You seem to not understand the fundamental purpose behind using solar: it's sustainable, clean and has no moving parts.jb_nc said:Average solar flux on the ground is about 700 W/m2. Average solar panel efficiency is about 20%. Average coal plant puts out, say, 5 billion kW-hr/year.
You can do the maths.
Oh yeah, viable energy storage for solar (such as batteries) don't exist and probably won't exist unless better batteries are discovered.
Also, your maths is wrong, and you base your efficiencies and premises on current technology even though we have significantly better prototypes and research models (see the fields of intelligent polymers, carbon nanotubes, hydrogen storage, and general materials science). Further, you seem confused into thinking solar power is designed to replace all other energy sources for some reason.
Let's see:
- The 89 petawatts of sunlight reaching the earth's surface is plentiful - almost 6,000 times more than the 15 terawatts of average power consumed by humans. Additionally, solar electric generation has the highest power density (global mean of 170 W/m²) among renewable energies.
- Solar power is pollution free during use. Production end wastes and emissions are manageable using existing pollution controls. End-of-use recycling technologies are under development.
- Facilities can operate with little maintenance or intervention after initial setup.
- Solar electric generation is economically superior where grid connection or fuel transport is difficult, costly or impossible. Examples include satellites, island communities, remote locations and ocean vessels.
- When grid-connected, solar electric generation can displace the highest cost electricity during times of peak demand (in most climatic regions), can reduce grid loading, and can eliminate the need for local battery power for use in times of darkness and high local demand; such application is encouraged by net metering. Time-of-use net metering can be highly favorable to small photovoltaic systems.
- Grid-connected solar electricity can be used locally thus reducing transmission/distribution losses (transmission losses were approximately 7.2% in 1995).
- Once the initial capital cost of building a solar power plant has been spent, operating costs are extremely low compared to existing power technologies.
- Compared to fossil and nuclear energy sources, very little research-money has been invested in the development of solar cells, so there is much room for improvement. Nevertheless, experimental high efficiency solar cells already have efficiencies of over 40% and efficiencies are rapidly rising while mass production costs are rapidly falling.
You can read the rest on wikipedia, I'm sure.
Basically, you've not given any reason against researching and using solar energy.