Fun Facts about Solar Energy

There are many interesting facts about solar energy:

The sun is a huge resource of energy:

• It takes around 8 minutes for the Sun's light and heat to reach Earth.
• The Earth's atmosphere receives 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) of energy from the Sun each year, which translates to more energy in one hour than the entire planet's energy consumption in one year. (876,000%)
• The energy output of a 1 KW solar energy unit is roughly equivalent to the burning of 170 pounds of coal and 300 pounds of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.
• When silicon is taken from just one ton of sand, and used in photovoltaic solar power panels, that silicon can produce as much electricity as 500,000 tons of burning coal.
• Africa's Sahara desert, assuming 15% efficient solar cells, could generate more than 450 terawatt (TW) per year. Current annual global energy consumption, including fossil and renewable sources is about 13 TW.
Solar Technology evolves rapidly

• Many ancient civilizations worshiped the sun as the cause of everything. Ancient and modern North- and South-American Indian tribes worshiped the sun. The ancient Egyptians worshiped their sun god Ra.
• In the late 15th century Leonardo Da Vinci already conceived of an industrial use of solar power by employing concave mirrors to heat water.
• Almost 200 years ago, a British astronomer by the name of John Herschel cooked food with solar power during a journey to Africa.
• In 1921, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for experiments with solar power and photovoltaic. It was awarded to Albert Einstein.
• The 3021 km Australian Darwin-to-Adelaide annual car race for solar-powered vehicles seeks to promote research in solar-powered vehicles. It attracts international competition and is making some headway. In the first race, in 1987 the average speed was 67 km/hr. By 2005 it was 103 km/hr!
And it is also financially attractive:
• Solar power can cut water bills by more than 50 percent each year in a home where a solar system replaces the electric water heater.
• Germany is one of the world's top photovoltaic (PV) installers, with a solar PV capacity in 2009 of 8,877 megawatts (MW), and 6,200 GWh of electricity generated in 2009. Solar power now meets about 1.1 percent of Germany's electricity demand; a share that some market analysts expect could reach 25 percent by 2050.
• The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory underscored the benefit of installing solar inverter in US urban centers in a recent report. Seven major outages -- including one impacting the San Francisco area in June 2000 -- were analyzed from the perspective of the quality of the solar resource during the exact times of the power losses. In all but one of the outages, conditions for optimal solar electricity generation were above 90 percent. Interestingly, solar conditions were close to perfect (99 percent) for generating electricity from the sun on June 14th, 2000, the day 100,000 customers in the San Francisco area lost power.
• The Mojave Desert in North America houses the world's largest solar power plant. It covers 1000 acres (4 km²) of solar reflectors. An astonishing ninety percent of the world's currently commercially produced solar power is produced by it.

About the Author

SolarEdge's Solar PV system including power optimizers, PV inverters and monitoring software allows module manufacturers, integrators and installers to benefit from constraint-free site design, full site space utilization, reduced installation time and maintenance cost, module-level monitoring, improved safety, theft prevention and more.

Author (Nick Roggers). Submitted on Sun, 5 Sep 2010 Time: 9:49 PM

Rating: Not yet rated

Comments

No comments posted.