Adding Solar to More Devices

I never understood why this wasn’t more common already. … Why not? Seems like an obvious solution…

Good question, with a simple engineering answer: often times the energy cost of creating these solar panels and installing them into devices is considerably higher than the amount of energy those devices could possibly except after many decades of constant use. The point at which the solar energy collected matches the energy cost to create and install the device might actually be longer than the life of the solar panel or the device itself. So adding solar to every last little thing will actually cost a lot more money for consumers while causing more harm to the environment.

That is not to say that solar is always bad, in fact solar is incredibly good when used at industrial scales, especially in power stations, and on the rooftops of factories, shopping centers, data centers, and warehouses.

We see too often on the news stories about how some amazing invention might help solve global warming, but this is often just propaganda. The oil and car companies want you to think buying more technology from these tech companies (which are often their own subsidiary companies) will solve the problem. But really it is just another way of profiting off of people without doing any of the hard work on the energy transition themselves.