Sounds like a project to incorporate leading edge technologies rather than with an emphasis on affordable, high efficiency, alternatives design; regardless, one-offs demonstrating new technology features are rarely accurate predictors of the costs of installing new tech features in either existing homes or as feature design elements in tract housing construction. Demand and experience in construction/installation usually realizes massive price/cost reductions over demonstration projects.
I didn't follow the 2013 competition they held in California this year or the one in China, but the 2011 Decathlon placed budget restrictions on construction, and teams had to fall within that budget in order to be competitive (IE they lost points precipitously after breaching $400,000 in construction costs). So yes, we actually had to try and be affordable, it was a requirement, though different teams gave and took on different facets including energy efficiency to focus on costs for example.
2009, 2005, and earlier competitions had no such rules in place which is why university teams like the one I mentioned which clad their entire construction with photovoltaic panels pretty much abandoned any though for affordability. Your critique about the cost aspect is pretty well spot on for the earlier competitions, and perhaps to a lesser extent to the one I was in. For that matter, as energy production and alternative energy goes you could also b asking why those competitions don't deal with wind or similar even (the tangents and critiques on this can get pretty long so I'll leave it at that).
[/end competition monologue]
Solar is one part of a multipronged approach to replacing fossil fuels, the idea isn't to replace all fossil fuel energy with one alternative technology. Rather, the idea is to replace fossil fuels with a range of local sources of alternative energy technologies. BTW, your car engine is only about 25% efficient at tapping and making use of the energy from gasoline (which itself requires energy in oil recovery and distillation), so why do you think that the solid state efficiency of solar makes it unsuitable for widespread energy applications?
Regarding that... Steep costs for the equipment for the same energy conversion efficacy are the main, but not only reasons why I think that. At an individual consumer level, I learned that the cost of the equipment, area available for the solar array, the weather, and geologic location influence how well the system performs. 6/10 days were cloudy, and pretty much every "house" was in the negative when everything was said and done. We wound a little bit positive only because we minimized power use (the design involved a lot glazing [aka day lighting] which which was itself a large cost component).
At the city level, you need a huge area of land to set up the solar array. That hasn't set particularly well with environmentalists in a number of cases, particularly given that where I live the only area available for an array of the required size happens to be a national park. I'm not sure they're cozy with the idea. Nor do I think the idea of blinding reflected sunlight on flights is either.
Doesn't mean solar's a bad idea, I think we should pursue it, but if it's supposed to help eventually replace fossil fuels, it needs a lot of passive design built into the architecture. I don't see large solar fields doing the trick.
<snip>...or did you not realize that this is what has led us to understand the primary anthropogenic character of this carbon?
Already know that the amounts of carbon in the atmosphere can be measured and a reasonable picture of the distant past versus our current production can be made about the CO2 concentrations themselves. The problem lies in the fact that specifics about the impact from direct atmospheric analysis became available only in the last 40 years. That can't establish much of a pattern when you're dealing with long term climate trends, nor especially when within these last 40 years there have been smaller fluctuations in the climatological patterns. If reducing the CO2 emissions is a priority go for it, my disagreements with AGW are essentially separate from my thoughts about the potential of alternative energy. But I think there are other components of climate change that are more immediate of a concern (and at ground level) than the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, if I'm to take the crisis of sea level rise, warming, etc as already having been "locked in" at face value.
Energy technology has never transitioned in this manner. New forms gradually increase in application and improve in efficiency as they overtake systems that have become expensive, problematic or otherwise undesirable, until the older form is no longer profitable and it falls by the wayside.
Well the problem is fossil fuels are the defacto and most established, and it's remained that way despite solar power not exactly being a new concept. There's also ethanol, which has it's own challenges interfering with food demand/prices. Let's not also forget wind power which is restricted by geography and climate. They're receiving adoption sure, but how how long have some of these alternatives already been around, solar's been around for nearly 40 years.n I can't speak for the future improvements to the technology so maybe you'll be proven right but for now those technologies need enough efficiency and cost balance to allow for adoption to ramp up. And manufacturers of these products need to be able to stay afloat.
what are you trying to say. This is a science forum ...not one for sound bites with no context. Who is "they".
