system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What is the real future of solar power? Is it as possible as the media is making it seem, or are the disadvantages too great?

A buddy of mine has made several claims about why solar energy isn't viable at all in the long term. He's a huge proponent of nuclear energy - which I don't disagree with him on, but his adamant denial of the viability of solar has me torn.

His claims include:

1. Solar is incredibly inefficient, with most of the solar energy wasted.

2. Storing the excess energy for night time in lithium batteries is irresponsible, as they are not great long term solutions for power storage.

3. The lifeline of a solar panel, as he describes it, is 8-10 years along with whatever battery would accompany it to assist at night time. He says that both components make this fiscally irresponsible.

A lot of the sources of information on the internet that I've been exposed to have been solar hype machines.  I live in Florida where I think solar is exceptionally viable, but he's started to make me doubt its impact going into the future.

What are your thoughts on solar energy and its future?
gpt
>Solar is incredibly inefficient, with most of the solar energy wasted.

This is a weird statement.  Solar energy is essentially free energy rained down on us, the fact that we can reliably build cheap panels that convert 20% of that into usable electricity is pretty amazing.    If we could harness even a couple percent of the total solar power hitting our planet we would be set for a long time, even though that might look inefficient.

To me the type of efficiency that matters here is price per kWh or however you want to measure energy production, and in that case we are getting to a point where solar is beating out nuclear (factoring in regulations and their prices) and encroaching on cheaper fossil fuels.

>Storing the excess energy for night time in lithium batteries is irresponsible, as they are not great long term solutions for power storage.

That irresponsible word needs some explaining.  Lithium for Li-ion batteries may have some sourcing issues and some recycling hurdles, but other than that it is a great option.  You can also store the energy in hundreds of different ways if you so choose, though they are generally either more expensive, more land intensive or dependent on a certain area (like pumping water up to a high reservoir above a dam).

Also, long term storage is a term that needs a definition.  It makes sense to store energy on the scale of days or weeks most of the time, and Li-ion batteries are fine for that.  If you are storing energy for months to years then you are likely in a niche area or way over-designing your system.

>The lifeline of a solar panel, as he describes it, is 8-10 years, along with whatever battery would accompany it to assist at night time. He says that both components make this fiscally irresponsible.

That is just false.  Commercial panels that people put on their roofs are generally rated for 20 years and expected to be down to about 80% original capacity by that point.  1% a year is not an incredible loss.

The truth is that right now solar panels are getting to be pretty cheap to produce and easier to deploy, and frankly a lot less risky than things like nuclear or fossil fuels.  They last plenty long and there are numerous ways to store excess energy, too many to list in one post for sure.

However they certainly aren't just a one-size-fits-all approach.  They cannot easily meet 100% of our current demand right now, not remotely cheaply at least.  We still need strong baseload power and we need peaker plants that can meet surges in demand.  Many areas of the world simply cannot use them effectively.

The future will surely be one with lots of solar panels, solar thermal plants, and a host of other green technologies and probably still a lot of fossil fuel and nuclear options for a time.  Demand response and storage are still evolving and need to go quite a ways before we get something that looks like "the future" though.

As for nuclear in general, that is a tricky subject.  Certainly the promises of the past have not panned out, we never got our "too cheap to meter" power.  There is a great deal of reliable energy there but it is inherently very risky and so needs a whole lot of infrastructure and oversight (which costs a lot).  There are some pretty cool ideas out there like small mobile generators, thorium, or single industrial building units that combine thermal and electric production and use less dangerous fuels.  They aren't ready yet but they will probably be a part of the energy mix in future along with solar and wind and such.

If you want a safe bet for energy then go for a little of everything, but the super long term winners are probably going to be ~~fission~~ fusion (if we can ever figure it out) or anything that is directly powered by the sun (solar, wind, tidal, hydro).  Maybe add in heat from the Earth too (geothermal).