Solar Power Heats up

Solar power—it's plentiful, virtually endless (well, for at least the next few billions years or so) and it's pouring onto our planet 24 hours a day. So why is solar energy satisfying less than one one-hundredths of a percent of our global power needs?

While there's a decent chance that your backyard swimming pool uses a solar heating system to keep the water warm, the real silver bullet to our global energy crisis is harnessing the sun's rays to create electricity. The most common way that's done is through photovoltaic cells (commonly known as solar cells); you've likely seen fields covered by massive arrays of these large panels, which use silicon and other materials to absorb the photons in sunlight and create electricity.

Sounds simple, but prohibitive manufacturing costs have kept the budding solar energy industry in check for decades. In a nutshell, building enough photovoltaic cells to create a significant amount of energy isn't cheap; passed along to consumers, the ultimate price of solar power would cause electricity bills to double, triple or even quintuple, according to the latest statistics from solar industry site Solarbuzz.

Making matters even more complicated is that you can't install solar cells just anywhere; they work best in direct sunlight, so installing a bank of photovoltaic cells in, say, Seattle, isn't going to get you a lot of power. And while you can certainly store solar-generated electricity in batteries, you lose a good percentage of that power in the transfer process.

Luckily, there's good news on the solar horizon. Production costs for solar cells has been trending downward as solar-cell manufacturing continues to build; in fact, the price of solar power has fallen four percent a year for the past 15 years, according to Solarbuzz. Meanwhile, a team in New Zealand is looking to solve the direct-sunlight issue of solar power by developing a synthetic dye that can pull power from the sun even in the poorest lighting conditions.

Solar is still struggling to break through in the gadget world, although you'll find plenty of solar-powered calculators available. Solar chargers are making some headway; fellow Tech Advisor Gina Hughes has already blogged about solar-power adapters that can charge your digital camera and other portable gadgets, while Becky Worley was impressed by the 40-Watt Solar Energy System, which cranks out plenty of electricity but weighs a whopping 80 pounds (luckily, a wheeled stand comes in the package).

Related:
Juice 2 Go: Portable Power
Charging Cameras the Solar Way
Fast Solar Energy Facts [Solarbuzz]