Making Solar Energy Affordable for Everyone

For a long time, solar power has often been viewed as only affordable to the wealthy in most countries despite the fact that the source of solar energy is free; from sunlight. Most states have aimed to make the solar power equipment more affordable and accessible to help reduce the costs of living among the citizens. In America, the current average cost of a solar-electric system is half as compared to the expense in 2010. The use of solar panels has been on the rise, with most international bodies like the United Nations and the World Bank advocating for a continuous use of renewable energy. The organizations have since invested a lot of resources in making this a reality, installing them in cities, farms as well as rural-urban areas.

In America, the government has since announced many policies designed to help install power energy to anyone who wants it including those renting, landlords, middle-class earners as well as the low-income earners. For most of the American families and businesses renting with not enough space to install the solar panels, there has been a promotion partnership with the National Community Solar agency to install shared solar panels. Moreover, families that live in federal subsidized houses have seen cleaner solar energy installations. Most countries all over the world have continuously committed a lot of resources, more than a billion dollars to help finance solar power plant and make it more efficient and affordable especially in low-income areas (Cedric, 39).

The primary challenge in the success of solar power has been the perceived high costs associated with the source of power. Most people globally are of the view that the cost of acquiring the solar equipment and the installation costs are way high. Interestingly, even the corporates have in the past showed low interest in the use of solar power. In most countries, many barriers are making it hard for the success of the solar installation. For example, some countries have outdated regulations which make it difficult in financing and installing clean energy for the citizens. Moreover, the high upfront costs can always stop someone from accessing the renewable source of energy despite being aware of the possibility to save expenses in the long term.

In the near past, there has not been enough sensitization of the available career opportunities in the solar energy. Most of the focus has been on hydro-power and other forms of acquiring power thus making it difficult for the development of solar energy. In the modern world, there has been a more focus on advancing career opportunities in the renewable solar energy. For example, in California, there are more solar energy workers than film actors according to the Bureau of Labor and numbers as indicated by the Solar Foundation. The number of solar workers in Texas has also rapidly increased making it one of the highest employers in the modern period (Cedric, 33).

There are a lot of opportunities in the renewable power career ranging from multinational companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google which are currently changing the source of power for their servers from other sources to solar energy. Other big retailers like Wal-Mart are continuously installing solar panels and power turbines in their stores as well as distribution facilities across the globe. Moreover, the U.S government through its military is rapidly establishing forms of renewable energy including solar power, the wind as well as geothermal energy both at the home bases as well as its bases overseas. The continued support by the American government to reduce the cost of equipment for the solar power has significantly increased the demand for the renewable power (Cedric, 49).

In a bid to make solar energy more efficient and affordable for everyone, the primary strategy used by most advanced countries is to cut by more than half the costs of equipment to help compete with other energy sources like from fossil fuels. For example, China is currently creating large perovskite crystals which use low-cost fabrication to cut production costs for other renewable sources of power. The chief engineer, Huang heads the team and has often demonstrated the capacity of the project in the form of a sun catcher which has all been successful. The findings as published in The Science magazine helps provide more insights for future research and development to other forms of energy.

Huang advocates for more investigations into better techniques that will make the cost of equipment less expensive in a large-scale production capacity. In the current analysis, the Perovskite crystals often degrade easily thus more research required to replace silicon sources of power. Through the use of the advanced technology, Huang and his team have consistently investigated ways to easily overlay silicon with other ultrathin films to help increase the efficiency of the solar cells. Moreover, replacing silicon with less expensive and modern organic polymers with plastics is viewed as a strategy to help create a cheaper source of renewable energy. Huang states that renewable energy has been and will be the future which makes solar energy demand for more research and development to help achieve the millennium development goals to help achieve solar power goals of being a primary source of energy (Cedric, 37).

There are several ways of making solar energy equipment more affordable to the consumers. One major approach is through the use of power purchase agreements between the entities mandated to produce energy and the customers. The method is mainly used by large-scale consumers of companies which have high electricity costs with the aim of reducing the costs. Through the agreements, the entity procures the equipment on behalf of the customer at an exchange of the excess produced energy. After installation, the user may often generate excess power than needed which is channeled to the institution that financed the purchase of the equipment to distribute it to other users at a fee (Cedric, 41).

In most large organizations around the world, power purchase agreements have significantly reduced energy costs. In ensuring that the equipment is affordable to low-income consumers like households, sharing of power systems can be used, where many users together enter into one agreement with the energy producing companies and share the cost of the equipment. Moreover, government subsidy programs can make it possible to reduce the cost of the equipment through incentives that motivate consumers to adopt solar energy. International bodies like the UNEP also play a fundamental role in promoting environmentally friendly sources of power through financing communities as well as educating citizens globally on the benefits of using renewable energy (Cedric, 24).

Conclusion

The continuous efforts by environmental experts and scientists to promote more sources of renewable energy will lead to positive climate change as well as increased standards of living due to the low costs of energy to consumers. Through a collaborative effort by key players in the energy sector, solar power is considered a game changer which has had a good reception by consumers in the last few years. Most consumers advocate for a reduction in the cost of equipment and installation to help them acquire cheaper sources of power, hence solar energy becoming a way of life soon

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