Comments by "Paul Aiello" (@paul1979uk2000) on "How Solar Power Got So Cheap … So Fast" video.
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The advantage with solar over other renewables is that it can be plastered almost everywhere and it's becoming cheap to make, it's likely going to get a lot cheaper overtime, also, with how solar is developing in that it can be integrated into many things without ruining the look of it, I suspect it's going to get so cheap that it ends up going into almost everything that needs power.
There's already talks about solar being used so it covers the entire house surface, from roof, walls, even the driveway, which clearly, if you have a lot more and it's cheap enough, without ruining the look, so it blends in with your house, more or us will likely do it because you're likely going to generate a lot more energy.
I also think it's the major advantage solar has over wind, with wind power, it works well at scale and size, but it's not that good in urban areas and on our houses, there's almost moving parts so it's not as reliable and it's easy to see why solar is getting far more investment than wind, it can be used it a lot more ways, and it's more consumer friendly.
As for the big change towards renewable energy, a big part of that is the war in Ukraine and Putin, it's really started to focus minds to do real change, not just in Europe but across the world, and Putin might have speeded up our transition by a decade or two, we were always going to move away from fossil fuels, but there was a lot of foot dragging, and even thought there's still a bit of that now, it's clear the pace is picking up, and it's likely going to continue as renewables get cheaper, better, battery tech becomes better and energy prices become cheaper for it, which could keep pushing us more in that direction until we don't use fossil fuels at all.
It's also a given that as the tech becomes cheaper and better, more of us are going to adopt it, and I actually feel that the biggest cost is installation, if they reduce the complexity of that so it's easier to install, it would do wonders for the adoption rate of solar power, especially for homeowners.
Critical mass is also important, once you get to that, it snowballs, and the impact of that is far more investment in the tech which massively reduces the price whiles at the same time, develops the tech a lot faster, the computing revolution went through the same process in the 90's, where it went from niche to mass market in just over a decade, I do feel solar is heading to that path, but when the trigger point is, it's hard to say, but it could happen over the next decade, if it does, the fossil industry is in big trouble because the amount they can sell will drop and continue to drop a lot, worse yet, they will have to sell at a lower price point to compete with renewables and before you know it, it kills off that industry.
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