Stars have rather an ancient beginning, from the inception of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago to the world we live in today – the stars around us have been creating life to those around us. We are the creation of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, sulphur and phosphorus – all elements of which are found in stardust. Thereby the creation of stars within our solar system is the foundation for the creation of us; this is the way the force of the universe flows.
Mankind is one of the incredibly intelligent species born through the stars, sourcing energy from various sources to build, innovate and advance for centuries. The world today uses a many kind of these various energy sources ranging from coal, oil, gas, hydro, solar and nuclear to generate energy. There’s a certain mystique surrounded around harnessing the power of the sun, however we believe that’s the way the world ought to move forward.
The world consumes about 580 quintillion joules of energy per year. The sun hits the earth with about 430 quintillion joules of energy, every hour.
That’s almost the entire energy consumption of the world produced in a year, produced by the sun in an hour. Think about that for a second.
The Harnessing of Solar
Solar has two main methods of producing energy. Photovoltaic cells (PV) or better known as Solar panels and Concentrating Solar Power plants (CSP).
Photovoltaic (PV) or Solar Panels
PV cells generate electricity directly from sunlight via a process that happens naturally in semiconductors. Sunlight containing photons strike and ionise the semiconductor material within the solar panels causing electrons to break free from the neutrons and are forced to move in one direction. As the electrons move in one direction this causes a flow of electrical current.
Concentrating Solar Power Plants
CSP plants are more utility scaled focused and use mirrors to redirect the suns thermal energy to power traditional steam turbines or engines that generate energy.
Reflecting the power of Concentrating Solar Power Plants can be broken down into three methods,
Parabolic Trough
Parabolic trough systems used curved mirrors to focus the suns energy onto a receiver tube that’s placed on the centre of the trough. Inside the receiver tube sits a high temperature heat transfer fluid (synthetic oil) which absorbs the sun’s energy and passes through a heat exchanger to heat water and produce steam. The steam is driven through a conventional steam turbine power system to generate electricity.
Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR)
CLFR uses a similar principle to the parabolic trough except instead of a curved mirror system a CLFR system uses long parallel rows of lower-cost flat mirrors to reflect the thermal energy onto receiver tubes. However CLFR uses water instead, which boils the water and directly converts it to steam which can be used by the turbine or engine for power generation.
Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR)
CLFR uses a similar principle to the parabolic trough except instead of a curved mirror system a CLFR system uses long parallel rows of lower-cost flat mirrors to reflect the thermal energy onto receiver tubes. However CLFR uses water instead, which boils the water and directly converts it to steam which can be used by the turbine or engine for power generation.
Efficiency is innovation
The efficiency of solar panels are yet to be innovated as the industry is yet to turn its focus on solar panels, however once the key players in large energy corporations turn their attention to solar – then will it be the birth of the solar revolution.
The current efficiency of solar energy panels range from 18% – 30% efficiency. That means only around 18 to 30% of the total energy we receive on each
panel can be converted into energy. Now, picture this – the year is 2030 and solar panels are 50% efficient. What does this mean? Smaller panels, lower costs and more energy density.
Efficiency is the key player in the market and we believe in order to make solar energy the golden element of energising our world – efficiency is what should be our focus. How can we improve upon current technologies, how can we incorporate current technologies into newer technologies and how can we help build a brighter world, for tomorrow.
The Revolution
The magic of solar lies not in its power generation techniques but its ability to generate power from a source that generates such vast amounts of power that it’s difficult to imagine the loss of such an energy source – unless the sun dies in 5 billion years due to a lack of hydrogen. Until then, the constant energy we receive from the sun can be harnessed, innovated and made more efficient than ever.
Since the inception of solar energy the annual growth rate of solar energy has rapidly increased however solar amounts for almost nothing in comparison to the total amount of the energy generated around the world annually.
In 2019, just over 2% of global electricity came from solar – ourworldindata.
That being said, the growth rate of solar energy from 1990 to 2018 is at 37% and the market for solar is still in its infant stages. Thereby solar, is yet to revolutionise how we energise our world and its reign is yet to begin. Try being a solar kid, it’s the way forward.