Essay about Solar Energy and Storage

Advantages and disadvantages of alternative energy sources and engineering challenges for the harnessing of such forms of energy will also be addressed along with energy storage and fuel cells. The pre-requisites for the Alternative Energy elective are Thermodynamics II, Fluid Mechanics, and Heat Transfer.

There are four types of concentrated solar plant technologies: Parabolic Trough, Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector, Power Towers, and a Dish-Engine. As Solar Energy Industries Association explains, “Parabolic trough systems use curved mirrors to focus the sun’s energy onto a receiver tube that runs down the center of a trough. In the receiver tube, a high-temperature heat transfer fluid (such as a synthetic oil) absorbs the sun’s energy, reaching temperatures of 750°F or even higher, and passes through a heat exchanger to heat water and produce steam. The steam drives a conventional steam turbine power system to generate

     Solar energy is the most ancient kind of energy found on earth, for it is as old as the sun. "Solar" means from the sun. The earth is only one of the many planets which is bathed in the sun's overflowing energy. Every second the world receives 95.8 trillion watts of power…just think about that for a minute. Think about how much power the earth just received in the time it took you to read this sentence? It is well beyond the amount of power used in one day. It has the potential to satisfy all our energy needs forever without ever having to use the pollutive fossil fuels ever again. "The problem however, does not lie in the limited source, as do fossil fuels, but in harnessing

In this modern fast paced world that we live in, there are many issues that are looked over, energy is one of these. As a world, we are dependant on dwindling fossil fuel supplies and take for granted electricity, oil, and gas. There are four completely renewable sources of energy around us that should be used and developed, they are: wind, growing plants, flowing water, and the sun. These sources of energy are the ones we should be tapping, because they are reliable and renewable. Harnessing the suns energy is the most certain and ultimate energy source. Looking at a brief history and some facts about solar energy, a glimpse of the future can be seen, a future not dependant on

Abstract— Now a days, global warming is one of the serious concern for environment to get protected from it every one is taking help of technology by the means of different types of refrigeration system for comfort food process, medicines, blood storage, humidity control, etc. use of refrigeration system not totally green or ineffective environment, if we can use proper eco-friendly refrigerant in refrigeration system and make number of refrigeration system less. Then it is not long way to be resolve global warming issue. In Indian middle class and poor families cannot afford all types of refrigeration system like a ac, refrigerator, air cooler, etc. generally they purchase only air cooler. To solve this we can integrate refrigeration system of ac, refrigerator and air cooler in one product. So, that it cans multiplication and can we say as multifunctional refrigeration system. This type’s product various components are used like as compressor, condenser, capillary tube, evaporator, motor, fan, etc.

The solar industry is divided in three main markets: the European solar thermal market, the Chinese market and the market in other world regions. The industry is segmented in two main types of solar thermal collectors, which are evacuated tube collectors (80 per cent on average of the worldwide newly installed capacity in 2010) and flat plate collectors (20 per cent on average). This industry is characteristic of technology intensive industries with their central innovation: solar thermal water heating which radically reduces costs. They can also count on experimented installers. Each customer adopt and have

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.

Solar is quickly becoming a popular project to take on. Not only does it help save the environment, but it can also help save money for businesses and homes that elect to make the switch to solar. However, completing a solar project is expensive and it is important to look for ways to promote efficiency of the install and of the system itself.

The air conditioner in your home is running on which type of energy? - _______

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

Commonly, renewable energy is defined as energy which is able to be captured from existing natural resources that are replenished rapidly, such as flowing water, sunshine, wind, geothermal heat flows and ocean [2]. Renewable energy technologies are required to provide technologies to use one or several renewable energy resources. There are some different types of renewable energy technologies, which include solar energy, bioenergy, hydropower, wind energy, geothermal energy and tidal energy. This thesis project will focus on the solar photovoltaic which is currently one of types of solar energy technologies, and this technology using photovoltaic cells to converts sunlight directly into electricity.Solar photovoltaic system can generate electricity from sunlight through using PV modules, and the system can be integrated into building designs, installed on rooftops, or large scale power plant. With the development of photovoltaic technologies, solar photovoltaic capacity has been increased from 3.7 GW (2004) to 177GW (2014) [3]. Figure 2 shows this change from 2004 to 2014, there is a big trend of increase in these years. The increase of PV capacity can reduce the carbon emission and provides more job opportunities. It also helps to reduce air pollution and make a friendly environment for living. One of the common PV system is

Solar Thermal Power systems, also known as Concentrating Solar Power systems, use concentrated solar radiation as a high temperature energy source to produce electricity using thermal route. Since the average operating temperature of stationary non-concentrating collectors is low (max up to 1200C) as compared to the desirable input temperatures of heat engines (above 3000C), the concentrating collectors are used for such applications. These technologies are appropriate for applications where direct solar radiation is high. The mechanism of conversion of solar to electricity is fundamentally similar to the traditional

I am certain that all have heard of the terms green house gases, fossil fuels, and global warming. Have you ever questioned what will happen if nothing is done about the environmental problems facing the world today? What if I answer you that, we can merely use the power from the sun to power up our entire planet without the use of harmful energy sources, which affect our atmosphere? The power from the sun is what we call solar power. Solar power is the energy that comes from the sun as light and heat energy, and then it is later converted into electrical energy through solar panels (Nelson, 2008). This kind of power is completely free, right? Why should we put a lot of expense on other sources of energy, when there is a complete free

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.

Solar energy is transferred to the earth through radiation and the energy reaching the top of the earth’s atmosphere is estimated at 1400watts/m2. It is used directly for a wide range of human life activities including simple domestic use - drying cloths, crop and providing hot water for home use; commercial generation of electricity using photovoltaic equipment; and heating water to drive turbines in thermal electric generators. In recent times photovoltaic cells are used to convert sunlight into electricity with 40 percent efficiency Another method of using solar energy to generate electricity also used in recent times is to convert the sun’s energy into heat which is then stored in thermal tanks. The thermal tanks contain molten salts or paraffin wax which can absorb tremendous amount of heat energy without changing state. The heat can then be used as a heat source in steam engines to drive electric generators. Such thermal tanks usually have capacities of up to 1.44 Tera joules per 68m3. Grid tie allows excess energy to be sent to the transmission grid; the rest of the electricity can then be stored or used directly with solar inverters for AC