Harnessing The Sun- II

In my last post, we had seen how typical Solar Panel works (how it converts Solar energy into electricity). Despite being available at almost every corner of the globe we cannot completely rely on the Solar energy, not yet.

But why?

Firstly, there are some political factors at the play, not to mention businesses that lobby to maintain their statistical profits like Petroleum products. But let’s shift our focus on the physical and logistical challenges, and the most obvious of those is that Solar energy is unevenly distributed across the planet. Some areas are sunnier than the others also it is inconsistent. Less Solar energy is available on cloudy days or night. So, a total reliance will require efficient ways to get electricity from sunny spots to cloudy ones and effective storage of energy.

The efficiency of the cell itself is a challenge, too. If sunlight gets reflected instead of being absorbed or if displaced electrons fall back into a hole before going through the circuit, that photon’s energy is lost. The most efficient Solar cell yet still only converts 46% of the available sunlight to electricity and most commercial systems convert about 15-20% of the available sunlight into electricity.

Despite these limitations, it actually would be possible to power the entire world with today’s Solar technology. We need funding to build the infrastructure and a good deal of space. Estimates range from tens to hundreds of thousand square miles, which seems like a lot but the Sahara Desert alone is over 3 million square miles in area.

Meanwhile, Solar cells are getting cheaper, better and are competing with electricity from the grid. And innovations like floating Solar farms may change the landscape entirely. Thoughts experiment aside there are almost a billion people who don’t have access to the reliable electric grid, especially in developing countries, many of which are sunny. So in places like that Solar energy is much cheaper and safer than available alternatives, like kerosene.

(Interesting Fact:

Even though we are at the pinnacle of the technological advancement we haven’t achieved many things yet like time travel, telepathy and for this instance, we haven’t yet managed a complete reliance on solar energy. But most of the things that are invented in this century seemed impossible before.

So, will there be a point where we reach an actual limit of technological progress? And if so, are we anywhere near to that limit now? The answer is no, not yet. Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev found a way to measure the technological progress by analysing the amount of energy that a particular civilization uses and according to that he categorized three types of civilizations.

Type I (Planetary Civilization): A type one civilization is completely capable of using its planetary resources. In our case that will be 174,000 terawatts, Earth receives from the sun. We currently harness only 15 terawatts of it. So we’re nowhere near to even Type I civilization.

Type II (Stellar Civilization): A type two civilization is the one which completely harnesses the energy of its mother star by placing Solar panels orbiting around a star in a combination which is known as “Dyson Sphere”.

Type III (Galactic Civilization): A type three civilization is the one which is capable of harnessing the total energy of its home galaxy which would be the most advanced civilization.

Luckily, we haven’t witnessed none of these yet. But that doesn’t mean there are no such civilizations. Perhaps we are not well equipped to witness their existence because we haven’t achieved the technology that is required to observe such types of civilizations.

So, the answer to the original question will there be a point where we reach an actual limit of technological progress? And if so, are we anywhere near to that limit now? The answer is no, not yet.)

Have a good day! Thank you!

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

External Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVsHzS70krg

– Pankaj R. Gode.