Solar energy technologies can help you mitigate your home energy bills and give you free energy to operate your refrigerators, HVAC systems, and heaters. However, solar energy isn't a perfect technology. It has some inherent flaws that require your attention before you consider using it. Learn more about its three primary issues below.
Excess Material Disposal
The number of solar panels are increasing due to more households adopting the technology. However, this progress raised the issue of aged solar panel disposal. Recycling the raw materials for solar panels are still slow, and they can become the industry's bottleneck. Using virgin materials will increase solar panel acquisition costs temporarily in local areas.
Existing Grid Technologies
Many energy companies have yet to have the right infrastructure to accommodate massive solar energy production on their grids. It will need some time and design testing to find the right grid structure that maximizes solar energy production and transfer to properties nationwide.
Oversupply
The increased demand of solar panels can power numerous homes, but the high demand risks solar panel oversupply. It can lower local acquisition costs but the sharp fall in demand due to the surplus can affect solar panel market sustainability and dependability in the future.
Save on Energy has an excellent post about solar technologies and its challenges below.
The solar energy industry has experienced a surge of growth in the past decade. In 2010, the residential installed solar capacity in the U.S. was 667 MW (megawatts). That number jumped to almost 20,000 in 2021, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). That’s a nearly 3,000% percent increase.
Solar job growth has exploded too. According to the National Solar Jobs Census, the U.S. solar industry employs over 230,000 workers as of 2020, up from about 93,000 in 2010.
But despite the massive growth of the solar industry, it may not be replacing fossil fuels anytime soon. There are still several barriers that could hold solar energy back. Here are the top three challenges facing the solar industry.
Grid infrastructure in the U.S. and your utility company
The power grid has remained largely unchanged over the past century. Now, as Americans try to go greener, grid infrastructure must be retrofitted to handle the influx of renewable energy.
A large part of President Joe Biden’s energy plan involves a major power grid overhaul as the U.S. inches towards clean energy. This feat is a nearly insurmountable challenge.
According to Forbes, Biden will have to “overhaul a sprawling electrical network that relies on tens of thousands of generators that are owned by more than 3,000 different electricity providers, a group that includes investor-owned utilities, publicly owned utilities, cooperatives, power marketers, and federal power agencies,
But with so much revenue at stake in the power and electricity industries, utility companies aren’t likely to just quietly go away. The U.S. electric power industry generated 401.7 billion dollars in 2019, according to Statista.
However, the utility companies are feeling the pressure of a renewable energy revolution. According to Grist, “Solar power and other distributed renewable energy technologies could lay waste to U.S. power utilities and burn the utility business model, which has remained virtually unchanged for a century, to the ground.”
You see, electricity isn’t stored. Once it’s been generated, it’s transmitted to the grid, where it flows through power lines to meet the supply and demand of the nation. If demand is higher than expected, the power in your home might flicker or go out completely. However, if demand is lower than anticipated, energy is wasted. To keep that from happening, there has to be the right balance between energy generation and consumption. (Continued)
You can always trust Roper Roofing and Solar to provide you with excellent solar panel installations in Golden, CO. Contact us today to learn more about our products and services.
