Solar Power 101

Solar Power Plant (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

More and more homes, offices and devices are now relying on solar power as people are becoming more aware of the potential dangers of other unnatural sources of power. It is important that you know more about the idea to determine if it is the best option for you. Solar power can render several benefits for the long term. You can take advantage of the features by choosing the right type and maximizing the effect right in your own home.

About Solar

Solar power is described as the creation of electricity straight from the sun. The generation can be direct with the use of PV or photovoltaics or indirect via CSP or concentrating solar power. CSP is done by using the energy of the sun to focus and boil water which will eventually create solar power. Solar power has the capacity to give more than 1000 times the total world energy consumption back in 2008. However, solar power only comprised 0.02% of the total in 2008.

If solar power will be used double every 2 to 3 years, it can become the dominate source of energy for the century. The biggest solar power plants, are concentrating solar thermal plants, although new multi-megawatt photovoltaic plants have also been created. More and more countries are investing in the bigger photovoltaic power stations, like Germany and Portugal.

More Solar Power

Terrestrial solar power is a predictable and intermittent source of energy, which means even though solar power is not readily available all the time, people can still predict it using a certain degree of accuracy when the energy source will or will not be available. A number of technologies, like the solar thermal concentrators, include an element of thermal storage, such as molten salts.

These come in the form of heat and are considered as store spare solar energy that can readily be made available overnight or at times when solar power is not available to create electricity. Orbital solar power collection also avoids the intermittent use, although satellite launching and beaming of the gathered power are required to get antennas on Earth. The enhanced intensity of the sunlight over the atmosphere also tends to boost the generation efficiency.

About Solar Energy

Solar energy, heat and radiant light that emanates from the sun have been controlled by humans beginning the ancient periods using a wide range of evolving technologies. Solar radiation, together with secondary solar-powered resources like biomass, wind, wave and hydroelectricity are accountable for majority of the available renewable energy on Earth. Only a small fraction of the available solar energy is utilized.

Solar powered electrical generation depends on photovoltaics and heat engines. The uses of solar energy are only limited by human ingenuity. Some of the other uses of solar energy include space cooling and heating via solar architecture, solar hot water, solar cooking, potable water via distillation and disinfection, daylighting and high temperature process heat for industrial functions. Solar panels are one of the most effective and basic ways to gather solar energy.

What is Photovoltaics?

Picture of PV cells (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Photovoltaics are considered an integral part of solar energy technology. PVs are now used in a wide array of settings, depending on the current needs of the user. More and more people around the globe are also starting to invest in these devices for a variety of reasons. You can get constant and renewable energy at a much cheaper cost, thereby power different devices and tools for your benefit. Here are some more tips and details.

The PV

The PV or photovoltaic cell is also known as the solar cell. It is a device that readily converts light into electric current via the photoelectric effect. The device is based on the discovery of Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel who realized that a number of materials let go of electrons when these hit rays of photos straight from light, causing an electrical current. The first solar cells were made by Charles Fritts during the 1880s. Even though the prototype selenium cells converted below 1% of incident light into electricity, James Clerk Maxwell and Ernst Werner von Siemens realized the importance of the finding. After the work of Russell Ohl during the 1940s, Calvin Fuller, Gerald Pearson and Daryl Chapin made the silicon solar cell in 1954.

These were the early solar cells that were very expensive and can reach efficiencies of around 4.5% to 6%. The highest efficiency PV cells produced were by Boeing and SpectroLab in 2009, with efficiencies of around 35% to 41%. There are also other multi-layer cells that closely resembled the device. These were very expensive too, and were only used in the most unique applications. Thin film PV cells were also created and made in bulk. These were more cost-effective and less fragile, with about 20% efficiency.

More Technologies

There are several technologies now, including a minimum of 14 photovoltaic cell types, like polycrystalline silicon, thin film, monocrystalline silicon and amorphous cells. Concentrating solar power also appeared in several types. The earliest application of solar cells considered to be very significant was being a back-up power source to the Vanguard satelilite back in 1958. The solar cells continued transmission for more than a year after the chemical battery exhaustion. The operation of solar cells during the mission was considered to be very successful and was duplicated in several American and Soviet satellites. PV has become the established power source by the late 1960s.

At Present

Today, Germany has become the primary PV market worldwide after they revised the feed-in tariffs for the Renewable Energy Sources Act. Spain has become the biggest PV market after 2007 after it adopted the same feed-in tariff structure. Spain installed half of the PVs all over the globe, accounting for about 45%. Concentrating photovoltaics are very new, which employ sunlight concentrated onto photovoltaic surfaces for electrical power production. Solar concentrators of different varieties can be used. These are usually mounted on a solar tracker to keep the focal point on the cell as the sun travels over the sky. Tracking can boost the output of flat panel photovoltaic by 20% during the winter and as much as 50% during summer.

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What is the Best Solar Energy System

Free Energy (Photo credit: AlicePopkorn)

With the recent advances in technology in recent years, being able to produce viable and clean energy to be used to power your home is now a reality. Alternative sources of power and energy will not only help you avoid burning fossil fuel to help provide electricity for your home, but will also help you save a considerable amount of money on the cost of your utility. One of those alternative energy sources is solar energy.

There are actually a number of different solar energy systems that are available in the market today. Since solar energy has become more common and more viable in the recent years, developers have begun to develop different solar energy systems that you can choose from, depending on your needs and limitations. Choosing a solar energy system that would fit best for your home is not necessarily an easy thing to do, which is why it is important that you learn how to choose the best one in order to get the right type of solar energy system for your home. Here are a couple of hints.

Know Your Solar Energy System

Before anything else, the very first thing that you must do is you must make sure that you know what different solar energy systems there are that you can choose from. Basically, there are two different types of solar energy systems, and those are the photovoltaic (PV) panels and solar thermal systems.

Photovoltaic Panels
Photovoltaic panels are solar energy panels that convert solar energy and turn them into electricity that you can use to power up most of your appliances and household lighting, and should only be used for those particular uses. Unfortunatley, among the solar energy systems that are in the market, photovoltaic panels are considered to be one of the more expensive ones, if not the most expensive in the solar energy market today.

Solar Thermal Systems

Solar thermal systems, on the other hand, simply generate heat, and are well-suited for boilers, furnaces and water heaters, as this type of system allows you to make heat using direct solar energy at a much lower cost as compared to using conventional energy and electricity. However, if you want to retrofit your home with one of these solar thermal systems, you need to sacrifice a little bit of space in your home. The good thing about using this type of solar energy system though is that you will save up to 80% of your total energy cost per year.

Calculate Your Energy Cost

Once you have a much better understanding and grasp of what solar energy systems are out there, and how they work, you simply need to learn how to calculate the cost of your energy consumption. This will actually help you determine which type of solar energy system you should choose from the two. When calculating the cost of your energy consumption, you need to create a list of all the things that might need energy and electricity. Include appliances, lighting, water heating, space heating, space cooling and air conditioning. If you can, try and figure out first if there are ways that you can reduce your electricity and energy consumption without having to resort to retrofitting your home with solar energy system.

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