At least until such time as we cover rooftops and parkinglots. That should be a priority

Reduces the need for snow removal and produces electricity.

Was on a board looking at making a nonprofit more green and we looked into this. Startup costs were prohibitive because no tax breaks for a non profit which is how we currently push solar energy.

But think of a food bank/pantry that could generate enough electricity thru solar panels over the parking lot to not have to pay for refrigeration of the food or climate control for the building. It would put more money into buying food in bulk and could help more people.

I got solar on my shop roof in 2014 it has supplied the shop and house we have a partial electric bill in the Dec to Feb months. The space was doing nothing besides being a roof before.

The sunlight should …. If possible…. be used directly at the building or car or equipment it
goes to.

to you the consumer. Can't cut out the (greedy) middlemen!

Big limit currently is range and charge time.

Our son just graduated college and is 7-8 hour drive away.

We went traditional hybrid to be more green but not have to stop for long charging time.

Not sure if it would generate fast enough, but if you started full charge and would generate enough electricity solar to keep it running for 400-500 miles with our stopping for full charge would be a game changer for EV and reducing greenhouse gases from cars.

Specs were, that it added 1 mile per gallon. It wasn't parked in a garage.

Who knows if it paid for itself?

it can get to help change climate change. forward!

Is the way to go and this will move us closer to that option.

their historic appearance, the option to simply have the metal roof painted with such a material would be a game-changer!

This would be a tremendous waste of materials like copper, materials that take require a lot of energy to refine and recycle, causing a lot of pollution in the process.

Markets are already flooded with cheap solar crap that ends up as electronic waste mostly dumped in landfills within a decade or less.

In places like California solar has already reached the point of diminishing returns, where additional solar capacity is only increasing the cost of electricity for everyone.

The problems with solar electricity are the same at any scale, from a small solar "tiny home" to an entire regional electric grid. And no, the answer is not "batteries." Batteries are not magic.

Any handy person with a thousand dollars in their pocket (or good scrounging skills) can investigate the realities of solar power for themselves. Even if solar panels could be made for free they could not displace fossil fuels because of their dismal capacity factors. Backup power is a dirty business.

An average home solar system in California has an annual capacity factor of 16% (more in the summer, less in the winter)

Large desert solar "farms" get about 25%, the best claiming something like 28%, numbers which are often inflated by marketing hype. That's not good enough to "save the world," it's not enough to displace fossil fuels to any significant extent. None of it is economically viable without large fossil fuel inputs.

If we truly want to quit fossil fuels we'll simply have to ban them. Otherwise all these "renewable" energy "breakthroughs" are little more than a distraction, mere fiddling while the world burns.