That's the real key, black paint is really cheap and really good at converting most of the spectrum to heat, combined with the fact that mirrors are orders of magnitude cheaper than solar panels and you've got a winning combination.
It's also really cheap to store energy as heat and we've got two centuries of knowledge around turning heat into mechanical energy.
It's also really easy to apply heat and pressure to most organic material and directly convert long chain hydrocarbons to short chain hydrocarbons.
Also if you can generate steam you can just inject it into the ground and recover the oil in bitumen, your friendly neighbours to the north have like a trillion barrels of it.
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Best efficiency in conversion solar -> energy: Solar thermal.
And doesn't require expensive equipment for that.
My money is on that.
That's the real key, black paint is really cheap and really good at converting most of the spectrum to heat, combined with the fact that mirrors are orders of magnitude cheaper than solar panels and you've got a winning combination.
It's also really cheap to store energy as heat and we've got two centuries of knowledge around turning heat into mechanical energy.
It's also really easy to apply heat and pressure to most organic material and directly convert long chain hydrocarbons to short chain hydrocarbons.
Also if you can generate steam you can just inject it into the ground and recover the oil in bitumen, your friendly neighbours to the north have like a trillion barrels of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization