Solar Power System - Facts to Know for Using Solar Energy

The term ‘Solar power’ means power of the Sun and hence solar power system means a system to harness the power of the Sun and generate energy or electricity from it, for various purposes. Solar power system uses various techniques to capture the heat of the Sun and transfer it to electricity and other forms of energy as needed.

Solar power is a renewable source of energy unlike coal, which means that solar power can be harnessed without worrying about the Sun running out of heat – unlike coal mines running out of coal. Therefore in the recent times, elaborate research is continued to be done on solar power systems, in order to utilize solar power energy for various purposes.

What is a solar power system and how is it built?

The concept of a solar power system is based upon converting the ‘sunlight’ into ‘electricity’.If you want to know how you can use sunlight, the most basic experiment is that take a magnifying glass, hold a paper angled at 45 degrees towards the glass, and let the glass reflect the sunlight. You will see that the heat from the sunlight reflected on the glass will burn your paper.

This is the basic idea from which the entire concept of ‘solar power system’ generated. A solar power system is made using one of the two things:-

• ‘photovoltaic cells’ which are made of semiconductors to capture the sun rays and converting the same using ‘photo electric effect’.
• ‘concentrated solar power’ which uses big reflecting mirrors to capture the heat of the sun, which is then turned to electricity by turbines.

So these are the basic two systems which use solar power or the Sun’s light to capture and converts it into electricity.

The invention of solar power is one of the most important inventions, so because firstly a renewable source of energy got finally discovered and used to its optimum usage level and secondly it is easy to build a solar power system and generate electricity out of it.

Solar power system – history and modification with time

The basic concept of using sun rays (not for electricity) for generating heat is supposedly dated way back to 200 BC when Archimedes, the famous physicist used ‘burning glass’ (magnifying glass) to fight back an entire army back in Rome by producing excessive heat which the glass reflecting the sunlight produced!

However, scientifically solar power was used by Auguste Mouchout, to use solar energy converted into heat using a parabolic trough, which produced steam and hence the first steam engine was run using solar power system in the year 1866.

As time has passed, solar power system caught the fascination of many scientists like Dr. R.H.Goddard and Frank Shuman, who did various experiments to generate heat and electricity using the solar power system concept.

Solar power system – the most important evolution

The most important contribution to the concept of generating electricity was done by Professor Giovanni Francia, who built the first ever solar power plant to harness the sunlight and produce electricity on a large scale. Since then solar power system formed an entire scientific genre of its own, and evolved in to modern solar power systems.

Solar power facts –what you should know while you use solar energy

You might be using a solar power system to light up your entire house or even office, but might be unaware of certain solar power facts which you should know while using solar power energy.

Solar power energy is the energy that is generated by harnessing the power of sunlight. Solar power facts that you should know:

• Solar power energy is the most highly used renewable energy resource all over the world after hydropower.
• The photovoltaic cells used to capture solar energy are made of semi conductors same as in the chips of your laptop.
• Solar power can be combined with hydropower to generate huge amount of energy, enough to provide electricity to an entire village.
• The heat concentrated and stored by a solar power system can be used to boil water, which can be again harnessed by turbines to produce electricity.
• People in countries which have winter most of the time generally use solar power naturally to keep their rooms heated.
• Large windows trap the heat of the sunlight penetrating the house inside it, and thus by the method of radiation the walls radiate the heat to keep the rooms warm from inside.
• Using solar power prevents noise as well as environmental pollution as there are no harmful gases which come out of solar power appliances.

Solar power facts – to install solar power for electricity generation inside your house

Though solar power is being used at a large scale in many countries around the world, however you need to decide upon and know certain facts about solar power and solar power equipments if you want to use it as your only source of electricity in the house.

• You will save money by avoiding electric bills, because the electricity will be converted by solar panels and you won’t need to buy the former from the normal grid.
• However solar power panels come in various shapes and sizes and are to some extent costly as far as installing the same in your home or office is concerned.
• If you are financially capable of using a solar power system, then you should research around your area to get the best solar power company to do the work for you.
• Solar power companies are the ones who responsibly install the solar panels outside your house and also the added equipments which are required for the entire system to work for generating electricity.
• You have the option of exporting the unused excessive solar power generated electricity to the local solar power grid, which might otherwise charge you for using excess electricity based on grid tariff laws.
• You should necessarily know that solar power cannot be accessed in the absence of sunlight, be it due to an upcoming storm or just a cloudy sky which is not giving your solar panels enough exposure to the sun.

So always keep a back up, like a solar power battery, which stores the sunlight by charging itself by natural sunlight. So one of the most important solar power facts is that, you can use it as long as the sun shines on you.