Solar Energy Advantages And Disadvantages

The greatest energy that can be produced by the sun is electricity. Photovoltaics, or solar cells, capture the sun and convert it into electricity. Solar cells were discovered by the Europeans back in the 1870’s when they used selenium to develop the telegraph. They found that when light hits selenium it would produce and electrical current. Soon enough there were many scientists and engineers working on photovoltaic systems. Silicon and Selenium proved to be the two best elements to conduct electricity when light hits them. Photovoltaic systems (PV cell) work by converting the suns light into electricity. A semi conducting material absorbs the sunlight, that energy knocks electrons loose from their atoms, this allows the electrons to flow through the material to produce electricity. The further development of solar cells can be attributed to the satellite industry. Solar cells were expensive and there was no use for them until satellites came. Because it is impractical to tether satellites it became important to develop solar energy at any cost that would power these satellites. This created a sustainable market for solar power, the first of its kind.

Solar energy begins with the sun. Solar panels, also known as photovoltaics, are used to convert light from the sun, which is composed of particles of energy called "photons", into electricity that can be used to power electrical loads. Light from the sun is a renewable energy resource that provides clean energy, produced by solar panels.

The sun is a massive burning ball of hydrogen that outputs gigantic quantities of energy every second. Sunlight is an excellent energy source and the future of using solar power is very exciting. The Sun's energy can be used to heat and cool buildings, generate electricity, operate communication, and GPS systems and even power solar cars. The sun’s energy is clean and solar panels used to harness the energy are low maintenance.

There are two main forms of solar power: The use of photovoltaic, or PV, cells, and the use of thermal energy from the sun. Photovoltaic cells exploit the photoelectric effect, which converts the protons from the light of the sun into electrons, which can be converted into energy. Photovoltaic energy accounts for fifteen gigawatts of global energy, which is equivalent to fifteen large electric power plants. Also, the production of PV cells has increased by two thousand times over the past twenty years, and it is expected to continue to grow. Solar-thermal energy takes the thermal energy created by the sun and turns it into electricity. Although it only only produces as much energy as one large power plant, solar-thermal energy has many domestic uses. It can not only be used for electricity, but also for solar heating, which uses sunlight to heat up houses. Solar power has already proven to be a reliant source of energy, and it will only continue to improve in technology and

Basically, Photovoltaic (PV) panels use layers of silicone doped with other materials and sandwiched together to extract free electrons using sunlight. A dopant on one side of the panel generates a negative charge and on the other side a dopant generates a positive one. This creates an electric field and when sunlight passes through the panel it has the chance to knock an electron off an atom. Metal plates on the sides then collect these electrons, because of the potential from the electric field, and a current is generated which goes on to be converted to alternating current in an inverter and then used to power our homes (Dhar, 2013). Photovoltaic panels are ideal for any residential application because they require little to no maintenance as they have no moving parts, they can just be set up and run as much as necessary to supplement household power. Unfortunately though they only supply power when the sun is out so they would never be able to be the primary power source for a home. Commercially, thermal plants have the ability to produce large amounts of power in multiple phases and as technology improves it may soon even be able to run around the

As the demand for solar power has grown, legislatures across the country have responded in different ways. The North Carolina legislature passed legislation in 2007 that successfully incentivized solar energy development in the state. By 2015, North Carolina ranked only behind California in solar installations. South Carolinians often compare themselves to North Carolinians and this is no different when it comes to renewable energy. The South Carolina legislature passed extremely different legislation in 2014 from that passed earlier in North Carolina. Both houses of the legislature in South Carolina unanimously passed the Distributed Energy Resource Program Act (Act 236) with the full support of investor-owned utilities, municipalities, the electric cooperatives, the state’s Office of Regulatory Staff and most of the region’s environmental conservation groups that work throughout the state . It is too early to determine, but the South Carolina legislation may or may not see similar success as that seen in North Carolina to incentivize solar power generation throughout the state. The South Carolina legislation requires the state’s three investor owned utilities to subsidize and socialize the additional cost of solar energy to incentivize solar energy’s development across the South Carolina. However, the distributed energy law does not require the 20-member owned electric cooperatives of South Carolina to subsidize or socialize any additional cost of solar energy. Instead the cooperatives are left to determine individually if adoption of solar is prudent for their membership.

Almost everyone has heard of solar energy already. Although it is very well known, it has to be used by many people. The biggest problem is the cost of solar energy. There are only a select few who use solar energy. Solar energy has many benefits, but when one sees the price of solar energy, they turn their head the other way. In the beginning, solar cells were extremely expensive to make. They were used in special applications, such as aircraft. Performance mattered more than the cost of making solar cells. However, it is less expensive to make. This is where the problem lies, how to increase efficiency while keeping the manufacturing at a low cost. The energy consumption of solar energy falls below one percent of total energy consumption.

Solar energy is an eco-friendly alternative to fossil fuels. Our planet has been experiencing an average increase in global temperatures. Slowly but surely our planet is deteriorating, unless we change our form of energy into a greener alternative. Deterioration of our planet may occur at a faster rate. The depletion of fossil fuels is detrimental to our environment. By substituting fossil fuels with the solar energy, our planet will benefit. These benefits include: reduced climate change, beneficial economic opportunities on both a large scale benefitting our government and on a smaller scale helping individuals decrease their energy bills, and solar energy is renewable and sustainable.

Our sun produces 386,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts of energy every second. This enormous amount of free energy needs to be harvested because natural resources are running out. Peak oil production in the United States was reached in 1970 and the global peak could be coming soon. When oil begins to run out, how will humans continue to live the way we are now? The answer to this is the sun. The sun is the most reliable and abundant source of energy that humans can use to create electricity. Solar thermal energy can be easily confused with solar panel energy production, so it is important to distinguish between the two. This form of energy production has many advantages to its use, but also some disadvantages that might drive away potential new users.

The Clean Power Plan needs to be implemented and followed if solar energy is ever going to become more prevalent in the United States. Many states have already begun shifting away from coal without the CPP ordering them to. However, the Trump administration has already stated it plans to reenergize the coal industry. The administration is also trying its best to repeal the CPP completely, although this will not actually help the coal industry. The plan has already been stalled once after the Supreme Court issued a stay on the CPP in 2016, and if it gets repealed then the CPP would not have made any progress at all (Kestler D’Amours, 2017). With coal use already on its way out, it does not make sense to start revitalizing it now. Many people are turning to alternative sources of energy, and the job market there is continuing to expand. Even if the CPP does get repealed the coal industry will continue to decline as more and more people turn to alternative forms of energy. If the clean power plan is reinstated and executed properly it would open the door for many renewable resources, including solar energy. Without the CPP the United States carbon emissions would most likely still decline, but with the CPP carbon emissions would decline much faster, and more money could be allocated to alternative, clean energies.

Although the price for installing Solar Powers Systems is high, in the future years solar panels have potential not only return on their investment, but to save you significant amounts of money by not paying for electricity bills. Solar Panels or cells use photovoltaic effect to convert the energy of light directly to electricity. Solar cells are constructed from a semiconductor material, that is usually silicon. Each solar cell contain many electrons. The electrons are not able to carry an electrical charge in their natural state. Photons are being delivered within the suns rays, and when these photons reach the electrons, the electrons are turned into conduction electrons, what means that they are able to carry electrical charge to the

Earth’s energy budget is the net measurement of incoming radiation from the sun that is being used and distributed throughout the climate system and later being reradiated back into space. The sun is the prime source of energy and behaves like a ‘black body’ where it will emit energy proportional to absorbing it, this can be supported through Planck’s law where it describes that a black body will emit maximum energy at a given length at a given temperature (Roger G Barry,200).

Concerns about the well-being of the environment have driven the world towards the use of renewable energy sources. The issue at hand was to determine which salt, between CloKMag, FLiBe, and FLiNaK, would be the best option to be used in conjunction with a concentrated solar plant in order to supply power to all 100,000 of Salt Bay’s residents for the least cost. Since solar energy has been criticized for only being able to produce daytime power, the addition of salt storage has allowed energy generation throughout the day. This power has to be available 24 hours a day, year round. Through the use of mass and energy balances, the recommended salt was found to be FLiNaK, with a net cost per year of $147,000,000. In order to break even, a utility cost on Salt Bay residents would be $0.16. This is 11% cheaper than the second least expensive option.

That great ball of fire up in the sky that we call the sun is the ultimate source of much of the power that is generated and used by man. Solar power is full of potential and has many benefits of which some are obvious and a few others that are not so easily realized by us. In fact, the sun has

Solar energy may define as the energy received by the earth from the sun. This solar energy is in the form of solar radiation. With the help of solar cells, solar radiation can convert into electricity. Sun is a highly powerful energy source, humans and natures are directly depending on the sun. For example in hydro-electricity the solar energy needed for the evaporation of water after that it returns to earth as rain and provides water in dams. In biomass, the solar energy used that process. Solar cells directly converted solar radiation into electricity, during the process time there is no noise or pollution are there. These cells made with some semiconducting materials. If use solar cells in our home it will help to reduce the greenhouse gas emission, minimise the percentage of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and mainly reduce the necessity of fossil fuels and natural gas use to produce electricity. According to the Ben Sorensen, solar energy is one of a good source of substitute energy, for the reason that it is renewable, economical and does not pollute our environment. Thus, this essay will be divided into three parts. Firstly, we will talk about fossil fuels and its demerits. Secondly, we will look at the issues and implications of solar energy. Finally, we will focus on the advantageous and disadvantageous of solar energy respectively.