Agreed.
Except that ground solar panels only work during the day time - and sunny days at that. And storage is difficult: Batteries are heavy, bulky, are climate sensitive, and become inefficient over time. And there's a problem with scale: sure collecting more sunlight is easy, but storing it at a large scale is hard. Batteries don't scale up well to large sizes.
Water -> Hydrogen is quite promising for energy storage. It have several advantages - scales very well, could be used for fueling, can be (relative) easy transported. There are some problems here of course.In some areas is it sunny most days. Deserts is one example. And I think it's not THAT difficult to solve the problem with energi storage. How its should be dune depends on the intended use of the energy. I think also it´s useful to place at some buildings and use en energi for air condition - which is most needed during hot days. Or mayby heat up water to an "ackumulator tank". There ARE possibilities indeed.
The problem with ground based solar energy is the lack of controll or predictability over the level of energy production. Unless you can produce sufficient excess that can be stored, ground based soldar alone is not viable. You may have high energy needs on a cloudy day, then your stuffed!Water -> Hydrogen is quite promising for energy storage. It have several advantages - scales very well, could be used for fueling, can be (relative) easy transported. There are some problems here of course.
Coupled with solar batteries, water->hydrogen process can supply very large chunk of worlds needs in energy. Noone uses Sahara anyway ')
As i said, Solar -> hydrogen process lack this described problem. Hydrogen serve as accumulator and mean to transport the energy. As such, bad day / good day doesnt matter in the slightest. Sahara alone can cover ALL current worlds needs in energy.The problem with ground based solar energy is the lack of controll or predictability over the level of energy production. Unless you can produce sufficient excess that can be stored, ground based soldar alone is not viable. You may have high energy needs on a cloudy day, then your stuffed!
.
Very interesting.A recent news item from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21253268/_
I'd like to find out if anyone knows where the National Security Space Office report mentioned in the article can be obtained from.
First couple of sentences
"A new Pentagon study lays out the roadmap for a multibillion-dollar push to the final frontier of energy: a satellite system that collects gigawatts’ worth of solar power and beams it down to Earth.
The military itself could become the “anchor tenant” for such a power source, due to the current high cost of fueling combat operations abroad, the study says.
The 75-page report, released Wednesday, says new economic incentives would have to be put in place to “close the business case” for space-based solar power systems — but it suggests that the technology could be tested in orbit by as early as 2012."