W7T1-One of the 14 grand challenges for engineering

My article comes from the website “NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING”. It is about the 14 grand challenges for engineering in 21st century. Among 14 challenges, I choose “make solar energy economical” as the most important challenge. The article I read and summarize is about this topic.
The first part talks about why solar energy is important. Any energy forms on the earth are solar energy in origin; however, the energy we used directly from solar energy is fractional. The advantage of solar energy is that we can attain is almost everywhere. Therefore solar energy still has great potential to develop. Another reason is that traditional energy cannot afford enough energy to the increasing energy demands. Meanwhile, fossil fuel produces much pollution which may result in the global warming.
The second and third parts state how to improve solar energy technology. The challenge for engineering is to improve the conversion of solar energy efficiently and make the manufacturing cost economical. Most of solar cell today can convert solar energy to electrical energy in 10 to 20 percentages; however, the cost to produce solar cell is 3 to 6 times higher than current price. One of the possible ways is to develop nanotechnology which can transfer solar energy to circuit. And find a particular material which can absorb light and then drive changes to move.
The last part relates to how to store solar energy. No matter how efficient and economical we can convert solar energy, we need to store during cloudy weather or nighttime. One of the possible solutions is to produce a kind of fuel cell which can store solar energy into chemical energy.
In conclusion, if we succeed settling this challenge, we can use solar energy more efficient and economical; we do not need to worry about whether we can leave any energy to our descendants any more.
Reference:
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING, <http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9082.aspx>