I'll Follow the Sun

Just a few days past the famous Bloomsday and of course Captain Picard Day, today is International Solar Day!   

Seriously though folks, of all the green power/clean energy forms out there in various stages of practicability and promise, solar power always has seemed to me to be the most sensible form, with the most potential.

 The sun after all is the ultimate source of all our energy, so why not go right to the source?  Plus--and this to me is the best argument and solar's greatest advantage: its technologies are theoretically and practically the most diversified and scalable.  Unlike wind farms that have to be huge, or wave power that has to be in the ocean, solar power can be generated by very big devices for a lot of people, or by very small devices for a few.  And these days, solar power can be just about anywhere.

I think that's the future: a system that provides redundancy and autonomy, where you have enough power to run your house or even individual devices as well as your city and region.  Solar devices can eventually be made so small that we can wear them, or string them on the outside of vehicles to run them.

With almost no one noticing, solar power has been dropping in price for decades, and new breakthroughs may well be on the horizon to drive the costs down further--the Obama administration is betting on at least one of these.

I'll leave it to the experts to make the range of technical and economic arguments.  But regarding the whole climate crisis/energy crisis future, this is one of the few things I've got a good feeling about.  Other technologies, including some pretty exotic bio-based ones, should also be explored, but as for me, I'll follow the sun.