IMPLEMENTING SOLAR – REFLEXIONS ON HOW TO CONQUER THE SYSTEM

摘要

For every new technology, its viability will be compared with both the existing system and other newcomers. Not only technical and economical performance will be at stake. The ”system” in which solar energy technologies are to be embedded must, to a large extent, be seen as socio-technical and socio-cultural. From a cultural point of view, can solar energy technologies be identified by users and cultural trend-setters as part of modernization, the good life and prestige consumption – rather than with environmentally motivated and somewhat self-punishing life -styles? Such artifacts as the automobile and the computer have been closely identified with progress and belief in the future. Is it possible that solar energies can follow their lead? I may be fruitful to observe different technological styles in various countries –similar to those noted by Thomas P Hughes’ regarding early electricity systems. Rethinking electricity. 150 years of increasing scale and ever larger feeding points and grids have forged our picture of what electricy ”is”. Solar (and some other new energy supply options, such as hydrogen) may pave the way for a competing view. Information and communication technologies require reliable and uninterrupted low-voltage electricity supply (largely stand-by), but need only low power and limited total energy. With mobility we need accumulators or conventional batteries. Evidently, neither energy cost nor power cost is the key issue here.