SOLAR POWER
Solar power (also known as solar energy) is a source of power that uses energy from the sun. Solar energy also broadly describes technologies that utilize this energy. It is also in widespread use where other power supplies are absent, such as in remote locations and in space.The primary forms of solar energy are heat and light. Secondary forms and effects include biomass, wind, the Gulf Stream, the hydrologic cycle, fossil fuels and electricity.
Solar energy has been used since prehistoric times. Primitive architects incorporated windows to provide light. The Greeks, Native Americans and Chinese warmed their buildings by orienting them toward the sun. Medieval European farmers used thermal mass and elaborate field orientation to increase crop yields.
In 1865, the French engineer Auguste Mouchout successfully powered a steam engine with sunlight. This is the first known example of a solar powered mechanical device. Over the next 50 years inventors such as John Ericsson, Charles Tellier, Henry E. Willsie, Aubrey Eneas and Frank Shuman developed solar powered mechanical devices which were used for irrigation, refrigeration and electrical generation.
In 1954, researchers at Bell Laboratories developed a solar cell capable of converting light into electricity via the photovoltaic effect. This breakthrough marked a fundamental change in how power is generated. Since then solar cells have progressed from early cells priced at £750 per watt to modern cells which can cost less than £2 per watt.
Within five years, solar power could be cheap enough to compete with carbon-generated electricity, even in Britain, Scandinavia or upper Siberia. In a decade, the cost may have fallen so dramatically that solar cells could undercut oil, gas, coal and nuclear power by up to half. Technology is leaping ahead of a stale political debate about fossil fuels.
READ MORE ..........................
|