>>9341810>With an energy efficiency of a laughable 20%How can you hang around repeating this idiot monkey gibbering after this?
>>9340253>You could just as well say that typical nuclear power is only about 0.1% efficientThe conversion percentage of solar panels is only indirectly relevant, insofar as it affects monetary, material, labor, and land area costs. If solar panels were otherwise identical, but 100% efficient, these would all get better by a factor of 5. We've seen them all (other than land area, which is not a serious problem at ~20%) get better by a factor of 5 a couple of times already, *without* conversion efficiency improvement, and you'll see them do it again if you just wait a few years.
Conversion efficiency is totally meaningless, absent awareness of sunlight intensity. On a world where the sunlight was one fifth as intense, 100% solar panels would offer the same value proposition as 20% solar panels would here. It's just spectacularly stupid to point at some arbitrary technical figure out of context and act like that's a conclusive argument.
Anyway, it's not like solar panels are even limited to 20% efficiency. Cells around that efficiency are chosen as economically optimal with current technology. In other words, they're economically better than solar cells with higher conversion efficiency, which can range up near 50%.
If you want to make a real argument, you have to look at the $/watt and $/joule figures, and the rate of their improvement. You have to look at issues like land use, the advantage to consumers of being able to cut out the middle man and directly generate their own electricity, the storage problem, etc. in comparison to nuclear's catastrophic threat, waste disposal and decommissioning problems, the forced dependence of individuals on large central facilities, etc.
