In a book by Peter Diamandis, and Steven Kotler titled, “Abundance: Why the Future Will Be Much Better Than You Think,” they make the following statement:

“Solar cell production capacity is growing at 30 percent per year at the same time that price is falling at 6 percent per annum. At this rate, America is less than 20 years away from meeting 100 percent of its energy needs with solar.”

IMO, what this statement really says is that “IF this continues to grow at 30 percent per year, and IF price continues to fall at 6 percent per annum, THEN we’re less than 20 years away.” I don’t perceive this as some type of guarantee.

My question is how sustainable do you think this growth is? What things would put nearly a full stop on this growth? What could actually spur it?

Electric cars will spur it beyond most peoples wildest dreams.

The payoff swill be clear financially and in increased mileage before re-charging. It will start as a bit of a fad and then explode.

What could actually spur it? Increase the energy densities of batteries by a factor of 10.

Make this discovery practical and electric cars which currently have a 100 mile range before recharging would now have a 1000 mile range. You would be able to design a solar systems for houses that had a practical means of storing the excess energy produced during peak sunlight to be used when there is little or no sunlight.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2008/j...re-010908.html

My guess thus far, then, is that at least the two of you agree that by 2035 we could easily be 100% solar then.

Because, my question was, can we sustain this growth (amongst other questions). You evidently think we can.

Any others? Anyone think Solar basically goes downhill?

Nothing like 100% solar, fossil will be still be massive.

and nuclear fusion might have begun to become reality. Though I guess 2035 is a bit soon for fusion, first plants are planned to open @2030 I think.

Yeah, it's mimicry. The universe isn't 100% solar but it's the easiest of energy sources to tap.

Planetary fusion is simply a micro model of processes that occur already in stars. Thing is, it's a difficult energy source to master because of the pressures. The smaller a solar body is, the larger its instability/energy output duality.

Basically, duck when Eta Carinae goes boom. Not my fault tho.

I have a hard time believing that solar cells are going to be the sole source of future energy. If anything I think we're going to see a nice combination of wind, solar, hydroelectric, and of course nuclear power take over in the coming decades. This is of course assuming that no one invents a far safer and environmentally friendlier source of energy such as fusion.

The biggest problem IMO isn't really the advancement of technology but rather our dependence on coal and oil. Realistically I don't think you will start to see big changes in our infrastructure until these become inefficient to mine and that's not going to happen for a while.

All energy is solar. Mother Nature just provided us with many strange types of batteries with which to store that energy.