The other was in Cairo, where it never rains. Lots of big metal barrels on the house rooves, all painted black. Yes, solar hot water, so even really poor people can have hot showers and hot water for washing up.
Two thoughts. First, the big problem with solar is energy flux density. You don't need that much for cooking, but try running a steel mill or aluminum smelter on solar. Not a prayer.
Second, solar to electric is an almost certain lose. The losses in conversion are high, the useful life is quite short, and with current technology, the embedded energy in the panels is probably more than they will collect over their lifetime.
There is only one collector of solar energy big enough, and cheap enough, to have any chance of replacing oil and coal: the ocean. My best bet for renewables, therefore, would be ocean thermal. We know the energy is there; it will be a tough job figuring out how to extract it and concentrate it, but everything else seems pretty hopeless.
You guys get it.
I’ve watched energy shenanigans since Carter, when energy became “the moral equivalent of war” due to the Arab oil embargo and formation of OPEC. Learned early on that so-called “alternative energy” (as it was called in the day) was largely a complete bust in any sort of rational economic analysis. Which I was involved in doing.
Now that we have so called “Green energy” 30 years+ later, little has changed. The Lefties still don’t have a clue, and are still spending gobs of the public’s money to little effect.
Without a rational energy policy, there will not be a significant economic recovery. We will not get one with this Administration.