Seite - 27 - in Clean Water Using Solar and Wind - Outside the Power Grid

© 2019 The Author. This is an Open Access book chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits copying and redistribution for non-commercial purposes with no derivatives, provided the original work is properly cited (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). This does not affect the rights licensed or assigned from any third party in this book. The chapter is from the book Clean Water Using Solar and Wind: Outside the Power Grid, Gustaf Olsson (Author). doi: 10.2166/9781780409443_0027 Chapter 3 The renewable energy revolution “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope that we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle  that. I wish I had more years left!” Thomas A. Edison (1847–1931). The technical and economic development of renewable energy will have an impact on many different aspects related to electricity availability and climate change, as well as links to water, water supply and treatment. It is no longer out of reach for poor people or those living in remote regions. The development will also have an impact on many social and economic aspects like gender issues, health hazards and consumer power. In 3.1 we illustrate the global picture of renewable energy. The off-grid development is of particular interest here, as emphasised in 3.2. Scalability of renewable energy is a key property that will give the end user control of the production, Section 3.3. The phenomenal cost development of solar PV and wind is illustrated in 3.4. This is linked with the expansion of solar PV all over the world, as we see in Section 3.5. The expansion of wind power is discussed in 3.6. The radical development of solar PV and wind already has geopolitical consequences, as illustrated Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book-pdf/520710/wio9781780409443.pdf by IWA Publishing user