Development Deployment And Economics
Beginning with the surge in coal use, which accompanied the Industrial Revolution, energy consumption has steadily transitioned from wood and biomass to fossil fuels. The early development of solar technologies starting in the 1860s was driven by an expectation that coal would soon become scarce. However, development of solar technologies stagnated in the early 20th century in the face of the increasing availability, economy, and utility of coal and petroleum.
The 1973 oil embargo and 1979 energy crisis caused a reorganization of energy policies around the world. It brought renewed attention to developing solar technologies. Deployment strategies focused on incentive programs such as the Federal Photovoltaic Utilization Program in the US and the Sunshine Program in Japan. Other efforts included the formation of research facilities in the US , Japan , and Germany .
The International Energy Agency has said that solar energy can make considerable contributions to solving some of the most urgent problems the world now faces:
We have proved … that after our stores of oil and coal are exhausted the human race can receive unlimited power from the rays of the Sun.
Frank Shuman, The New York Times, 2 July 1916.
Solar Power Generation Technologies
As already outlined, there are two ways of turning the energy contained in sunlight into electricity. The first, called solar thermal power generation, involves using the sun simply as a source of heat. This heat is captured, concentrated, and used to drive a heat engine. The heat engine may be a conventional steam turbine, in which case the heat will be used to generate steam, but it could also be a closed-cycle turbine system using an organic thermodynamic fluid, a gas turbine, or a Sterling engine.
The second way of capturing solar energy and converting it into electricity involves use of the photovoltaic or solar cell. The solar cell is a solid-state device like a transistor or microchip. It uses the physical characteristics of a semiconductor such as silicon to turn the sunlight directly into electricity. The simplicity and durability of the solar cell makes it an extremely attractive method of generating electrical power.
What Solar Energy Is
Solar energy is the radiation thats emitted from the Sun and fuels our planet. Solar energy is what keeps the Earth at a livable temperature, creates weather that provides rain and snow to plants and animals that need water to survive, and gets converted into chemical energy by the plants that we eat to feed ourselves.
To get more scientific, solar energy is made of photons, or tiny particles of energy that travel at the speed of light, contain no mass, and flow in waves. Throughout history, photons have captured the attention of great minds like Newton, Einstein, and Planck, and they are the basic unit of energy that solar technologies rely on.
Solar energy is also an abundant resource, and theoretically if we were able to capture all of it, enough solar energy hits the surface of the Earth every hour to provide the energy needed by humans for the entire year.
That said, solar energy is not electricity. Solar energy has the potential to create electricity when harnessed in the right way, but solar panels do not just capture solar energy and feed that directly into your homes electrical system. Solar energy must be converted into electrical energy before it can be used to power your home, and that is why solar panels are needed to capture and convert the power of the Sun into electricity.
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Is Geothermal Energy Ultimately Derived From Solar Energy
The following question is taken from 10th class science NCERT book chapter 14th.
Most of the sources of energy we use represent stored solar energy. Which of the following is not ultimately derived from the Suns energy? geothermal energy wind energy nuclear energy bio-mass.
The answer is given as nuclear energy.
I understand that the wind moves because of the uneven heating of the earth by the sun. And biomass uses solar energy for photosynthesis.
How is geothermal energy ultimately derived from the sun?
- $\begingroup$I’ve removed a number of comments that were attempting to answer the question and/or responses to them. Please keep in mind that comments should be used for suggesting improvements and requesting clarification on the question, not for answering.$\endgroup$
It is not a correct statement:
Geothermal energy comes from the heat within the earth. The word “geothermal” comes from the Greek words geo, meaning earth,” and therme, meaning “heat.” People around the world use geothermal energy to produce electricity, to heat buildings and greenhouses, and for other purposes.
The earth’s core lies almost 4,000 miles beneath the earth’s surface. The double-layered core is made up of very hot molten iron surrounding a solid iron center. Estimates of the temperature of the core range from 5,000 to 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit . Heat is continuously produced within the earth by the slow decay of radioactive particles that is natural in all rock
italics mine.
Eliminate The Middle Man
Some electricity, though, is made using clean sources of energy like wind and sunlight. We need to be making a lot more electricity this way.
Many people are now putting solar electric systems on their houses. Solar panels covered with solar cells, sort of like little glass wafers, are installed on the roof. When sunlight strikes them, they turn some of it into electricity, which is fed through wires into the homes electrical circuits.
When sunlight hits the solar panel, the energy knocks loose some electrons from the atoms in the material. The electrons flow into the circuits of the house.
Solar panels over only part of the roof can supply most of the electricity to run a house.
Volunteers in Oakland, California, help to install solar panels on homes.
Solar panels covering even a small area on the roof can supply a good part of the electricity to run the refrigerator, lights, heating, TV, and other energy-hungry devices in the house. Making electricity from sunlight does not produce carbon dioxide and does not add to global warming. And after the solar panels are produced, paid for, and installed, the electricity is free!
In California, people are volunteering to help install solar panels on the homes of those who otherwise could not afford to buy them. The program is called Single-family Affordable Solar Homes, or SASH. The organization that sponsors the SASH program is called GRID Alternatives.
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Concentrated Solar Power Plants
CSP plants are used to convert solar energy to electricity through conventional thermodynamic cycles , and have broad prospects due to their low cost, high efficiency and good scale-up potential, including distributed, lower-concentration applications . Generally, CSP systems are classified into four types according to solar radiation concentrating methods: solar power tower, parabolic trough collector, linear Fresnel reflector and parabolic dish systems, among which the first two are the most widely adopted ones . Accordingly, their concentration ratio, operating temperature and other properties vary with each other. Since solar radiation is intermittent and unstable, TES systems are introduced into CSP plants to improve energy dispatch ability and system stability. Currently, high-temperature sensible heat storage is the most mature TES technology for CSP plants. Four main configurations of CSP plants with TES are illustrated in Fig. 1 .
Fig. 1. CSP plants with different TES systems.
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews
Fig. 2. Configuration of PS10 CSP plant.
Applied Thermal Engineering
Santosh Raikar, Seabron Adamson, in, 2020
Solar Energy Or Energy From The Sun Is Contained In
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How Does Sunlight Generate Electricity
The answer to, How does solar energy produce electricity? is based on the relationship between solar panels and sunlight. To generate electricity from sunlight, the photons that the Sun radiates must be collected and converted into a usable format. This ability to create energy from sunlight is known as the Photovoltaic Effect.
So how is solar energy generated? The photovoltaic effect occurs when sunlight strikes the thin layer of silicon that makes up solar panels, and knocks electrons off of the atoms in that silicon. That kicks off the production of electricity using solar energy. Solar cells have a positive side and a negative side, so once those electrons are knocked free, they become negatively charged and will naturally seek out the positively charged protons to connect with.
How does solar power produce energy? Opposites attract, and the attraction of negatively charged electrons and positively charged protons is what makes solar power possible. This flow of charged particles from one side of the solar cell to the other side is whats known as current, or direct current electricity.
The more sunlight that strikes a solar panel, the more electrons that get knocked free, and the more current that solar panel will generate. So if youre asking, How is solar energy converted to electrical energy? just remember that solar panels convert more solar energy into electricity when there is more sunlight hitting them at more direct angles.
How Does The Cost Of Solar Power Compare With Other Forms Of Energy Production
In terms of cost per watt, the best way to compare energy sources is to look at global energy prices, which removes the impact of subsidies and scale. Historically, coal energy has averaged about $0.06 cents per kilowatt-hour . Fossil-fuel based steam energy averages around $0.05 cents/kWh, and natural gas can be as low as $0.03 cents/kWh. Alternative energy sources have caught up quickly though, and in 2016, a large commercial solar installation priced PV energy at $0.029 cents/kWh, making solar the cheapest form of energy available!
Solar power follows whats called Swansons Law, named after solar panel manufacturer SunPowers founder Richard Swanson. Swansons Law says that the cost of a solar module decreases by about 20% every time global solar capacity doubles. Just like other technologies, solar power improves over time, so if youre thinking about how does solar energy work to produce electricity, keep in mind that costs go down and efficiency goes up as solar energy works better with improved technologies.
Because solar power is becoming more popular, decreases in costs are compounding over time, so the answer to, How do we use solar power to generate electricity? looks a lot different than it did just 10 years ago. In 2009, electricity from utility-scale solar was $359 per megawatt-hour . In 2019, just 10 years later, the price declined by 89% and utility-scale solar was $40 per MWh, making it the cheapest source of energy from new power plants being built.
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Acs Climate Science Toolkit
Although much hotter on the inside, we can closely approximate the surface of the sun, from which its emission occurs, as a black body at a temperature of about 5800 K. The Stefan-Boltzmann equation then gives the energy flux emitted at the suns surface.
SS = 4 = 63 × 106 W·m2
The surface area of a sphere with a radius r is 4r2. If rS is the radius of the Sun, the total energy it emits is SS4rs2. As the radiation is emitted from this spherical surface, it is spread over larger and larger spherical surfaces, so the energy per square meter decreases, as illustrated schematically in the diagram below.
The figure at the right compares the experimental solar emission curve observed outside the Earths atmosphere to the emission curve for a 5800 K black body located at the suns distance from the Earth. The structure in the experimental curve is a result of absorption of some wavelengths by atoms and ions in the cooler layers outside the suns emitting surface.
When the energy emitted by the sun reaches the orbit of a planet, the large spherical surface over which the energy is spread has a radius, dP, equal to the distance from the sun to the planet. The energy flux at any place on this surface, SP, is less than what it was at the Suns surface. But the total energy spread over this large surface is the same as the total energy that left the sun, so we can equate them:
SS4rs2 = SP4dP2
SP = SS2
Where Solar Energy Is Used
Insolation levels are important for the technical and economic performance of solar energy systems. The availability of financial and other incentives for solar energy are also major factors that influence where solar energy systems are installed. Net metering has been especially important in encouraging the installation of PV systems on homes and businesses.
Total solar energy use iin the United States increased from about 0.06 trillion British thermal units in 1984 to about 1,501 trillion Btu in 2021. Solar electricity generation accounted for about 96% of total solar energy use in 2021 and direct use of solar energy for heating accounted for about 4%.
Total U.S. solar electricity generation increased from about 5 million kWh in 1984 , to about 164 billion kWh in 2021, of which 68% was from utility-scale PV power plants, 30% was from distributed/small-scale PV systems, and 2% was from utility-scale solar thermal-electric power plants. Utility-scale power plants have at least 1,000 kilowatts of electricity generation capacity and small-scale systems have less than one MW generation capacity.
The maps below show total annual solar electricity generation in each state from utility-scale solar power plants and estimated electricity generation from small-scale PV systems. Most small-scale PV systems are installed on or near buildings. Residential sector small-scale PV systems accounted for 61% of total small-scale PV electricity generation in 2021.
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How Solar Energy Works
Solar energy is a vast, inexhaustible, and clean resource. Solar electricity generation is a great alternative to electricity from fossil fuels, with no pollution and no threats to public health. The energy we get from the sun is tremendous. 18 sunny days on our planet contain the same amount of energy as is stored in all fossil fuels combined. It is an incredible option to convert that abundant amount of energy into electricity solar power systems. These Photovoltaic systems are usually made up of several solar panels that are able to convert energy into usable electricity
How Does Solar Power Work
Solar power works by converting energy from the sun into power. There are two forms of energy generated from the sun for our use electricity and heat.
Both are generated through the use of solar panels, which range in size from residential rooftops to solar farms stretching over acres of rural land.
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Negative Impacts Of Solar Energy
I’m sure you are now thinking if solar energy is so great, why are we still using nuclear power and fossil fuels? Well, the amount of solar energy has increased in recent years. For example, in 2020, the renewable energy growth rate grew around 45%! Despite this, there are still pitfalls of harnessing solar energy, which we will discuss in this section.
There are two ways we can harness solar energy, and that’s through either cells or solar thermal plants. The location and the amount of land required can differ depending on which one we use.
The estimate for and around 4 to 16.5 acres per megawatt for thermal ones. Solar facilities also can’t share the land with agricultural uses like other forms of energy. Some solutions to this include building commercial-size photovoltaic plants and using contaminated land or other areas where habitat loss is less of a concern.
Water is required for cooling when we manufacture solar energy panels. The amount of water used depends on the design, location, and type of system used. We can use dry-cooling technology to minimize the amount of water utilized, but it leads to lower efficiency rates, significantly above temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a problem because many regions in the U.S. that need alternative forms of energy the most are in the driest climates.
What Are Solar Farms
Solar farms, also known as solar parks or solar fields, are large areas of land containing interconnected solar panels positioned together over many acres, to harvest large amounts of solar energy at the same time. Solar farms are designed for large-scale solar energy generation that feed directly into the grid, as opposed to individual solar panels that usually power a single home or building.
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What Are The Common Uses Of Solar Energy
Solar energy is commonly used for solar water heaters and house heating. The heat from solar ponds enables the production of chemicals, food, textiles, warm greenhouses, swimming pools, and livestock buildings. Cooking and providing a power source for electronic devices can also be achieved by using solar energy.
