Solar will get unfathomably cheap

At home, we haven’t done anything about it yet: we’re still 100% grid-dependant and old-fashioned, partly because it would be problematic for us as we live in an apartment building and partly because, frankly, it still seems expensive, especially with three kids studying away from home. Also, I want to avoid getting entangled in another project; my mental bandwidth is limited (and I suspect it will only worsen over time.) ...

September 4, 2024

The exponential growth of solar power will change the world

The latest issue of The Economist focuses on solar energy. The introductory article is short, compelling, and optimistic. On the economics, they make a good point: Consider solar economics. As the cumulative production of a manufactured good increases, costs go down. As costs go down, demand goes up. As demand goes up, production increases—and costs go down further. This cannot go on for ever; production, demand or both always become constrained. In earlier energy transitions—from wood to coal, coal to oil or oil to gas—the efficiency of extraction grew, but it was eventually offset by the cost of finding ever more fuel. Solar power faces no such constraint. The resources needed to produce solar cells and plant them on solar farms are silicon-rich sand, sunny places and human ingenuity, all three of which are abundant. ...

June 21, 2024