One of the things I have noticed over the past few years is the continually slow uptake of solar technology in everyday society, and I have always wondered why this is. I asked a few friends of mine why they thought we don’t have solar technology embedded into nearly every device, and their answer is always the same: the high cost and low efficiency.

Both of those issues seemed to be controlled by an industry against the further development of solar technology. I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but if I were an oil company, I would be willing to spend a great deal of my profits on making sure certain technologies never come to light, as they could detract from my wealth creating business and I do believe a certain amount of this is going on where solar technology is concerned.

The advances we have had over the past decade have been very slow going, and unlike other technologies, I don’t feel like solar is being given the full support that it should be getting from the research and development corporations in the world.

Yes, Nanosolar is a cool idea, but the real boom in solar technology won’t come until the efficiency is raised and then the high efficiency panels are mass produced. Why are we even producing solar cells that are under twenty percent efficient? Where are solar cells that are mass produced with fifty percent efficiency?

I know we have made some strides over the last decade, but can this really be all that the scientific minds can come up with currently? The current technology just isn’t good enough, and I don’t think the governments and corporations of the world have really put enough pressure into developing it fast enough.

One of the biggest complaints of solar technology is its size and weight for the amount of power it produces. No one wants to see full fields filled with mirrors, but again, increasing efficiency will reduce the amount of cells needed to produce power.

If we could get to seventy-five percent efficiency, and assuming current solar power plants have on average twenty-five percent efficiency, then we could reduce the array size by one third, making it much more realistic once the cost of such technology also drops to a friendlier price.

Despite living in Canada, I would pay tens of thousands of dollars on a solar system if it could reduce my dependance on fossil fuels by thirty percent or more, but I am not about to devote my whole back yard to solar cells.

Are corporations fighting against solar technology development, or am I just paranoid? Do you think solar technology is moving at a decent rate or dragging its heels? Let me know in the comments below.

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