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Solar Has A Long History And Even Bigger Future
With stories on the news about fluctuating prices on oil, and the fact that the term “fossil fuel” means a finite resource that will, someday, run out, it’s no wonder that some people look to the future, realize just how much we rely on electrical power to maintain our modern lifestyles. It’s a wake-up call to try to find ways to keep the ability to generate electricity viable without having to rely on a fuel source that will one day one out.

But we already have that alternative and, in fact, we’ve had it for decades. It’s been floating up in the sky, above our heads, providing the light we see by day, and it’s called solar power, direct from the sun.

Solar power is not a new technology. Even as early as the 1970s, we had retail products that were proof solar power could work as calculators and other smaller consumer electronics would sometimes use solar cells to power themselves. So if we’ve actually had the technology to harness the power of the sun itself for so long, why haven’t we done it on a larger scale until now? The answer lies in two factors, technology and economics.

The basic principle of the “solar cell” remains unchanged. It is a clever piece of technology that reacts to exposure from light—be it natural sunlight or artificial light—by creating electrical energy. However, in the past, the amounts of electrical power generated by a solar cell, or even a massive array of them grouped into large solar panels, was not large. Improvements to the efficiency and technology have changed all that.

Another big factor was cost. Producing solar panels and cells was an expensive process compared to the kind of power they actually generated. So, while certain operations—such as the International Space Station—had no choice since it was the only practical way to get power, traditional means of electrical generation such as burning petroleum, coal or using nuclear power, were cheaper to maintain because the existing infrastructure was already in place, and no additional cost was required to implement them.

Today, the cost of solar cells is lower, with their ability to generate power much higher. Conversely, as natural resources become more and more difficult to acquire, or are subject to regulation because of the pollutants they produce, solar power is clean, efficient, and always available. It’s cost in the future is going to continue to drop while economic and political factors will cause traditional resources to go up in cost, especially as they start to run dry and it becomes harder and harder to gather them. Once your solar panels are installed, the power generated by them for your home is free, versus $1000 per month at some point in the future. Which expenditure makes more sense?
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