Question: Thank you for the enlightening and informative lecture. What I would like to know is about the third world countries who are blessed with sunshine but still unable to fuel energy with constant power cuts. What can be done to avert this?

Petra Cameron answered on 13 Jan 2017:

This is a very interesting question. There are many developing countries that are installing ‘solar farms’ (fields full of solar cells!) to generate electricity. I was reading recently about a new solar farm in Rwanda which is feeding electricity into their national grid. However solving energy shortages takes more than just good solar technology. There has to be reliable infrastructure to deliver the electricity – this also requires governments or companies to maintain infrastructure, often in very remote regions. There are also many people in developing countries who live ‘off-grid’ and it is very expensive provide them with electricity. So to help solve the problem there needs to be investment in installation of solar technology, there needs to be investment in energy storage (so electricity can be provided at night); there needs to be infrastructure to deliver electricity relaibly and there needs to be people to maintain the infrastructure.