Solar Power Madness

With all the hype around global warming, climate change and the emission trading system going around these days around the world, marketers are capitalizing on this trend to go 'Green', especially in the energy and manufacturing industry. Solar energy is nothing new, its been around for decades but due to the high cost and under-developed efficiency in energy storage it never made mainstream. I'm guessing this is all going to change in the coming decades as more powerful investors and advocates getting involved will drive innovation up and costs down due to competition in the market. This 'Green' revolution may perhaps be just what it needs.

The Kyoto Protocol was founded in, as you have guessed, Kyoto Japan to combat the global change and control emission around the world. This is not the only area where Japan is leading the 'Green' vision. As you read the news and walk around Japan you may also notice that many companies are investing in research and development of Solar energy.

The Japanese government is investing big yen into Japan space agency (JAXA) to utilize this unlimited clean energy. They have recently acquired several big companies to research and develop The Space Solar Power System (SSPS), in which arrays of photovoltaic dishes several square kilometers (square miles) in size would hover in geostationary orbit outside the Earth's atmosphere.

The solar cells would capture the solar energy, which is at least five times stronger in space than on Earth, and beam it down to the ground through clusters of lasers or microwaves. These would be collected by gigantic parabolic antennae, likely to be located in restricted areas at sea or on dam reservoirs.

Sharp Corporation and Kansai Electric Power are currently building “Sakai City Waterfront Mega Solar Power Generation Plan”. Under the initiative, two mega solar power generation plants are to be built in Sakai (near Osaka) by 2010.

There are now numerous number of products utilizing solar, available to both consumers and business.

Backpacks with built-in solar panels. The biggest backpack is able to produce 15W in ideal conditions, the small ones only 4W. The interesting thing is that they also include a battery so even when there’s not a laptop, cellphone or iPod plugged to the backpack, if you are walking in sunlight the battery will recharge so that you can plug any gadget later on to recharge it. Cost varies starting from around $600, depending on the model.

Dubbed the "Solar Hybrid" phones, the big three telco companies are also utilizing the summer rays on their cellphones. This one is also waterproof so you can take it down to the beach. With the current models the need to be recharge for 15 minutes out in the sun to talk for 1 minute.

Tokai University's solar car team recently took home the gold medal for one of the world's largest green car races, which took place from Oct 25, 2009, in Australia travelling 3,000km from Darwin to Adelaide, without any major trouble with a driving time of 29 hours and 49 minutes (in four days) and an average speed of 100.54km/h.

Toyota is taking a step further in their innovate 'Green' car, Prius by powering solely by solar energy. They have also announced Solar charging stations for electric cars and plug-in hybrids.

About 50KM Northwest of Tokyo there is a town dubbed the Solar City in which the government have given incentives to the residents to install solar panels in their homes to research into efficiency and power outages.

Solar energy is inevitably a growing market. The challenges at this stage is driving the currently high costs down and the efficiency of energy storage up. Once these challenges are met the mainstream will have no problems adapting, I have no doubts about that.

Coming from the land of the rising sun, they may just succeed.