I don’t care how cheap you make a solar power generator you can still only expect the Sun to give you 120 watts per square meter per day. That is not a lot of power.
You also must factor in the opportunity cost. If you are using those square meters for the production of power or fuel you are not using them to produce food. If you use those dollars to buy solar cells you do not have those dollars to buy another means of power (mining or drilling).
Solar power is a last ditch method of power production that you turn too when nothing else is available. Wind also falls in to this area of power production. They produce expensive and unreliable power.
[ The myth of cheap solar power continues to delude millions.
I don’t care how cheap you make a solar power generator you can still only expect the Sun to give you 120 watts per square meter per day. That is not a lot of power.
You also must factor in the opportunity cost. If you are using those square meters for the production of power or fuel you are not using them to produce food. If you use those dollars to buy solar cells you do not have those dollars to buy another means of power (mining or drilling).
Solar power is a last ditch method of power production that you turn too when nothing else is available. Wind also falls in to this area of power production. They produce expensive and unreliable power. ]
To heck with Solar, oil, nuclear fission, or even nuclear fusion....
Zero Point Energy is the only way to power humanity forever, even past the “heat death of the universe” No one ever thinks ahead as far as they should be....
Kind of makes you wonder how well they’d work on say... the Moon for a permanent habitat. Breaking down water in the lunar regolith and using it for power and oxygen would seem to be pretty darn handy.