The departure on Friday of a solar-powered plane with no backup fuel from San Francisco's Moffet Field in the first leg of a cross-country US trip is a dramatic demonstration of how far solar energy has come. The HB-SIA Solar Impulse arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, early yesterday morning (US time) after a 19-hour flight. The plane is able to fly long after the sun goes down or in cloudy weather because the nearly 12,000 solar cells on its wings charge an array of lithium-ion batteries in gondolas that hang below the wings, and these power four electric motors. The craft is being piloted by Bertrand Piccard, the first person to circumnavigate the globe in a hot-air balloon in 1999 and a co-founder of the Clean Generation Initiative to encourage the adoption of sustainable energy technologies, and a pair of Swiss pilots. In the coming weeks the plane will make flights to Dallas, St Louis, Washington DC and finally New York City amidst a PR campaign to promote solar energy.
While it's a safe bet the aviation industry isn't going to turn to solar power for commercial aircraft any time soon, this flight and previous ones by the team should dispel the notion that solar is not viable because the sun doesn't shine at night or on cloudy days. While the sort of lithium-ion battery assembly used for this flight may not be either practical or cost-effective on a large scale at this time, the energy storage problem associated with solar energy can almost certainly be overcome if adequate research and resources are thrown at it.
But the real message coming from the landmark flight of the Solar Impulse is that solar has arrived and is able to take a significant load off fossil-fuel driven power sources right now - if it's taken seriously and the necessary changes are made to allow its input.
In Thailand, as elsewhere, energy is a government monopoly, and that means almost exclusively large coal, natural gas and hydropower projects. In many cases oppressive regulations make it difficult if not impossible for private individuals to use solar.
On a larger scale, progress is slow on the renovation of power grids to allow small and medium power producers to easily feed into the system.
The country has taken important steps towards increasing solar capacity in recent years under the Ministry of Energy's Solar Energy Development Department. For example, a 73MW solar farm in Lop Buri was completed in December 2011 at a cost of about nine billion baht. There has also been a welcome interest from the private sector in developing solar in Thailand. In general, however, the solar initiatives here have been on a relatively small scale, lacking in urgency and not nearly bold enough.
Alternative technologies including solar technology will not be able to replace fossil fuels in the short term, and possibly not ever, but that doesn't mean they should not be developed much more aggressively. Germany is one of the few places in the world where this is happening now.
At noon on April 15, the European nation achieved a new peak solar output of 22.68 gigawatts. Over the whole daylight period of approximately 12 hours a total of 167GW was produced, the equivalent, according to Cleantechnica.com of 34 million tonnes of oil or eight "average" nuclear reactors, contributing about 12% of the total German electricity consumption on a typical Monday in April. As Germany is not known for its sunny climate, it's clear that solar could be taking a much greater role in supplying sunny Thailand's energy needs and reducing the country's reliance on fossil fuels.
Put aside for now the energy storage question, which should eventually be solved. Peak sunlight hours correspond to peak energy usage times when people are more likely to run air conditioners and factories are sure to be in operation. If solar power were given real respect in Thailand, worries over energy shortages because of temporary stoppages in natural gas from Myanmar this past Songkran would not have arisen. It would also lead directly to cleaner skies, an improved trade balance and reduced emissions of greenhouse gases.
The Solar Impulse team intends to circumnavigate the globe in 2015. Hopefully by then solar will have really taken off in Thailand and around the world.