Imagine a world where virtually all energy was generated from sunshine in the form of electricity. Cars, trucks, ships, factories, cities, and all others would get all their energy supplies from an electrical supply point made out of solar cells that captured sunlight and turned it into electricity. Yes, this is in the future, but what’s surprising is how fast the future is closing in on the present. Let’s break it all down and take a look.
What is a Solar Cell: A solar cell is square in shape and slightly over seven inches across. It’s about a fifth of one millimeter thick, and is fitted with thin wiring on one side and an electrical contact point on the other. About 95% of all commercial photovoltaic cells (solar cells) consist of crystalline silicon. Light (either solar or artificial) shines into it, and voltage potential will begin to form in the silicon. It becomes most useful when a circuit is added and the voltage potential gathers up as much as seven watts of electric power. Between sixty to seventy-two solar cells are fitted together between sheets of glass to make a solar panel. Solar cells are not new—the first one was built by a Russian physicist named Aleksandr Stoletov in 1888. I can remember in the mid 1950’s watching a model train powered only by solar cells run around a table top.
Why Are They So Prevalent Today: Solar panels can be found on residential rooftops, in certain industrial areas, in large blocks across desert open space, and as part of a country’s large electrical grids. They make no noise, do not pollute either the atmosphere, the water, or the countryside, and once installed they have virtually no maintenance costs. This would make them the perfect instrument for the fight against global warming. However, as of 2023, solar cells provided only about 6% of all the electricity generated throughout the entire world. This may not seem like much, but when the growth of solar cells over the last twenty years is considered, it could become gargantuan. In 2004, it took the entire year for all the generators of solar power world-wide to install enough capacity to create one gigawatt (one billion watts) of electricity. In 2010, the same output could be developed in a month; in 2016, it took a week; and in 2023 a gigawatt of solar potential was installed in certain places in one day. Analysts are expecting as much as 655 GW of capacity installed in all of 2024, or nearly twice as much in one day as in all of 2004. The International Solar Energy Society estimates that solar power will out generate all the world’s nuclear power facilities by 2026, all wind turbines by 2027, all hydroelectric sources by 2028, all natural gas power plants by 2030, and all coal fired plants by 2032. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has a scenario that suggests that solar energy could become the world’s largest source of primary energy before 2050.
Demand Driven Industry: Solar power investment is all about demand, and the demand for solar panels was supported early on in this century via subsidies. This kept the supply side moving and prices under wraps until the industry reached its take off point. Now that the growth in demand has outstripped its predictions by a long shot, the industry is working hard to keep up. In 2024, producers may manufacture as many as 70 billion solar cells, most of them being made in China. The IEA says that the solar panel trade is “the largest single category of investment in electricity generation.” They expect that investment total to reach $500 billion in 2024, rivaling the upstream oil and gas sector. Predictions seem to constantly fall short as the demand for more solar panels keeps rising sharply. The demand should continue to grow as long as the price continues to decrease. The price should continue to decrease the more efficient and proliferated solar electricity production becomes. The levelized cost to produce solar cells has fallen from the 1960’s by a factor greater than 1,000 to reach the level that it is today. The cheaper the price to the customer, the more customers that should appear. This would mean that shifts away from fossil fuel energy, which is generally less efficient, should increase. This ripple effect could have a long-lasting impact on future industries that can rely on solar electric power as opposed to coal, oil, or natural gas.
Industrial Competition: China is the largest producer of solar cells, but also one of the largest consumers. Further, their large domestic market place is protected. The manufacturing process involves deriving silicon outputs from melting sand. Chinese manufacturers can in some instances leverage low-cost energy by locating in western provinces that have cheaper coal. The final product is basically standardized throughout the world giving no country or company an extraordinary edge. The barriers to entry into the industry are centered around the amount and type of capital expenditures needed to acquire the machinery to manufacture the product—it’s not super high tech.
Battery Storage: The sun doesn’t shine all day and all night most places on this earth, leading to the rise of battery storage being added to augment electrical grids. But installing battery storage for a giant grid that needs it only on occasion is a costly and risky endeavor. The SunTrain Company has come up with a unique way to help balance electrical usage that is generated by solar power—load it into specially designed batteries affixed onto railroad cars, and have it moved over existing rail lines by existing railroad operators to points where they are needed. This portable workaround will enable more efficient usage of solar cell energy until such a time that solar power is so comprehensive in modern society, that battery backups are needed and installed virtually everywhere.
Other Benefits: Cheap electricity has other benefits in that certain tasks in industry and in commerce cannot be feasibly performed because the cost of electricity has been here-to-fore prohibitive. This is forward thinking, but if energy for industry becomes cheaper while still being feasible to use, many other good uses of it should arise. The Sahara Desert comprises an area of about 3.5 million square miles. It is believed that if it were covered with grids of solar panels, the aggregate output would be cheap enough to service all the electrical demand coming from Europe.
Conclusions: William S. Jevons was an economist in Britain during the mid 19th Century. In studying the depletion of Britain’s coal reserves, he uncovered what became known as the Jevons paradox (or Jevons effect): When technological progress makes energy production more efficient and energy therefore becomes cheaper to the user, the users will demand more of it, not less.
Sources:
The Economist, The Sun Machines, June 22, 2024.
Wikipedia, Solar Cell.
Wikipedia, Jevons Paradox.