There are lots of interesting facts about solar energy. Educating yourself about this will prove to be beneficial in the long run for you and for others in your circle of influence.
You can share the information you learn with your loved ones. You can teach them ways on how they can help to conserve the energy. You can also do your share to help this method to advance if you are a genius in the field.
All of us have responsibilities to the environment so it is important that each of us does our part in the big scheme of caring for our environment. One way of being sustainably responsible is by using natural methods of energy dependence and leveraging solar energy is now a major way to generate the energy required to power our modern conveniences.
Solar power is everywhere because it comes from the sun, and it can be used to power electricity, pump water, to heat your home or office and power vehicles. In order to use solar power you need to know the basics of solar power and how it works.
The Facts That Matter
- Solar radiation makes it possible for the energy coming from the sun to be used as power source and energy that can in turn be used for many purposes. The technology on this aspect is characterized in two ways. They can either be passive or active. This will depend on the methods that are used to get, convert and allocate sunlight. What are active solar techniques? These utilize pumps, photovoltaic panels and fans to renovate sunlight into useful resources. These aim to increase the energy supply that is why these can also be referred as supply side technologies. The passive solar techniques, on the other hand, use only selected resources with constructive thermal properties, utilize the kind of spaces that can circulate air naturally and apply the position of buildings and structures towards the sun. These will lessen the need for other sources and can also be referred as the demand side technology.
- Solar energy has influenced many factors that surround people. This can be referred in planning and designing buildings. This process can be rooted back at the early days of the architectural history. The Greeks and the Chinese first used such factor in building and constructing their architectural pieces and on their planning methods.
- Solar energy is also being utilized by the agricultural sector because they rely heavily on its benefits in order to gain more harvest. They developed ways in order to plant the kind of crops that will grow according to the amount of sun that they will be getting for the season. This can also be used to dry the crops, pump water, brooding of chicks and to dry animal manures that can later be used as fertilizers.
- On seasons like the Little Ice Age, fruit walls were used by French and Chinese farmers to be able to collect and store solar energy to help them keep the plants warm and to speedy up the process of ripening of fruits. These walls serve as the thermal masses. The fruit walls that were first developed were perpendicular to the ground and faced the south direction. Over time, innovations were done and slopping walls were used to gain more advantage from the sun.
- To convert the solar light into heat, people have developed greenhouses. These enable the production and cultivation of specialty crops all year round. Such innovation made it possible for crops to be produced in untimely seasons and in places where you think that those plants won’t grow.
And these are only some of the interesting facts about solar energy. These give you a good peek at how wonderful nature is and how people have developed ways to use it to advance in many aspects of their lives.
The Benefits of Solar Power
The sun produces massive amounts of heat that are transmitted down to the earth’s surface. When the sun’s rays reach the earth’s surface the intensity of the heat directly from the sun is not as hot because some of the heat is rerouted before it reaches the earth’s atmosphere. When the sun is hot and it is summer time we think that it couldn’t get much hotter as the mid day sun makes your run for shade, but it can get hotter if it wasn’t rerouted.
Solar power can be hot enough to power machinery and that is exactly what was discovered over one hundred years ago when a man working on machinery wondered if steam from the heat of the day could be used to power machinery. He was right and thus began a new form of production, heat and electricity. Today solar power is being used all around the world. The solar power is being concentrated into a solar source where the heat is used in a variety of ways. We still rely on our way of heating and powering our homes but in the future it may all be powered by the sun. It is cost effective to use solar power as the only expense you have is in your solar source.
In order to use solar power you will need to have something that can attract the sun and allow the heat to be concentrated where it can stay warm for a long period of time. This is fairly easy when you consider all the knowledge and resources that we already have access to. When you use solar power for heating and power electricity you cannot go wrong.
Solar power is entrusted in space shuttles as they know that this will help produce the most efficient energy with the least amount of complications. The solar panels are faced toward the sun at all times in order to be able to power the shuttle efficiently. There are fewer problems from solar power than with other methods. Even though there are days that there are clouds in the sky and rain, snow or other weather, it is still possible to produce enough heat in your solar source to create enough energy to last until the sun can come back down.
When you use solar power you are less likely to experience the down times you might otherwise have if you’re using power generated by more “old-school” methods.
Why Choose Solar Power
Life on earth is fueled by the light and heat from the sun. Approximately, 3850 Zettajoules (ZJ) per year is the total amount of solar energy available to the earth. The suns energy travels to the earth by way of electromagnetic radiation like radio waves but the frequency range is different. Some of this energy is absorbed as it comes thru the atmosphere. Heat and light are the primary forms of solar energy.
Solar energy has many advantages over conventional energy. The energy from the sun is free the only expense is from recovering the energy. The cost of recovering the suns energy is recovered faster than with conventional energy. The recovering units don’t have to be connected to natural gas or power grids, they stand alone. The supply of solar energy is limitless. It has no emission gases to harm the earth’s atmosphere.
Ways To Recover Solar Power
- Focusing Collectors: This has a movable mirror, known as heliostats, is pointed to the sun and can provide a temperature around 4000 degrees C. This degree temperature is used for a solar furnace in industries and research. These solar furnaces don’t contaminate our environment. The heliostats can focus the energy to a boiler that turns water into steam. To generate solar electricity, focusing collectors can be used.
- Flat Plate Collectors: These collectors can be used in schools and homes to provide heat using water that is heated in pipes. They cannot provide as much heat as the focusing collectors because they are smaller.
- Solar Distillation: Solar distillation is about the same as flat plate collectors but provides distilled water instead of heat. Sea water is put in tanks or ditches on the roof of a house and the heat from the sun heats and evaporates the water and turns the water vapor into liquid water that is distilled.
- Solar Electricity: By using focusing collectors and Photovoltaic cells, made of thin pieces of semiconductors, convert radiation from the sun into electricity.
Solar energy would not be affected by the supply and demand of fuel for it is free and it doesn’t pollute the atmosphere. It is natural and pure. It would provide us with better health.
There are several ways that we can work together in order to get the best of natural and renewable resources. Using solar power is not only helpful but it is inspiring to others. The expenses to using the solar energy are less than the cost of using other resources for heat, including electricity and gas. When you use electricity and gas you may have a low cost up front but in the end you end up paying for it from now on. With solar power you may have an initial investment to turning your home into solar power but after that you have no reason to pay for it any further, unless you use electric or gas for a back up heating source. Solar power was available yesterday, it’s available today and hopefully it will be available for us in the future.
Want to know about how you can make solar power a part of your life? Then click here for information about several home solar power systems and click here for information about some portable solar power systems.