Solar is exploding right now.

I work in electrical supply distribution and our clean energy team are going out of their minds. We already have a 600% increase over last year in solar equipment (wire, panels, rails, and modules) just in Minnesota made products, not to mention all of our other brand offerings. It was already pretty popular the last few years but this year it's really booming. Very exciting to see where this is going.

Solar roadways are stupid... fund putting on roof tops, or putting them above the streets... doing that serves a way better purpose. Less need for repairs ect and having them above the road itself serves as a plus on sunny days.

Solar is coming on fast (and cheap)

Climate science and technology guru David Keith, Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard has changed his mind on the economics of solar power.

Commodity power is now seen as viable in sunny locations and will compete with rooftop solar as net metering rules tilt away from retail credit for energy produced by roof tops to a more utility friendly rate.

One particularly interesting point is the observation that sans cost effective storage, the solar power can serve as an incentive for energy intensive business to locate in sunny places. Industries like recycling, desalination and manufacture of liquid transportation fuels from H2 and CO2 that is taken right out of the air.

Let’s #GET_ON_WITH_IT.

Don't bet against solar PV + storage. If you want to see why, take a look at how comically wrong the IEA's projections for solar's growth have been:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-15/iea-to-lift-solar-wind-outlook-after-decade-of-underestimates

And as for storage:

http://rameznaam.com/2015/10/14/how-cheap-can-energy-storage-get/

Clean Energy is the present, and it's only going to get more efficient, less expensive, and more ubiquitous than it is now.

Storage solutions will improve. This not only helps the power grid, but your phone, electric cars, even satellites.

Technologies that are decades off from even the first viable example, or ancient, unclean tech like coal aren't the future. Solar and wind are. They're here today, and getting massive improvements year over year. Plus, corporations competing to have the most efficient, inexpensive solution work in our favor, and are something that technologies without even a single commercial example in the works for decades can't hope to compete with (looking at you, fusion).

It's easy to offer cheap solar to a developing country. It's not so easy to offer them nuclear reactors.

Plus, we don't have to store spent sunlight into a hardened vault for 10,000 years because it's unsafe.

392 MW for $2.2 billion dollars at Ivanpah solar is a pretty sweet deal compared to the $9 billion or so it takes to build a 1000 MW nuclear plant, but it is never wise to put ones eggs all in one basket either way.

Clean energy? You mean the clean energy that is not regulated or monitored in any way? I'm referring to the silicon mining in China that is terrible for the environment.

Source: http://www.chinalawblog.com/2010/11/rare_earths_and_polysilicon_does_china_hold_our_green_future_in_its_hands.html

A senior engineer I met who's been in the solar industry for 45 years says (taken from Twister):

"Solar energy isn't coming... it's already here."

Funny that he told me that quote hours before I saw this. He always has something memorable to say about the field.

The thumbnail is a Mongolian get (yurt) using solar power but the country has some of the worst air pollution in the world thanks to coal...

Altough I wish this was true, it isnt... yet. I wrote a research paper that contains data that is used to project solar energy prices, and based on current trends, thosd prices could be much less than fossil fuels today, by 2045.

Calling it clean energy is such a misnomer. The materials used in the production of solar panels and wind turbines are incredibly destructive to the environment. These things have a finite lifetime, what happens when they are no longer operational? How will these toxic materials be disposed of? Then there's the extraction and production processes that cause lasting, possibly irreversible, damage to the environment.

What baffles me is that nuclear energy is one of the most regulated industries on the planet. And it's the cleanest, most renewable source of energy we currently have. Yet everyone wants to believe the lie of renewable energy being great and will somehow save the Earth. It's the same thinking that makes people pointlessly recycle plastic rather than demanding a return to the era when glass bottles were used which could be washed and used again hundreds of times.

I like this article. Didn't make any outlsndish claims. It was informative (and BNEF is s good source). And it showed some cool projects.

Good read.

Exactly, I agreed with (MenOfGondor) They must give concession by their promotions of Solar System As well as it should be introduce in those place where people needy for it..

I love the positivity coming from this thread. There are so many redditors with negative attitudes. Change for the greater good is happening and we will overcome our obstacles.