I have Faith. Not in divine intervention, but lik
Post# of 22454
My solution is quantum dot solar energy. The problem with today's efforts in solar is that silicon panels are too costly and too inefficient. The industry is applauded for increasing global gigawatts over previous years, but that does not come close to meeting the year 2050 need. This article explains the need:
How much solar is needed globally to keep global warming within a safe range?
It depends on what is deemed "safe." For a long time, the international climate target was to keep warming below 2 degrees C. But there was a large push at the global climate talks in Paris last year to change the goal to 1.5 degrees because a 2-degree rise is too risky – particularly for the most vulnerable island states.
One benchmark useful in measuring solar's progress is the International Energy Agency's 2014 Technology Roadmap for solar PV. The roadmap offers three possible scenarios: 1) a business-as-usual scenario in which global CO2 emissions from the energy sector rise 61 percent over 2011 levels by 2050; 2) a 2-degree C scenario that calculates the most economically efficient path toward achieving that goal; and 3) a scenario that assumes more rapid development of wind and solar power.
In the third scenario, solar power makes up 16 percent of global electricity by 2050, with an installed capacity of more than 5,700 gigawatts.
What about in the U.S.? How much solar is needed to address the climate crisis?
The more, the better.
In its best-case renewables scenario, IEA projects the U.S. could install 305 gigawatts of solar by 2030 and 737 gigawatts by 2050. That's more than a 1,000 percent increase over 14 years from today's capacity of 27.2 gigawatts.
It would require that the U.S. install an average of roughly 20 gigawatts of new solar capacity each year between now and 2030. By comparison, the U.S. added 7.3 gigawatts of new solar power last year, and that was a record.
(Read the complete article here: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24052016/s...na-germany )
Solterra has not announced plans for developing quantum dot solar cells. So without that information it is impossible to project what can be done. NREL has already projected the cost savings of QDSC over Silicon panels:
In a 2014 paper entitled, The promise and challenge of nanostructured solar cells, NREL esteemed researchers Beard, Nozik and Luther estimate the present (.10$/KwH) silicon panel technology against the future (.03/KwH and lower) next-generation solar technologies to come in a illustrative graph, Relationship between power conversion efficiency, module areal costs and cost per peak watt (in $/Wp). It graphically shows silicon technology limited from this point in time, but next-gen solar has the advantages of potential MEG and the Shockley-Queisser limit to reach its potential. (find the links on this page: http://solterrasolarcells.com/sunsrays.php#nowandfuture )
Beyond the NREL estimates, there are additional future cost savings for QDSC. Higher efficiency quantum dots, lower cost of materials, and faster production. If solar can be expanded at a very low cost, it can become ubiquitious, and beat the 2050 deadline.