by Lucien Beauley

Created on: March 25, 2010

Solar Power: Source of Endless Energy

With Global Warming on many people's minds, do we have any ideas of the best way to lessen the impact on our future, or maybe a possible relief of its possible ravages or even a possible key to its eventual reversal. Many scientific experts have proposed possible solutions, but so far there is no proof of their effectiveness.

The Greatest Source Of Energy, The Sun...

Since the beginning of man's habitation here on earth, the sun has warmed our bodies, helped grow our crops, cycled our weather and made visible the creator's handy works. What would we have done without it ? We all know the answer to that, but man was given the genius of invention and has at least begun the journey of using it. With the realization of the eventual need to lessen the need of fossil fuels to run our industry and society's needs in general, man's ingenuity has developed means of converting existing forces into usable power for our benefits. One such invention, the solar panel, which simply collects the sun's rays and through proper electronics,is made to power our homes, industry and other electrically operated devices. True, there are other power sources which can be converted into electricity for our use, but solar power possesses an almost unique property and that is that there are no moving parts, at least in its simplest design.

What About Wind Power, Geothermal, Or Even Hydro ?

All of the present renewable energy sources have some advantages, such as Geothermal since it is usually used directly as in heating a structure, such as your home in the winter. Hydroelectric power is very constant and is not restricted as to day or night, though it has closely reached its upper limits at the present time. Wind power is probably the fastest growing renewable energy source at the present time and is expected to continue its present growth in the future. With the looming expectations from "Global Warming", all the nations of the world are forging ahead in building new windmill towers, both on and offshore and with the greater average wind speeds being recorded offshore, there are tendencies to promote those types of projects in the future. All in all, windmill energy production has been increasing an average of about 30 % a year in 2006.

Solar Power Is Looking Bright For The Future...

Though photovoltaic panels used to convert the sun's light energy to electrical energy are still still possess very poor efficiency, though they are improving each year, approximately 90 petawatts of energy reach the earth's surface and since 15 terawatts is what would be needed by the human population, then there is no shortage of solar energy. The only need is to convert it with some reasonable efficiency. The numbers do say one thing and that is the energy from the sun is virtually ...infinite. There are programs in California to place solar panels on 1,000,000 roofs throughout the state, though mostly in the southern part because of the stronger sunlight. It has been estimated that electricity produced from solar panels could be used to separate the Hydrogen element from water to eventually be used in fuel cells to power our cars. Solar panels have basically no moving parts in their simplest arrangement for producing power, such as on roof tops. Think of the endless electrical power possibilities.

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