The Solar Age – A Bright Future To Mankind

From Burning Fuel To Turning Light Into Lightning

Since the dawn of time, energy has been at the epicenter of civilization. For most of it, burning things has been the primary energy source, excluding simple muscle power (human or animal).

From primitive forges melting bronze into the first armor and swords to the modern power plants burning coal, oil, and gas, we progressed in complexity. Still, the base idea stayed the same: heat was used to transform material (like melting ore into metal), including turning water into steam to power to create electricity.

Photovoltaic technology changed this, allowing for the first time the production of energy on a large scale with no moving parts (which even excludes wind power).

Such a design has tremendous advantages, as no moving parts mean a lot more durability of the associated machinery. It is also an energy generation system directly creating electricity, instead of some other energy form needing conversion into electricity, like fossil fuels and nuclear power plants, which cycle from heat -> steam -> power.

A Tremendous Growth

The market for solar energy has grown massively over the last few years and is still expected to grow by 15.4% CAGR in the US until 2030.

Source: Grand View Research

The West’s adoption of solar energy is actually dwarfed by the global growth of solar energy, with China leading the charge, as it is responsible for more solar power project pipelines than the rest of the world combined.

China has been ramping up its renewable energy capacity year on year, installing more solar power between 2023 and 2024 than the previous three years combined, and more than the total global capacity installed in 2023.

This has put the Asian giant on track to achieve an installed wind and solar capacity of 1,200 GW by the end of the year, putting it six years ahead of the government goal.