Solar power refers to useful energy extracted from sunlight.
Solar power is generally considered to be "Green", renewable, sustainable, and environmentally friendly.
Some forms of solar power such as heating are well-adapted to low-technology appropriate construction, while others such as photovoltaic cells for the production of electricity are typically mass-produced in high-tech capital-intensive factories.
Some forms of solar power include
- Production of electricity, typically by solar photovoltaic panels : see for many more specific articles on photovoltaics.
- Solar heating; may be active or passive ; used for indoor environmental heating and heating water
- Production of mechanical energy, for example by a heat engine
The relatively mild heating of a flat plate collector can be used for:
- directly warming water
- dehydrating food : Chris's ENGR305 Solar Food Dehydrator
- dehydrating seawater to get salt
- various steps in papermaking
According to Village Earth, water heated in a normal flat plate collector does not boil.[1] So to Pasteurize water and to cook at high temperature cannot use flat plate collectors, but must use more complicated concentrating collectors that require frequent adjustment to keep them pointed at the sun, such as:
- sunbrella
- Solar Cooking and Health
- mechanical mathematician for paraboloids
- How to build a solar cooker
- Solar cooking and development of solar cookers
- Humboldt solar cooking gallery
- Aleiha's parabolic solar cooker
- Parabolic basket and tin can solar cooker
See also
For more specific articles on solar power, see Category:Solar.
Achieving economies of scale
There is a need to increase demand for photovoltaics such that they can compete with conventional electricity production methods. One innovative idea is to harness the green purchasing power of academic institutions. This has been shown to be potentially quite influential in catalyzing a positive spiral-effect in renewables globally[2].
References
- ↑ Solar Energy from Village Earth
- ↑ Joshua M. Pearce, “Catalyzing Mass Production of Solar Photovoltaic Cells Using University Driven Green Purchasing”, International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 7(4), pp. 425 – 436, 2006.