder huge business are jumping on it. Reminds me of a harry and Paul sketch Mitchell and Webb (fool!) about farmers "it just grows out he ground, by itself, and I can sell it for money!!"

[u/Tombfyre]

Definitely an optimistic video. Very nice.

[u/Octopus_Kitten]

Germany really pays people to use electricity?

[u/theaback]

Solar is only half of the equation. The video left out the most important part, energy storage. Without figuring out the storage part, solar will not be able to live up to its potential.

[u/karelsova]

ColdFusion videos are great, always super interesting and very positive.