Your teacher is either lying or an idiot.
1. MAKING the panels DOES produce toxic "leftovers" that pollute.
2. The panels are STILL the most EXPENSIVE way to produce power, but that is improving, slowly.
3. They are neither easy to make; NOR to install, and service AFTER installation, unless at ground level, which uses a lot of ground area that could be otherwise used.
4. They require inverters, which are not cheap in larger capacities; UNLESS you switch everything to DC operation, which was proved over 100 years ago to be LESS efficient, and MORE EXPENSIVE than AC operation.
5. The battery "stacks" required for night and low sun days are also expensive AND their production, (the batteries,) ALSO produce toxic "leftovers".
I think it's worth getting a clarification from the teacher as to what they meant.
There are a lot of applications where solar is clean, cheap, and easy to get, and I'm a big fan of solar, but I wouldn't make a blanket statement like that.
When I was growing up, we hung clothes on a line to dry. Nearly free, and saves maybe 2 kWh if you have an electric dryer.
It's winter here now, and we open the drapes on our large south-facing sliding glass doors to get heat from the sun. It's unlikely that the furnace will kick in again until sundown. That's pretty easy, too.
We have photovoltaic panels on our roof, which provide roughly all of our electric energy needs. Since we have a grid-tied installation, no batteries are involved. The electricity produced is cheaper than buying it from the power company, but this is true because in our area, we get a lot of sun, and utility electricity is expensive. There are a handful of other states in which this is true. But even this is quite an advancement. At one time, the only place that photovoltaic made sense was on satellites.
As for the pollution introduced by solar panel manufacture, it's far less than alternatives such as coal-generated electricity. This was not always the case, but certainly is today.
It may be cheap to operate but it is capital intensive. In addition, it is not efficient worldwide. The greatest insolation is located in the vicinity of Mecca. Compare that to Seattle, where it rains all the time (it seems).
We do use solar power in some instances other than solar panels. Trombe walls are simple to install, especially if they don't have to be retrofitted. And how about greenhouses?
On the average, you can only get power from the sun for 12 hours a day. At night, when we need electricity for lights, we don't get it from solar power.
The cost of installing a system on a house would be about $20,000. Look at your electricity bills. In my case, I spend about $600 per year. The break even point, with those numbers, is 33 years. Not a good investment.
Your biology teacher is misguided.
Why don't you ask your teacher when the last time s/he ever saw a solar powered Boeing 787 dreamliner powering off the airport runway.
Ask your teacher if s/he is aware of the incredibly caustic and environmentally hazardous process that is used to make photovoltaic cells and why the vast majority of those are produced in heavily polluted China.
Ask your teacher why solar, both photovoltaic and thermal collection panel, systems are so expensive that they are cost prohibitive that the majority of people who use these systems can only afford them with subsidies from the government.
Ask your teacher why dozens of green energy companies like Solyndra failed even when billions of government dollars were poored into them if green energy is easier and cheaper to get.
Ask your teacher why many environmental organizations are opposed to building photovoltaic solar farms in the desert. (hint: farms must be so huge to produce a viable commercial outpout that 1000s of acres of habitat are destroyed to do so). (Also losses due to the distance the power travels through transmission lines and transformer and Ac to Dc conversions is anywhere between 50% to 70% which means that for every 100 acres of solar farms only power from 30 to 50 acres makes it to the consumer. The rest is lost. This doesn't sound like cheap energy to me considering the cost per watt for a solar farm is quite high).
A 6 pound gallon of gasoline is roughly equivalent to 35 kilowatt-hours of power. A 1 square meter photovoltaic panel produces approximately 150 watt-hours. It would take approximately 233 square meters of solar panels to equal the same power density as a gallon of gasoline. At $275 per 150 watt panel it would cost $64,075 to produce the same energy density as a $5 gallon of gasoline. Energy density is important because it's easier to carry a gallon of fuel to run a riding lawn mower than 233 panels and it's much cheaper.
Then you have the fact that the sun doesn't always shine every day and not at all during the night. Winter hours for solar output are quite short.
Moral to all this is that solar is there and free and clean for the end user but not cheap, not convenient and definitely cannot meet the energy demands our society requires. At most it can only suppliment our energy usage but in a very limited capacity so the actual costs per watt is quite prohibitive.
I think we would be better off prospecting and harvesting the totally clean and free thermal energy that lies beneath our feet than the unreliable (dependent on weather, seasons, night) solar energy. Geothermal is reliable and can easily match the energy density of even nuclear energy in the right places far surpassing gasoline. And it's just as clean as solar but has a much smaller enviromental footprint. Tell your teacher to scrap that solar crap and leave the sun to the plants because geothermal is much better. Only problem with that is that it is not available in all places. However energy can be converted and stored in chemical form so it can be transported like oil and gasoline et al.
We have only solar at home. If I need more electric than we have in our solar system, I have to go into town to get it. We could use solar all the time, if we decreased our electric usage too.
Its the time factor that restricts.. You will not be able to use solar power for 24 hrs its difficult
right now, the limiting factor is battery technology.
also, there is a transmission problem. the best places to generate it is in the relatively inhabited west, while the greatest demand is in the east.
finally, it is not really clear how cheap and environmentally friendly solar power really is. people who call it cheap tend to overlook production and maintenance cost of the components.
why dont we all fart rainbows, and ride unicorns to work everyday? the world is not perfect, and union workers need money. full solar power will never be possible on a national level until the labor gets largely unionized. and then we will pay out the a$$ for it.
The cost of installing such systems are still at high side. Definitely a day will come when we will use the same.
my biology teacher said solar power is clean, cheap, and easy to get, so...why dont we use it all the fricken time!?
it is way expensive and its is useful only during the day by the sun.
Um no it is way expensive
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