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Today you will learn from expert guest Chuck Kutscher about solar energy, why it may or may not help solve climate change, how it works and what needs to still be done for it to be an effective solution to climate change.
Dr. Charles (Chuck) Kutscher is a Fellow and Senior Research Associate of the University of Colorado Boulder Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI). Dr. Kutscher spent 4 decades as a renewable energy researcher and manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and was the Director of the Buildings and Thermal Sciences Center when he retired from NREL in July 2018. He is a Past Chair and Fellow of the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) and served as U.S. Representative for the International Energy Agency (IEA) Solar Heating and Cooling Program Task 14, "Advanced Active Solar Energy Systems."
He is the lead author of the third edition of the college textbook, Principles of Sustainable Energy Systems and is an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado Boulder where he is teaching the course “Sustainable Energy.” Dr. Kutscher has given many presentations on climate change solutions throughout the US and abroad, and he has been involved in several recent climate change projects, including as lead author of the RASEI report, Accelerating the US Clean Energy Transformation (which was summarized in an op-ed in The Hill) and as a contributing author to the 2020 Zero Carbon Action Plan by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
Dr. Kutscher received a B.S. in physics from the State University of New York at Albany, an M.S. in nuclear engineering from the University of Illinois, and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in the states of Colorado and California.
Follow Chuck Kutscher:
If you look at all the different energy resources by far the resource with the greatest potential is solar.
It swamps out everything else and it's a renewable resource. I mean, you know, we, it's not like you can use up too much sun and run out of it. Okay. It just keeps coming. And so you know, we're trying to move society to Being more sustainable so that we're not stealing from future generations that that they can perceive the way we have.
Solar is a diffuse resource. It doesn't have energy density like coal does. So you have to build infrastructure in order to capture it.
In using solar energy, there are different ways to use it:
We have to stop burning fossil fuels. We have to stop putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Solar captures the sunlight coming down making it a renewable resource that does not emit carbon dioxide.
When we go to an electric grid that's based on solar and wind, those are variable sources of electricity. Utility owners that provide the electricity have to deal with that.
So we must:
We all benefit by moving off fossil fuels and going to renewable sources particularly solar and wind.
Those who may be harmed are:
Photovoltaic panels use the photoelectric effect. Inside a photo electric cell is a semiconductor material, the most common one is silicon. Then you have two different layers and you put other atoms into those semiconductor layers and you design in such a way that when photons hit the cell, they knock electrons out of the orbits around the atoms to create a voltage to separate the electrons. You connect this to an external circuit and allow those electrons to to flow from one part of the of the cell to the other part of the cell. As those electrons flow, that's where you can stick your light bulb and other things.
We need policies that speed up the process of getting more transmission out there. We need to continue to subsidize. Provide some incentives for for wind and solar because they're beneficial to all of us.
Our guest recommends learning the following skills:
Activity: Solar Installation Feasibility Study
Description: Research the process of installing solar panels on a residential property. Evaluate the feasibility for a hypothetical location considering factors like roof orientation, energy consumption, and return on investment.
Demonstrate mastery of the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson by applying it to the above activity. If, and only if, you have a full understanding and have mastered the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson, select the next lesson in the navigation.
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