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Solar Power - Energy Salvation or Hot Air?

October 9th, 2007    Subscribe To Our Feed

Is Solar Power Enough?

Solar power isn’t quite the perfect solution to the world’s energy needs – or not yet anyway! Sunlight can provide one thousand watts of energy per hour per square meter. Or to put it another way, harness the sunshine in 100 miles of desert and wasteland, and you’d meet the total energy usage of the whole USA!

Unfortunately, actually doing that is the stuff of Science Fiction. Today’s solar power challenge is to find a feasible economic way to convert the sun’s energy into reliable, available electric power that heavy industry can utilise.

But in many countries using solar power to meet the power needs of the home owner – or the forward thinking home renter - is very far from Science Fiction.

Is Solar Power the Right Choice for Me?

As with all power systems, there are pros and cons. Robert Heinlein once said “Fire and fusion … dangerous servant and bad master” but we’re not about to give up fire or fusion, are we? Sunshine is a lot safer and cleaner than either.

A photovoltaic power system is the most readily available method of harnessing solar power for home use.

Is it cheaper? That’s an accountant’s question, and I’ll give you an accountant’s answer. It all depends on how you’re doing the math.

Long term, solar power is way cheaper. Short term? Well, if you only expect to be using power for, say, the next year or two, stick with the power company!

OK, OK, I know – and you know – that you’re gonna be using power forever, most likely. But not necessarily always in the same place.

There are portable solar power systems. We’ll take a look at them later…

The Advantages of Solar Power

The good news about solar power.

1. Photovoltaic power systems run silently.

2. Solar panels last a long time. Some suppliers give 20 year warranties.

3. Your Solar power system is very low maintenance.

4. Solar power is environmentally friendly. And more comfortable – the panels are usually roof mounted, and their shade helps to keep your attic cool…

5. Sunshine is free! You’ve no power bills. Pay for solar power system installation and that’s it! You’re laughing all the way to the bank.

If Solar Power Is So Hot, How Come We Don’t Use It More?

October 9th, 2007    Subscribe To Our Feed

Solar Power Systems
Photovoltaic power systems have a lot of built-in advantages. They run silently. They are environmentally friendly. There’s virtually no maintenance to do. They last a long time. Over their lifespan, they save you a heap of money.

BUT, nothing in life is perfect, is it? And solar power is no exception.

Despite all the advantages, using solar energy may not be the right choice for you and your family. There are disadvantages too.

1. Your solar panels will still collect sun energy on cloudy days but not quite so much as on sunny days. This means that if you live in a cloudy climate the amount of stored electric energy available to you could be considerably less.

2. At night, there is no sunshine to collect. You are reliant on sunshine gathered during the day and stored as electricity in a battery. This means that you might need to conserve energy at night - when you need it most – unless plenty of sun power has been collected earlier.

3. If you get frequent hail-storms, this is definitely an issue, and before installing a photovoltaic power system you should get an expert to look into that for you…

4. Purchasing the necessary solar panels and getting your solar power system installed costs more than just asking the power company to hook you up!!

Other Possible Drawbacks to Using Solar Power

Your solar power system becomes as much a part of your house as the electric power wires running through your walls. So taking your solar panels with you if you decide to move would mean disconnection and reconnection – a lot of fuss, expense, difficulty and inconvenience.

If you’re a home owner, that’s probably not an issue. In all likelihood, installing your photovoltaic power system will add value to your home in the same way that getting air conditioning installed would. But if you’re renting, then you might want to talk to your landlord about whether you’d get back the cost of installation if you should decide to move … or choose a portable solar power system instead of a permanent fixture.

Some people think that solar power won’t work well with certain electrical devices, that heating bath water will be a difficulty, for example. Actually, that’s not true. You just need to use a slightly different kind of system. In Cyprus, where I spend a lot of time, new built homes have solar power systems installed for the express purpose of heating up water. Cyprus gets a lot of sunshine, but also lots of cloud, so most people who live there use a combination of solar heating and grid electric power.
Only you can decide how cautious you want to be, but why not have the best of both worlds when it’s on offer? No matter where you live, no matter how sunny a spot you call your own, it’s still a prudent idea to stay hooked up to the power company’s grid as a form of back-up electricity provision, just in case your solar power system doesn’t always meet all your needs.

What Is Solar Power?

October 9th, 2007    Subscribe To Our Feed

Solar power is a form of energy derived from the Sun

Sunshine is stored as heat, or converted into electricity. Solar power is a versatile and endlessly renewable source of energy that can be used to power up everything from spacecraft to your own home.

There are also many different kinds of portable solar power devices which are used in everything from calculators to cars and boats.

Photovoltaic power systems are clean pollution free ways of using electricity which are also pretty nearly cost free! since the main resource used is sunshine, which falls all over the planet, all day, every day…

How Solar Power Is Used

Solar power systems – which use solar panels, storage batteries, wiring, and control panel switches - are a wonderful alternative to traditional diesel, oil, or gas powered electricity generators. For many years now, large solar power systems have been used in that way for outlying areas and in hard to reach buildings like lonely mountain cabins and isolated farmhouses. These types of solar power systems have been very reliable.

Small photovoltaic cells are used in lots of electrically powered devices, often supplementing or even taking the place of a traditional battery.

Photovoltaic cells are

1. compact
2. cheap to produce
3. need little if any maintenance
4. hardly ever have to be replaced
5. and aren’t full of dangerous acids

so it’s easy to see why businesses prefer them to batteries.

The Future of Solar Power

What with the fossil fuel crisis, many businesses and scientific establishments are currently actively researching new techniques and technologies for using solar power.

Also getting a lot of attention is the hunt for ways to make it more practical to use solar power more extensively in commercial enterprises. Another area of intensive study is finding really effective ways to store and distribute the sunshine we can already harvest.

No matter what happens to oil prices or the ozone layer, the Sun is here to stay, so it makes good sense to make the most of solar power!

What is Solar Power made from?

October 9th, 2007    Subscribe To Our Feed

What Is Solar Power Made From?

Solar power is basically sunshine

The Sun puts out colossal energy every day, which is almost all totally wasted. The idea behind creating solar power is to halt that waste by harnessing the Sun’s energy and putting it to practical use. To accomplish this, various forms of solar collectors absorb energy from the sun. The collected sunshine or ‘Sun energy’ is then converted into usable man-made ‘solar power’.

How Do Solar Power Systems Work?

There are several different types of solar power systems.
Sunfav.com provides free information about each of the readily available systems.

The energy collection devices are usually called solar panels. Solar panels are an array of specially designed light sensitive cells which capture and make available the energy which the Sun releases. Because the cells operate by absorbing sunshine, to work best the solar panels should be facing towards the Sun and in direct sunlight.

The 3 main ways solar power systems work at present are by

1. heating air

2. heating water (or some other liquid)

3. converting sunlight into electricity and either

a) using that electricity to provide for immediate power needs.

or

b) storing the electricity (usually in a battery) for later use.

How Does Solar Power Get Made?

The Sun’s energy is converted into solar power in one of 2 ways.

The devices used are called solar thermal applications or photoelectric applications.

If a solar thermal application is in use, basically we are harnessing and using raw sunlight. Sunshine is warm. The same heat in which we bask swimsuit-clad is used by solar thermal applications to heat up either air or liquid (usually water). The heated-up fluid can be used in several ways, for example, in a central heating system, or stored in an insulated hot water tank ready to be used for baths and showers.

Solar thermal applications like solar heating panels are used all over the globe in many residential and a smaller number of commercial buildings. This type of solar panel catches sunlight and uses the energy from the Sun directly to provide heat.

Photovoltaic Cells

Photoelectric applications use the Sun’s energy indirectly by converting it into electricity. Low maintenance photovoltaic cells which are part of the device use silicon-type semiconductors to convert the Sun’s energy into electricity.

For example, a solar powered calculator uses a bank of tiny photovoltaic cells to generate enough electricity for the calculator to do its sums. The calculator goes on working year after year without ever needing a battery.

I remember that when I was first given a solar powered calculator it seemed like some form of arcane magic to me, and I was deeply reassured when one day my calculator wouldn’t light up. I turned to my husband in relief and said “It needs a battery now”. He laughed at my feminine ignorance, of course, and just turned the calculator’s screen this way and that until it caught the light. I’ve had my solar calculator for 22 years now, and there’s never been a day cloudy enough – even in rain-shrouded Scotland – that the wretched thing couldn’t tell me how I’d mis-managed my budget!

But on the other hand, time without number I’ve justified buying myself a new plant with the reflection that I’m saving the plant’s price by not buying calculator batteries…

Copyright © 2007 Residential Solar Power | Solar Power Facts

Credits: Make Money Online | Matteo Turchetto | Andreas Viklund