subject: Practical Solar Power is Here! [print this page] Practical Solar Power is Here! Practical Solar Power is Here!
When you consider solar power as an abstract concept, its advantages over other forms of energy are obvious. This is a source of energy that is, from a human viewpoint, inexhaustible. The sun has been making it for some billions of years, and will continue to do so for billions more. The more conventional, earthbound energy sources are already getting more scarce, but we can count on the power of the sun for millennia to come.
The problem comes in the practical application of the concept. Scientists have been searching for a cheap, practical way to harness the sun's energy for a long time, and the road hasn't always been smooth. Early solar panels were inefficient and expensive, and they just weren't practical when other sources of energy were so plentiful and cheap. Besides, the early technology was cumbersome and hard to install, and the very idea of a time when solar panel installers could come to a residence and install a set of workable panels was still science fiction.
Now the future is here, and technology and circumstances have met in the middle. The solar panel installers have arrived with products much more efficient than the earlier ones. At the same time, global need for energy has become more acute. Because of this meeting of need and technology, the time for practical solar panel installers has come.
In the panels offered by solar panel installers today, a layer of silicon is sandwiched between two layers of glass. The silicon has been deliberately combined with other elements to form impurities, and each atom of the impurities shares electrons with a silicon atom. However, this leaves some electrons sadly without a partner, and these loose electrons flow into a device called an inverter. The inverter gets them all pointed in the same direction, and there you have the electric current. It's a simple concept, and now it has a simple application. Today's solar panels use this concept to produce cheap, reliable power in a growing number of buildings, and the trend is only beginning. In the future, the power of the sun will be in every home.
