The Uses of Solar Energy

The earth receives more energy from the sun in one hour than the power requirement of the world for the whole year. Solar energy is free, renewable, clean and sustainable. We know how to harness it and we know where to use it best. Below are the different uses of solar energy.

Grid-Tied Residential Homes

Solar energy can be used hand in hand with your current electricity provider. This is ideal to those who live in places where sunlight does not shine year round, to those who live in areas where electricity is cheap and to those who just want to use solar energy as a backup to their existing source of power. The idea is that if you have 2 sources of power, you can get uninterrupted power supply all the time.

One of the benefits of having a grid-tied solar energy system at home is that you can turn your electric meter backwards. This happens when you produce more energy than you use. The excess power that your system generates is sent out to the grid, which will be used by other households. As a result, your electric meter turns backwards and your electric provider will pay you for the amount of energy your system has produced.

Homeowners can use solar energy in producing electricity to power security lights around the house’s perimeter. Since these types of lights consume as much as 5 times more power than the household’s daily energy requirement, opting for solar energy system is very reasonable.

Solar power system may not be used to answer the entire power requirement of the household. Sometimes it is used to power particular equipment such as lighting, water pumping, cooking and water heating or other equipments that consume the most amount of energy.

Corporate Buildings

To save on electric bills, many companies and building owners install PV cells on their atria. On large industrial buildings, PV cells can be installed on rooftops. While the initial cash out is expensive, the amount of savings the system produces over the years will pay for itself.

Off-Grid Homes

If you have a cabin house or a farm house located far from the power grids, a solar power system can be your best source of electricity. Also, it is ideal if you need to power stand-alone sensing equipment and remote telemetry. Holiday homes that receive a substantial amount of sunlight can also benefit on this system.

Community halls, schools, clinics and other buildings that are not connected to any grid lines can use PV cells to generate power from the sun.

Signs and Street lights

Lights to brighten our street and street signs consume large amount of energy. This energy is drawn from electric providers that use conventional fossil fuels. To reduce the demand for this type of energy source, signs and street light can be installed with solar power systems that store power during the day and use it to light the streets at night. Many cities have solar panels attached to their street lights to save money and reduce fossil fuel burning.

Other Recreational Application

RVs and marine vehicles require small amount of power which are drawn from its engine. This consumes fuel and emits greenhouse gases. To reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gases emission, owners prefer charging their batteries with solar panels.

The New Discoveries of Solar Energy

The day may not be far off when the use of solar energy becomes a norm. There is now a deep conviction among experts that given a few years time, solar power will be in high demand that the cost will go down, inexpensive enough to undercut the prices of oil-generated electricity.

Previous predictions that it will still happen in a decade may no longer be true. The anger generated by the recent prices in oil and its vulnerability to market forces and other events may have already been enough to polarized people, governments and scientific communities into seriously considering a reliable alternative energy source.

You can not get a source more reliable than the sun. Even today homes that uses its power does not only benefit from the silent, energy generating, inexhaustible power of the sun, it also spikes up the prices of their homes. Those that have solar powered homes are even reimbursed for the surplus power that they supply to the power grid.

Presently, heliostats, photovoltaic cells and plate collectors are being used to collect the energy by focusing these panels towards the sun or constructing and installing the panel’s on spots where the sun shines most. Development in technology as we all know often has a snowball effect. It never stops rediscovering and reinventing that the speed of development could often be surprisingly fast.

Today, a polymer foil, thin as a sheet of paper and lighter by 200 times when compared to the regular glass collecting plates, are being developed. Chances are, these new inventions and discoveries could very well have a great potential for mass production. Previously, the glass-based materials used for heat collection need expensive substrates and require additional support for mounting due to its weight. The polymer foil, being very light could now be attached even to the walls of a structure.

So confident are scientists in the development of this technology that while the polymer foil is being developed, a plastic solar cell, based on nano technology is gaining breakthroughs. This plastic material can collect the power of the sun even on a cloudy day through harnessing the infrared rays is believed to be five times more efficient than the current technology.

While plastic materials for harnessing the power of the sun are not new, it is only recently that this plastic composite could harvest the infrared portion. Previously, only the visible rays are generated, the infrared part, which is half of the power of the sun, is invisible.

Currently, the best plastic solar cells could only harness 6% of the suns energy, with further study and development, this new plastic solar cells are expected to harness 30% of the suns solar power.

Scientists and researchers alike agree that ultimately, solar farms will be harnessing all our energy requirements and costs of power will drop. Today the price of solar powered energy is about 3 to 4 times per kilowatt hour compared with conventional electricity. That could change dramatically though the development of the existing technology and recent discoveries.

The roller pressed flexible plastic materials and the polymer foil are only two of the best hopes in arriving at a cleaner, greener and safer environment that could ultimately free the planet from its dependency on the depleting supply of oil.

Facts About Solar Energy & Solar Power Plants

The earth receives more than enough energy from the sun in an hour to supply the world’s energy requirement for the whole year.

Unfortunately, only a tiny portion of it is harnessed and the world still relies on power plants that burn fossil fuels. The good thing, though, is that there is a constant increase in demand for solar energy; and over the years of continuous development, solar panels are much cheaper today.

During peak hours, the maximum power density that the sun can give is about 1kW per square meter. In other words, one square meter of solar panel can produce as much as 100 GWh (gigawatt hours) of electricity in one year. That is enough to power 50,000 houses.

If a solar power plant is build on 1% of the total land area of the Sahara desert, it will satisfy the world’s energy requirement.

The efficiency of solar panels depends on several factors such as pollution, clouds, temperature and atmospheric humidity.

Solar power plants are very similar to other conventional power plants – with one significant difference: The majority of power plants draw their power from fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas.

When power plants burn fossil fuels, they produce greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Solar power plants or solar thermal power plants (or Concentrating Solar Power plants) utilize the power of the sun’s rays to generate electricity.

The process could not be any simpler. The solar panels receive heat from the sun, which will be reflected to the receiver. The receiver converts into steam the concentrated solar energy. The steam is stored on tanks which will be used to turn the turbines and generate electricity.

The whole process does not involve any burning of any fossil fuels. Thus, solar power plants do not contribute to global warming.

The increase in the use of solar energy will bring down the demand for oil.

Today, there are more than 10,000 households with solar energy systems and the number is constantly increasing. If the demand for solar energy as well as other forms of alternative energy, the demand for oil will drop and the cost fuel will likely to follow.

Residential solar energy system can turn your electric meter backwards. Given that you are connected on a power-grid, the excess energy that your solar energy system produces will go to the electric lines to be used by other homes. As a result, any excess energy you give will be reflected on your bills. Your electric supplier will even pay for the electricity you supplied.

Residential solar energy system can save you money.

While the initial cash out for installing solar energy system at home is big, the device will pay for itself in the long run. Not only you will save money on solar energy system, you also help the environment by not contributing to carbon emissions.

Solar energy systems are reliable and can last for a very long time.

PV cells are last from 25 to 40 years. Many manufacturers of solar panels give 25 years product warranty. This is the assurance that solar panels are very dependable.

In addition, solar panels require little or no maintenance and the can be installed on most places where there is sunlight throughout the year.