Posted by: nbaground on: January 25, 2010
Here is a selection of remarkable solar power fun facts. People have used the sun as a heat resource for thousands of years. It is only with the progress in technology that have taken place in recent years that have helped us to fully harness this power.
Families in ancient Greece built their homes to get the most sunlight during the chilly winter months. The ancient Greeks thought that the sun was the god Helios and he drove his chariot round the earth towards the sky in the morning and in the evening back again.
The invention of the photovoltaic effect is attributed to the French physicist Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel in 1839.
In 1921 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Albert Einstein for experiments with solar power and photovoltaics.
Way back in 1955 The American Solar Energy Society held its first gathering in Phoenix and attracted the first Russian scientist to the US after the second World War. There is film footage presenting early photovoltaics which was developed for NASA, solar cookers and solar heating panels.
The first solar flight occurred in 1974 in California by an unmanned plane which was specially designed by two brothers Roland and Bob Boucher.
In 1975 the first solar boat was constructed in England and in 1996 Kenichi Horie from Japan made the first solar powered crossing on the Pacific Ocean using a catamaran.
The earliest World Solar Challenge took place in 1987. This is the solar-powered motor race covering 3021 km through the Australian outback from Darwin to Adelaide.
Did you know that it is possible to increase any solar power panel productivity by 75% simply by positioning a mirror which is about twice the size of the panel on the ground in front of the panel?
PV cells do not require direct sunshine to work - you may still generate some electric power on a gloomy day.
Solar electricity is a green, renewable energy and does not release any damaging carbon dioxide or other pollution. An average home PV system can help save around 1200kg of CO2 per year which is around 30 tonnes over a lifetime.
It is possible to store the electrical energy that a solar power system generates in batteries for a cloudy day.
You may sell off any extra electricity that you produce using your solar power back to the power company making a little bit of money.
It takes only about eight minutes for solar energy to travel from the sun down to earth.
About 30% of the radiation that we receive from the sun in the upper atmosphere is actually reflected back up into space. The rest is absorbed by the clouds, oceans and also land masses here on Earth. Yet even in these conditions, the energy that our planet receives from merely a single hour of sun exposure is equal to the amount of energy that human beings use in an entire year.
Large scale solar projects that are being constructed world wide show that sun powered clean energy technologies are both attainable and lucrative. Solar power plants generate Megawatts (MW) with one MW being sufficient power to supply 1000 homes. One of the largest solar energy projects which the world has ever seen is the "Desertec" program to use the uninhabitable North African desert for a power grid of concentrated thermal electrical power stations which will supply Europe with all of its power needs by the year 2050. So much progress in such a brief period of time let us all see exactly where solar electricity will go from here.
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