- One of the most popular renewable energies is Solar PV with tremendous scale up of this technology across residential and commercial locations, industrial facilities, and large scale solar farms. •Unit costs have dropped over 90% in the past decade making this particularly attractive.
- But Solar PV energy is intermittent – the Sun only shines part of the day, and weather can interfere, so the capacity of the installed systems have to be great enough (oversized) to capture the necessary energy whilst the Sun is shining.
- Excess solar energy would need to be stored in energy storage systems to provide the needed energy supply to match demand over the course of 24 hours.
- Not all geographical locations provide enough solar radiation with high latitudes particularly challenged. Equatorial regions may be challenged by cloud cover in some locations.
- Hybrid renewable systems are common with additional renewables like Wind energy providing a more resilient mix. Geothermal energy offers great promise to support hybrid systems like this since it is a persistent renewable energy.