Solar Energy

The sun is one of our planets most important renewable and free source of energy. The energy of the sun can be harnessed in so many ways and with the latest technology, the amount of energy collected from the sun is ever increasing.

Using the inexhaustible energy from the sun to generate power, keep our geysers warm and reducing the amount of fossil fuels used to generate power will save our planet and reduce global warming which one of the major problems the planet is currently facing.

Also going solar will reduce the amount of pollution emitted from factories to produce power, thus helping the restoration of the planets hole in our atmosphere.

Did you know?

The amount of energy from our sun that reaches the Earth's surface is so vast that just in one year is around twice the amount of energy all of Earth's non-renewable resource will ever produce.

The first ever solar heat power station was built between the year 1912 and 1913 by a United States inventor by the name of Frank Shulman, who was the first to demonstrate how to power a steam engine using solar power. This plant made use of parabolic troughs that powered a 45-52 kW engine to pump more than 22 000 lites of water/m from the great Nile River to the adjacent cotton fields.

Unfortunately the idea of solar power was lost during World War 1 which lead to the discovery of oil. But this idea was resurrected in the 1970's.

Solar power applications

There are two basic solar technologies, active and passive. Active solar uses the PV(Photo-voltaic panels), fans and pumps to changes sunlight into other output forms of energy. Passive on the other hand is a technique whereby certain materials that are favorable to thermal properties are used in building designs to make used of the energy of the Sun, this reduces the demand for alternate resource considerably.

Solar energy has been used in the transport industry from as early as the 1980's. There are biannual solar-powered car races that is in central Australia where universities enter a group of scientists that compete in a 3021 kilometer race. From making solar cars to making boats that use solar power, the first solar power boat was designed and built in England in the 1975's. Amazingly in 1974 was the benchmark for the first unmanned solar flight took place. Technology has advanced as far as black solar balloons, which has been filled with ordinary air and as the sun shines on the balloon, thus heating the air and causing the buoyancy effect which makes the balloon move upwards.