One of the biggest reasons businesses and home owners have for not installing solar panels are their high cost.  This is due in part to two things: (a) the cost of manufacturing anything with silicon, solar panels’ primary component, is high and (b) the overall efficiency of solar panels is relatively low (15-25% max), thus you need a lot of panels to meet your electrical demands.  The low efficiency of panels implies the need for a lot of real estate that faces in a specific direction to ensure demand is met.  The net-net is that even though solar is a perfect solution as an energy source, we need to significantly improve how we capture and transform it into usable electricity.

“All of humankind’s power consumption amounted to only 15 terawatts in 2004, so converting less than 0.02% of the Sun’s power delivered to the Earth would have replaced all of it.”

Luckily, we’ve finally got some global attention on the matter and innovation is occurring!

On a related note, if you’re looking for a solar charger for your electronics, check these out.