Jenny Cottle
Rising electricity prices may be the wakeup call households need to make the change to green energy. This combined with improved efficiency and reduced costs of green technologies are making green a viable energy choice for consumers.
Around the world there has been huge growth in the use of solar energy for domestic use. Solar energy is generated from the roofs of 1.3 million Australian homes, with about 50,000 added in the first three months of this year.
To date, it has been difficult to completely replace tradition energy from the grid with green energy due to inconsistent supply, the sun doesn’t always shine and it isn’t always windy. The only other option to supplementing with energy from the grid, was storage batteries, but these were bulky and expensive.
But change is coming.
Helping to reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of the batteries are entrepreneurs like Elon Musk. Musk plans to build a $US5 billion ($5.4 billion) gigafactory to mass produce batteries for his Tesla electric cars, aiming to drive down costs by 30 per cent. These technological innovations can then be applied to other battery uses such as storing solar energy.
In Victoria, a project by Sun Power, the world’s second largest solar energy company is looking to make solar storage viable for households. This project is set to launch a pilot storage program which combines photovoltaic solar with batteries. It is expected that test households would disconnect from the grid and that the initial outlay would pay for itself in 5-10 years.
Looking further ahead, exciting work by scientists at MIT and Harvard University may end up eliminating the need for batteries. They have discovered a way of storing solar energy in molecules which can be used to heat homes, water or for cooking. Amazingly, these molecules can store the energy forever and can be endlessly re-used through a phenomenon called photoswitching.
In the interim, there have been improvements in the technology, efficiency and cost of photovoltaic cells. This makes them cheaper to install and less panels are effective in producing solar energy. An interesting take on this was something I came across on Kickstarter- a solar cell/ wind rooftop combination. Marcio Pugina, inventor of GEN, claims it will generate up to 70% of household power.
Whichever way you look at it, the future appears bright for solar energy.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/1015554727/the-gen-produce-renewable-energy-for-your-home
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