What is a Solar Energy or Solar Power?
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The Sun is a vast sphere 864,000 miles in diameter containing 335 billion cubic miles of violently hot gases, which are 14 million degrees C at its core. Needless to say, it emits a vast amount of energy in the form of light, heat, gamma rays and others. Only 1x10-8 % or one hundred millionth of one (1) percent of the Sun's energy falls on the Earth, but in one minute even this small percentage is enough to supply the energy needs of the entire Earth's population for a whole year. If it were not for the Sun, there would be no life on Earth - there would never have been any life on Earth. So I think you can see just how important the Sun is to us, and how Solar Power is going to play an ever increasingly important part in our daily lives, especially as we rapidly deplete the Earth of its ever-decreasing supply of fossil fuels.
It is only in the last two hundred years that mankind has made the breakthrough and started to harness this enormous mountain of power and only in the last fifty that we have been able to really (we believe) understand the greater implications of harnessing this power. Perhaps the greatest breakthrough in the race to harness Solar Power came with the invention of the Solar Cell in 1839 - an invention that was to take more than a hundred years to catch on. Solar cells became a necessity when the Space Race began in post WWII years. Satellites needed some form of power but it was not practical to hoist a heavy battery into Space, and so there became a rapid development in Solar Cells. Only in recent years have we seen solar cells or photovoltaic cell take a giant leap forward and become in everyday use. They are even appearing in 3rd World countries in United Nations programs to supply water or electricity to areas that would not otherwise have access.
Solar water heaters and swimming pool heaters are now commonplace. But what are the innovative uses of Solar Power that have not yet become household knowledge? I will touch upon a few. There is the Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) Plant, which uses a mirrored trough to concentrate heat on an oil filled-tube, which, in turn, exchanges heat with water to form steam. This system produces 330 Megawatts of electricity. There is the Solar Chimney, the Energy Tower, the Solar Oven and the Solar Pond. But perhaps the greatest breakthrough was announced in January 2005 - nanotechnology brought us the first spray-on Solar Power cells - this composite material can be sprayed on to any surface, even a sweater, to form a portable source of Solar Power.