Comparison of Czech and Austrian approaches to the production of electricity from renewable resources: Difference between revisions

In Austria majority of people disagree with using nuclear energy. There are two main reasons. The first one is the issue of unsolved nuclear waste disposal and the second one is a risk radioactive leakage. These concerns are well founded, however in the Czech Republic if we want to be energetically self-sufficient and environmentally friendly we have no other option than to use nuclear energy. We cannot burn coal, solar and wind power would not be sufficient to meet the energy needs of our country and in contrary to Austria, we have almost no opportunity to use hydro energy.

As for other renewable resources, solar and photovoltaic panels can be used for electricity production only during period of sufficient sun light, which is mainly from October to March. Those energy resources can be used as side resources for households or small networks of consumers, not for big cities, industry or even whole country. As we could hear during our excursion in solar factory, the energy also cannot be used for the whole year without a storage system. Disadvantages of the chargers are that they are very expensive and have quite short lifespan. On the other hand, very positive from the sustainability point of view is that 100 % of parts of certain types of PV panels are recyclable. Moreover, average lifespan of panels is 25 years, but they could work even longer with reduced efficiency. On top of that, the development is moving forward rapidly and solar energy is becoming more profitable and cheaper.