Thinking Way Outside The Box With Solar Energy

Solar energy is a fascinating field. Think about it. We have a free, inexhaustible source of energy if we can just figure out how to harness it. You would think that this would give rise to a huge amount of creativity by researches. Well, it hasn’t. Most people stick to the panel concept and that is a mistake. We need people to think way outside the box on this subject and the few who are have made some interesting breakthroughs that could truly change our world.

Oil

To discuss solar, we first have to delve into oil. If you think I am going to bash it, you are wrong. You shouldn’t either. You would not be reading this if it wasn’t for oil. Our entire modern society is built upon the black gold. It is the most energy dense material we find naturally occurring in the world and we use it for everything. The United States uses about 19 million barrels a day for fuel for cars, petrochemicals used for everything from food fertilizers to plastics to clothing materials.

It is an amazing energy source, but there are a couple of problems. The first is the demand for it is growing. The second is the supply of it is falling. There is an ugly secret about oil that nobody really wants to talk about. While there are perhaps hundreds of thousands of oil fields, the vast majority of what we use comes from what are known as elephant fields. Of these, there are only 125 known and most are either completely depleted or on their way to being depleted.

How big a problem is this? Well, consider Ghawar. It is the biggest oil field in the world and is located in Saudi Arabia. It has produced one out of every 12 barrels of oil we have used world wide in the last 60 years. The Saudis now have to pump millions of barrels of sea water into the field to get it to produce [oil is lighter than water]. Ghawar is going to be producing fewer barrels of oil a day moving forward, a trend that happens with nearly all the major elephant fields that still have oil.

Ah, but what about shale oil? Yes, it is nice, but it can’t be produced in bulk. We need to replace about 40 million barrels of production a day in the next 20 years just to stay at the roughly 85 million barrels we produce a day now. Shale will do between three and six million at most.

Houston, we have a problem.

Solar

I’m not trying to be alarmist. What I am suggesting is we need to really be thinking about how we are going to supply our energy needs moving forward. The obvious answer is solar, but let’s be honest. Solar panels aren’t going to do the trick. For one, they can’t be used to power cars of any volume. They are nice for homes, but even then are an expensive proposition and solar panel installers are not cheap.

Out of the Box

The good news is some people are thinking out of the box on solar energy. There are many interesting ideas, but one is a game changer. It is called “solar dots”. What are solar dots you ask? The name refers to a form of solar energy capture at the molecular level. Yes, nanotechnology is the name of the game.

The technology is complex, but the basic idea is to build trillions of tiny solar panels at the molecular level. They can be “tuned” to different wave lengths of the light spectrum. While each one would produce only a tiny amount of energy, the cumulative total would produce a vast amount. It is an exciting idea and has already been used in certain inks.

Now think through the possibilities with me. If these dots can be used in inks, what else can they be used in that we apply everywhere. If you said “paint”, give yourself a slap on the back. Yes, paint. We could cover our cars, homes, buildings, roads, ships, planes and whatever else in solar dots and make them self-sufficient or at least much more so.

It would indeed be a game changer.

The planet may seem immense when you see it in a photo, but the truth is many of the resources that we rely on are rarely found. Water appears everywhere, but only small amounts of drinking water exist. Fossil fuels are under major pressure, which is well known. If you really want to see a resource under pressure, look at copper. Simply put, we are having problems finding it in usable amounts. This has resulted in huge theft levels as people steal copper from empty homes and street lights. Do a search on Google to see how big a problem it is!

Our resources are under pressure. We must develop a plan!