Solar Energy – A Clean and Green source of Alternative Energy.

I was first introduced to solar energy in the movie, Race the Sun with James Belushi and Halley Berry in the lead. It was a story about low- income and under achieving Hawaiian students encouraged by their teacher to join the Solar Car race. In the movie, a car shaped like a cockroach and covered with solar panels used the sun’s rays as an alternative energy source to run the car.

The energy poduced from sun’s light and heat is known as solar energy. Solar energy is a free and unlimited source of energy. There are no air and water pollution caused about by using solar energy. But there is still some impacts on the environment although indirect.

The efficiency of sun’s heat energy used as solar power for homes can be maximized with the use of daylight systems. This system helps in replacing the artificial lighting, by providing internal illumination of homes. Sawtooth roofs, Light Shelfs, Skylights and Light Tubes are all different types of Daylight systems. Daylight systems when they are properly implemented can reduce lighting-related energy consumption by 25 percent.

The conversion of solar energy into solar thermal technologies helps power for the purpose of heating water, space heating, space cooling and process heat generation. Solar energy can also be used to distil water and make saline or brackish water potable or drinkable.

Also sunlight can be converted into electricity using photovoltaics or PV. PV has been mainly used to power small and medium-sized things like a calculator powered by a single solar cell. There are homes powered by photovoltaics. Using solar energy for water and space heating is the most widely use application of solar energy. While ventilation and solar air heating is also growing in popularity.

With all the benefits of using solar energy, there is still a downside of the solar energy efficiency. Its disadvantage being that it does not work during night time. The cost of setting up solar stations is expensive, but the benefit of using solar energy when accumulated is so much more.