Many of us know that solar energy is a good thing, but few really understand why. Therefore, I compiled a comprehensive list of solar energy advantages and disadvantages that will enable you to make an educated decision whether on not Solar Power is right for YOU.
Advantages of solar power-
a) Saves you money. It is getting cheaper, very rapidly due to an increase in production and new technologies being developed.
b) Panels are getting smaller, thinner and more attractive. There are even substances such as solar paint- paint which contains miniature solar panels.
c) You can circumvent some of the extreme expensive of having a system installed in your own house by a pro technician by building and installing one yourself. All you need are the right blueprints/instructions that will show you what components you need to purchase and where to get them from, how to assemble them and then how to install them in your own home in a safe, reliable and easy manner.
d) Solar energy is a renewable resource. Although we cannot utilize the power of the sun at night or on stormy, cloudy days, etc., we can count on the sun being there the next day, ready to give us more energy and light. As long as we have the sun, we can have solar energy (and on the day that we no longer have the sun, you can believe that we will no longer have ourselves, either).
e) Solar cells are totally silent. They can extract energy from the sun without making a peep. Now imagine the noise that the giant machines used to drill for and pump oil make!
f) Solar energy is non-polluting. Of all advantages of solar energy over that of oil, this is, perhaps, the most important. The burning of oil releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and carcinogens into the air.
g) Low/ no maintenance. Solar cells require very little maintenance (they have no moving parts that will need to be fixed), and they last a long time.
Disadvantages of solar power-
Here are the disadvantages of solar energy:
a) Solar cells/panels, etc. can be very expensive.
The initial cost is the main disadvantage of installing a solar energy system, largely because of the high cost of the semi-conducting materials used in building one.
b) Solar power cannot be created at night. No solar energy will be produced during nighttime although a battery backup system and/or net metering will solve this problem. See http://www.dsireusa.org for details on how net metering allows you to save electricity and money.
It requires a lot of land area if it is used on a commercial scale. Thousands of square miles of prime land would need to be used to provide enough energy for all non-transport energy use in the USA alone.
c) The expense of this form of alternative energy is still apparent. Solar panels, especially photovoltaic ones, although they have got substantially cheaper over recent years still do cost quite a large sum of money. Economies of scale still mean that it is cheaper for power companies to use gas, oil or nuclear technologies to generate electricity.
d) There is an inherent risk in the fact that the efficiency and generation capacity of solar panels relies on how much the sun is shining. The weather is quite hard to predict accurately, and very few people want to play “Russian roulette” with their electricity supply.