The conservatives are coming with a lot of arguments against green and alternative energy. I don’t know the reason, but it might be because they fear the change. They are used only to work with that was given by their parents and can’t come with anything new. Every new technology requires testing, improving and a long time to wait until it gets mainstream. The conservatives fear this process.
The most used arguments against solar energy are: the energy produced is not constant, photovoltaic panels are expensive, the amount of energy is low, you can’t produce more energy when you need it. Most of these arguments are false, but I will not insist on proving this. Instead, I will cover the solar energy advantages:
- It is 100% environment safe. The solar energy does not produce pollution, does not produce CO2. The air will be cleaner.
- It is free. You don’t have to pay for coal or for uranium so you can produce this type of energy. After the initial payment for the panels, then you practically don’t have to do anything else.
- Very low maintenance costs. On coal or nuclear power plants, there is a lot of maintenance required and there are hundreds if not thousands of people employed to do this. Also, there are a lot of materials required to fix the issues. For a photovoltaic farm, there is minimum maintenance required. Once installed, the photovoltaic panels only have to be checked from time to time and cleaned once per year.
- Light is always present. Even if there are a lot of clouds and it is winter, the light is still present. While there is light, there will be power produced from photovoltaic panels.
- Cheaper energy. Even some people consider that photovoltaic panels are cheap, the prices are dropping month by month. For example, a photovoltaic panel that will produce 1kW per hour at peak ( about 500W on average ), costs about $1000 and have a lifespan of over 25 years. If you do the math, you will see that it will produce over 100MW. How much you pay now for this amount of energy ? The costs to buy the same amount of energy is about $30,000. So, you are investing $1000 to get $30,000 back. Is not worth it ?