New study by MIT
The general feeling has always been that we’re still reaching for better efficiency and better materials in order for solar power to really become the future of energy generation — it’s just not ready yet — but a new study from MIT says that solar technology is already good enough.
In the very large report (332 pages) called The Future of Solar Energy, researchers say that current crystalline silicon photovoltaic technology (the predominant technology used in solar panels) is capable of generating multi-terawatt-scale power by 2050. To put that in perspective, the largest active solar installation in the world is the Topaz plant in California that has a 550-megawatt capacity. A terawatt is 1,000,000 megawatts.
According to the authors, “Solar electricity generation is one of very few low-carbon energy technologies with the potential to grow to very large scale.”
That doesn’t mean that we should stop innovating, in fact the study says that improvements in all types of solar technologies are needed, but that the biggest hurdle is, you guessed it, money.