

Ask HN: Why aren't we spending more time to research harnessing solar energy? - vijayr

I just watched this movie<p>http://www.youtube.com/homeproject<p>This fact shocked me:<p>In one hour the sun gives the earth the same amount of energy as that consumed by all humanity in one year
(Fast forward to around 1:26:20)<p>That is a staggering amount of energy.  Shouldn't we be spending more resources in trying to build, say a solar car, than an electric car?
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khafra
The trouble with your example is that a car is not a dyson sphere. A car is a
few square meters, which means that with a 30% efficient pv panel (double the
efficiency of the current standard), you'd only be getting around 15hp at
noon. That's enough to toddle around a closed track at 30mph in a carbon fiber
frame built by a university, but not enough to outdo a bicycle in real-world
applications.

Fixed solar power plants are more promising, but they're not perfect--Sure, a
square 100 miles on a side in Arizona could supply a lot of power, but not to
New York or Seattle, even over the best HVDC lines. And 1,000 square miles is
a helluva lot of monocrystalline silicon. Solar thermal looks more promising,
especially for keeping the power going at night, but it's far from a panacea,
and there's lots of companies working on it. I've invested in a few of them.

~~~
frossie
You are are right about that. Of course you could look at the question
laterally - solar energy comes from fusion, so if we could master fusion, we
would cut out the middle man.

ITER is trying hard, but I can't help feeling that if we had a modern day
Manhattan/Apollo type project for fusion energy we could make faster progress.

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noodle
yes, we should. the issue is that its not just one technology that needs to
improve for making solar energy viable to become the serious heavy power
provider, but many different interlocking technologies. batteries, for
example.

~~~
vijayr
True. Tesla Motors got $465 mil loan from the US govt, what about the
companies that are working to produce solar energy based products? Shouldn't
the govt support them at least as much as they support companies like Tesla?

~~~
noodle
tesla is clearly a special case. the government doesn't normally hand out
loans, and in this case it only handed out loans to financially viable car
companies. other car companies got government loans that aren't as
technologically cutting-edge.

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papaf
The amount of energy we can usably harness from the sun is a lot less than is
radiated to the earth. Its useful to drive at night and on cloudy days. People
also demand similar performance from their future vehicles as they get now.

If you're interested in these sort of questions, I highly recommend the
following book which I got a few days ago. I'm finding it both sobering and
exciting:

[http://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-
Air/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-
Air/dp/0954452933/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246389614&sr=8-1)

~~~
papaf
Oh, I just found out that this book is also available online:
<http://www.withouthotair.com/>

