What are some disadvantages of using solar power as a resource?
It’s an intermitent power source – it cannot provide constant power output continuously so it is often necessary to somehow store the energy (for example by pumping water uphill) for later use. This leads to a loss of energy due to inefficiencies during energy tranformations. It also requires a fairly large area to provide any meaningful power output and installation costs are high.
The biggest disadvantage is the is cost of the equipment is too high. There are two types of solar systems that use solar panels, grid-connected and stand-alone. The grid-connected system is connected to the power grid at the customer’s site and it only generates power when the sun is shining; it is designed to generate an average of 4 to 6 times the amount of energy that the individual customer uses and during times where the sun is not shining. Most commercial customers with a flat roof and residential customers with a South facing roof have plenty of roof space to meet or exceed this design requirement. When the sun is not shining, the electric customer draws power from the grid. This system works well; it reduces the customer’s electric bill to almost nothing. In some states, the customer can generate so much power that power company must sometimes write check to the customer. But the cost of such a system is very high and has a long payback time. The stand-alone system has the sam
