Solar Power and Its Importance

Solar power and its Importance

Solar power is the technology of obtaining usable energy from the light of the Sun. Solar power has been used as a traditional technology for centuries and is coming into widespread use where other power supplies are absent, such as in remote locations and in space.

Humanity has been able to give good use to solar power thanks to how technology has advanced overtime. Solar power plays an important role in everyday life because it's currently used in a lot of applications like heat, electricity, and the desalination of seawater. The application of this type of power is spreading as the environmental costs and limited supply of other power sources such as fossil fuels are increasing.

Many new technologies have been developed to make good use of solar energy, like solar designs in architecture, heating systems, cooking, lighting, power towers, and thermal electric power plants. These technologies are classified as either direct or indirect, and passive or active, which I will explain in the following paragraph.

In general, direct solar power involves a single transformation of sunlight into a useable energy. While Indirect solar power involves multiple transformations of sunlight into useable energy. The distinction between passive

And active solar systems can be explained in the context of building construction and building services engineering. Passive solar systems use non-mechanical techniques of capturing, converting, and distributing sunlight to outputs such as heating, lighting, or ventilation systems. These techniques involve selecting materials with favorable thermal properties, designing spaces that naturally circulate air, and referencing the position of a building to the sun. In the other hand, Active solar systems use electrical and mechanical components such as photovoltaic panels, pumps, and fans to process sunlight into useable outputs.

Using solar energy has a lot of advantages for humanity; some of those advantages are that solar power causes less pollution. Production end wastes and emissions are manageable using existing pollution controls. Another advantage is that the 122 peta watts of sunlight reaching the earth's surface is plentiful compared to the 13 terawatts of average power consumed by humans. Additionally, solar electric generation has the highest power density among renewable energies.