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David Hunt's avatar

As someone who founded a solar business in the UK in 2007, I enjoyed this trip, I mean episode

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Ken Fabian's avatar

Going by rooftop solar (I love, love, love it) it doesn't seem so impossible to build enough to top out above demand. Solar factory output of 1TW per year? I'd seen that as an IEA projection for 2025. Is it already exceeded?

I think solar pricing looks a lot like Zeno's paradox - edging ever closer to zero but unable to quite reach it - and that makes it a winner already. Yet it is heading for cheaper still - eg perovskite/silicon tandem edges closer to viability.

We can't know how the clean energy end game will turn out but we can foresee market saturation, where, like a rooftop, installed capacity exceeds all demand and production is for replacing existing solar, not adding more. It doesn't look like the cost of solar panels is a big constraining factor; developing the associated abilities to make the most effective use of it - transmission and storage and EV's that can be both, mostly - seems the space to watch.

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