From Guest Blogger Claire Reed: Solar Power and Energy Conservation

Each one of us uses energy in some way or other all day long, throughout our entire lives. We depend on energy for almost everything to make our life more comfortable, and enjoyable. Unfortunately what we don’t realize is that we are wasting energy unnecessarily. If we go on wasting energy like these ultimately a day would come when all the energy would be exhausted and we will have nothing to use in the future. Energy Conservation means an effort to subside the consumption of natural resources like water, electricity etc which are scarcely available in the Earth. 14th December is celebrated as World Energy Conservation Day. Energy Conservation is not an issue in day to day life, however it is one of the most important topic that needs to be discussed.

Renewable Energy:

The future belongs to renewable energy. Renewable energy are those energy that comes from those resources that can be easily replenished such as water, tides, sunlight etc. Most renewable energy comes directly or indirectly from Sun.

Solar Power:

Solar power is basically the conversion of sunlight into electricity. The Earth receives a tremendous supply of solar energy. It provides enough energy in one minute to supply the world’s energy need for the whole one year. Solar energy is efficient enough to make a difference. Since it is created form a renewable resource any amount of energy is helpful to mankind. The fact that it is available in plenty and is free of cost makes it the most important renewable source of energy.

Solar Power for Energy Conservation:

Sunlight can be converted either by using PV or by CSP.

A photovoltaic cell is a device that converts light into electric current using photoelectric effect. It is used to power small and medium sized particles like calculator, watches etc. PV is composed of cells made up of silicons. Power is generated when sunlight strikes the semi conductor material and creates a current. It has many advantages making it the most promising renewable resource in the world. It is non-polluting, and requires less maintainance and has a life span of 20-30 years. It has advantages over wind power, thermal power and hydra power as it does not require any kind of turbine and is less noisy as compared to the later three sources.

On the other hand Concentrating Solar Power(CSP) systems uses mirrors to focus a large area of sunlight into a smaller beam. It was first developed in 1980 and the advantage of it is that it has the ability to add thermal storage. The practical and environmentally safe nature of CSP is influencing a huge amount of people worldwide.  A unique approach to CSP is featured on this site’s list of renewable energy investment opportunities.

Other Storage Methods:

Some of the othe storage methods include:

Molten Salts: Solar energy can be stored at high temperature using molten salts. The are low cost and has high specific heat capacity.

Thermal Mass System: It can store store solar energy in the form of heat for daily or seasonal durations. It uses readily available materials like water, earth and stone.

Paraffin Wax: Paraffin Wax and Glauber’s salt are another thermal storage media. These type of materials are inexpensive, easily available and has many advantages of its own.

Solar Water Heating: Heat from the sun is used to heat the water in glass panels on the roof. Thus one does not need to heat the water through gas or electricity. They are used widely in countries like California and Australia where lots of sunshine falls on the Earth surface.

Negative Impacts:

Although solar energy has many advantages yet it has many environmental impacts too. Some of them are as follows:

1. It uses PVC to produce solar power. However it requires silicons and generates some waste as by products. Improper handling of it can have negative effect to mankind and environment.

2. Installing solar power plants requires large piece of land. Because of this reason solar power is not of much use in countries like United Kingdom.

3. The amount of sunlight a particular land receives varies from time, location, season and clouds. A person staying in Siberia would be benefited very little from this renewable resource.

4. Doesn’t work in night time.

5. Very expensive to build thermal power stations although the cost is gradually lowering with the advent of improved technologies.

Note: Embracing an energy efficient lifestyle will help us to get a better tomorrow. So we all should slow down the demand for energy and give a better future for the upcoming generation.

About The Author – About The Author – Alia is a writer/blogger. She loves writing, travelling and reading books.She loves writing about web services, web development.