Solar power in naturally associated with the hot places of the world, drive down any street in rural Spain or Portugal you are likely to see most properties with some sort of solar power feature – but Japanese scientists say that areas such as the Himalayas and even the Antarctic could supply enough energy to become the ‘Saudi Arabias of solar’

Solar power in naturally associated with the hot places of the world, drive down any street in rural Spain or Portugal you are likely to see most properties with some sort of solar power feature – but Japanese scientists say that areas such as the Himalayas and even the Antarctic could supply enough energy to become the ‘Saudi Arabias of solar’

Kotaro Kawakiri and his team estimated global solar energy potential, based on existing available secondary data, taking into account the effects of temperature on the output of solar cells.

The work could be refined in future, they say, by considering other variables, such as transmission losses and snowfall. But the initial results suggest that it is not just the hottest areas, such as the US desert southwest or European countries such as Spain and Portugal, that are ideal locations for solar arrays.

Many cold regions at high elevations receive a lot of sunlight- in fact so much that their potential for producing power from the sun is even higher than in some desert areas.

The types of photovoltaic cell that are used in today’s modules actually function better at low temperatures. Output from a photovoltaic module in the Himalayas, for example, could lead to a 50 percent higher output than the same module in Arizona.

The team suggested that the Himalayas could be an ideal location for the solar fields that could support the expanding demand of the ever growing economy of the People’s Republic of China.

Before long you could be volunteering abroad in the Himalayas and having hundreds of solar modules in the background of your photos. What do you think about this? Get in touch with us on Twitter and Facebook and tell us!