subject: Five Top Reasons For Solar Electricity Systems [print this page] Humans have come along way since the invention of the wheel. Today it's commonplace for an individual to have or to use hundreds of individual electrical motors everyday.
In addition, there's been a very rapid evolution in the sources from which we receive electrical power. The majority of electrical power generating plants in existence in the world today utilizes fossil fuels exclusively.
Today, it is becoming more and more likely that a new power plant will be utilizing a fuel that is not one of the fossil fuels.
Why is this so?
Although power plants utilizing fossil fuels, principally oil and gas or coal, are very effective they are also very unpopular. This unpopularity comes from the perception that fossil fuel plants are major atmospheric polluters. While this subject continues to be debated, the majority of chemicals and particles produced by these plants are built with by highly effective scrubbers in their smokestacks and thus do not pollute excessively.
Solar Electricity Systems.
Solar electricity systems have several major advantages over traditional fossil fuel power plants. These advantages include the following:
Nonpolluting. No solar energy system produces any pollution into the atmosphere. The energy from the sun is directly or indirectly captured by photocells and other technologies. This energy is then directly converted into usable electricity or indirectly converted via a generator.
Mechanical parts. Actually that's the beauty; there really are no moving mechanical hearts to speak up. This makes maintenance of the solar electricity system relatively low.
Operating cost. The vast majority of the cost of a solar electricity system is incurred during the construction phase. Since the sun provides a virtually free source of energy ongoing costs are quite low and very manageable.
In summary, the primary obstacles preventing the mass employment of a solar electricity system are two. First, the relatively large amount of physical real estate is required because of the relatively low efficiency of current technology. Second, since the sun does not shine 24 hours per day in all locations, the location of a solar electricity system plant is critical.
Nonetheless, shortcomings notwithstanding we will be obtaining substantial amount of our future power from solar electricity systems.
