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Importance of Solar Energy

Before we delve into the discussion of why SOLAR ENERGY is so needed in the world today, we’ll first look into what solar energy really is. By definition, solar energy is that beaming light and heat that is generated from the sun. Solar energy has been used by human beings since time immemorial. Solar power is used in a widespread of the ever so progressing technologies of the world.
The radiation that comes from solar energy along with the resultant solar energized resources such as wave power, wind, biomass and hydroelectricity all give an explanation for most of the accessible renewable energy that is present on earth. However, only an infinitesimal portion of the existing solar energy is used.
So the question ‘ IMPORTANCE OF SOLAR ENERGY‘, that persists in the minds of many, is because solar energy can prove to have an immense amount of constructive and helpful impact on you and on the environment as a whole. Contrasting to the fossil fuels that we consume and use on a daily basis, solar energy does not fabricate the excessively injurious pollutants that are liable for the greenhouse effect which is known to lead to global warming. Solar power use reduces the quantity of contamination and toxic waste, not to forget pollution that the engendering plants have to produce.
GLOBAL WARMING is an issue of great interest. In the recent times, with more awareness about the harmful effects of global warming, the issue is taken with great interest. There is in point of fact a massive belief that the use of fossil fuel is a contributing factor to the cause of global warming, which will ultimately result in the demise of the planet altogether. Probably the best part about why solar energy is that it is a renewable source of energy, which basically means that it will stay there forever, it will be consumed for all practical human usages. Oil, coal etc, is all bound to finish one day and eradicate from the face of  the planet. So why not put them in the storage and use something more useful, is a basic question that many people have today.

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World Panel unveils sun-powered mobile charging solution World Panel on Tuesday unveiled its latest robust technology, which “streams” solar-generated electricity into mobile devices, aimed at providing charging solutions for rural mobile phone owners. In a first step to get SunStream, showcased at AfricaCom in Cape Town this week, onto the local market, World Panel inked a retail deal with telecommunications giant Vodacom to sell the products at selected outlets. “I originally visited Africa with a solar prototype for household purposes and was consistently asked by residents whether it could charge their phones. I have returned with a product that is essential for anyone who owns a mobile phone but who has limited access to dependable energy sources,” World Panel CEO John Anderson explained. The US-manufactured device, which secured a US utility patent earlier this year and now had 20 design patents worldwide, would be steadily rolled out into Africa with talks under way with several small-scale distributors. SunStream, which was able to withstand harsh conditions and water, with a shatterproof, 2 m drop-tested glass face and polymer case, retailed for R199; however, CFO Derek Cozzens hoped the device could lead to the development of microbusinesses, with consumers able to sell a charging service for neighbours in rural regions.

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Off Grid Electric, Tanzania Mobile money powers solar expansion in rural East Africa ,East Africa is emerging as a hotbed of creative solutions to meeting the energy needs of the poor. Mobile money – where customers pay with their mobile phones – is increasingly used as a method of payment.Off Grid Electric is a leader in Tanzania, using mobile money to sell solar power as a daily service at an affordable price. But service doesn’t just mean the power itself. It also means exceptional customer service, including an all-day customer care telephone line and ongoing support from a local agent.With more than 10,000 households taking up the service since April 2012, as fast as systems are manufactured they are off to customers – thanks to a sophisticated app-based customer registration and product tracking system.

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Solar farms only occupy less than 30% of the leased area, allowing for dual land-use like grazing small livestock Lightsource solar farms can be designed to include grazing as the panels can be raised off the ground at least 70mm high. A well designed solar farm could accommodate your exsisting stocking density working in harmony with your rural business.On Marley Thatch solar farm in Devon, the sheep roam free around the solar farm grazing, whilst taking shelter from adverse weather underneath the panels.

 

The Advantages of Solar Energy
Non-polluting it is non-polluting, clean, reliable and renewable source of energy.Renewable Source: Solar energy is a renewable source of energy as it can be used to produce electricity as long as the sun exists. Sunlight is available everywhere on the earth Low maintenance: Solar cells generally doesn’t require much maintenance and run for a long time Easy Installation: Solar panels are easy to install and does not require any wires, cords or power sources.Can Be Used in Remote Locations: Solar energy can be of great boon in areas which have no access to power cables.Long Lasting Solar Cells: Solar cells make no noise at all and there are no moving parts in solar cells which makes them long lasting and require very little maintenace

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l.By thinking small, a group of South African scientists may have pioneered solar technology that has stumped internet giant Google. 'Plonkable' An engineer at Stellenbosch University's Helio100 project says the team has designed a cost-effective heliostat that harnesses solar power to generate electricity. A heliostat is an energy producing device that uses mirrors or lenses to reflect sunlight. Research engineer Sebastian-James Bode says the South African device is different because it is "plonkable", meaning it can be plonked down, without much construction needed to set it up. The team aims to reduce production cost further to 6 cents per square meter of mirror. Until now, building heliostat plants has been prohibitively expensive. In 2011, Google announced that it halted its own heliostat project after researchers could not design an inexpensive model.

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South African team may have solved solar puzzle even Google couldn't crack Pioneering technology to deliver the cheapest, small-scale concentrated solar power plants in the world could revolutionise the renewable energy market It is a problem that has so far stumped even Google’s brainy engineers – how to generate cheap solar electricity using a small-scale array of mirrors to concentrate the sun’s energy. Now a team at a South African university – led by a former Intel strategic planner – believes they have cracked it. Once they have completed a prototype system in October they have big plans for rolling out the technology. The idea behind the design – so-called Concentrated Solar Power or CSP – is simple. A field of mirrors on the ground tracks the sun and concentrates its rays on to a central point which heats up. That heat is converted into electricity. There are a handful of large-scale examples of such solar plants around the world generating electricity, and there are predictions that the technology could generate a quarter of the world’s energy by 2050. But the plants are expensive and it has proved difficult to make them work at smaller scale. Called heliostats, the shaped mirrors are usually large with a huge central base set in concrete. With current technology they are expensive to produce, have to be connected through pricey wiring and need to be installed by highly skilled and large construction crews. This is the main factor that makes CSP more expensive than traditional photovoltaic panels, which have fallen in price by 75% since 2009. Paul Gauché is the South African founding director of the Solar Thermal Research Group at Stellenbosch University that is testing a new approach. “I have managed technology teams from around the world and this is the best team I have managed,” he says proudly, looking around the busy workshop floor. His team’s aim is to produce CSP technology that will be cheap and quick to install. “We are developing plonkable heliostats. Plonkable means that from factory to installation you can just drop them down on to the ground and they work.” So no costly cement, no highly-trained workforce, no wires, just two workers to lay out the steel frames on the ground and a streetlight-style central tower. Their work has already attracted the interest of well-known foreign companies, including a German consortium and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology solar company. Sitting in a control room made from stacked shipping containers, Gauché looks out over the heliostats sprouting like flowers in the field. “Every part in it is manufacturable and installable by two sets of hands, or one rugby player as we found out,” he laughs. Helio100 is a pilot project with over 100 heliostats of 2.2 sq meters each, generating 150 Kilowatts (kW) of power in total – enough to power about 10 households. According to Gauché, the array is already cheaper than using diesel, the go-to fuel for most companies and businesses during regular power outages in the country. Google’s RE<C initiative, which developed pioneering new renewable energy technology, attempted to build systems like this but they abandoned their research after reporting that they could not do it cheaply enough. What Gauché’s team has done differently is to reduce the cost of creating heliostats. Around the world CSP is in decline after an initial growth spurt because it currently costs about three times more than using a hybrid system of PV panels together with wind power to generate electricity, explains Prof Tobias Bischoff-Neimz, manager for energy at South Africa’s Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research. “The future for CSP rests with creating power at changing rates, not like a base load power station that runs at full power all the time, but a system that makes the grid more flexible.” He says Gauché’s work to reduce the cost of the technology is vital if CSP is to reach its potential. Gauché’s team uses smaller mirrors that focus the sun’s rays on to a small surface at the top of the tower. The mirrors track the sun all day – like people watching a tennis ball during a match – and then reset for morning. They focus the sun’s rays into a beam so intense it that can melt the collector in less than five seconds if its cooling water stops flowing. The heating element is like a car’s radiator in reverse; the heat is transferred to moving water that can either create electricity or be used for other work. Athi Ntisana is a technologist from South Africa’s Eastern Cape province who has been working since the start of the project conceptualising, prototyping and building the finished systems. He is convinced the technology is right for the country. “It requires labour, components can be manufactured here in the country and we have land here where sunlight is abundant – and that’s also where there is not much employment. It solves all these problems.” The team wants their system fully functional by the end of October 2015 but Gauché predicts that once they refine the technology, then economies of scale will follow. Referring to Henry Ford’s famous mass-market breakthrough he says: “We are not yet at the model T in CSP. The moment you start to get high volumes, industrialisation, get more scientists, more of everything, then the costs will come down radically.”

India is inviting African nations to join a solar power alliance at critical UN climate talks in Paris on 30 November. Prime minister Narendra Modi made the bid for clean energy cooperation at a summit in New Delhi, attended by 41 African heads of state. Climate change was a core theme in his speech, which outlined common ground between nations representing a third of the world’s population. Modi said: “When the sun sets, tens of millions of homes in India and Africa become dark. We want to light up lives of our people and power their future. “But, we want to do it in a way that the snow on Kilimanjaro does not disappear, the glacier that feeds the River Ganga does not retreat and our islands are not doomed. “No one has done less to contribute to global warming than India and Africa. No one can be more conscious of climate change than Indians and Africans.” Solar power is a pillar of India’s commitment to cut its carbon intensity – emissions for each unit of GDP – 33-35% by 2030. It aims to install 100GW worth of panels by 2022, plus 75GW of other renewable technologies. And it features in many African national contributions to a UN climate deal. Worldwide, 155 out of 195 countries have submitted climate pledges. A global partnership can make clean technology affordable and bring energy to remote communities, Modi told delegates. He called for a “concrete and comprehensive” climate deal in Paris, based on the “well established principles” of the UN convention. That was a coded reference to language that puts the onus on rich, historic polluters to take most responsibility for tackling climate change – a frame that the developed world is pushing back on as emerging economies increase their share of emissions. Reflecting on India and Africa’s young and growing economies, Modi also demanded UN reform, including a voice on the security council. And there were finance promises: US$10 billion worth of concessional loans over the next five years and $600 million in grants.

AFRICAN SOLAR ENERGY CENTRE: WHAT IS A SOLAR ENERGY CHARGE CONTROLLER?Let us t...

AFRICAN SOLAR ENERGY CENTRE: WHAT IS A SOLAR ENERGY CHARGE CONTROLLER?
Let us t...: WHAT IS A SOLAR ENERGY CHARGE CONTROLLER? Let us take a look at the charge controller, or charge regulator is basically a voltage or curren...

WHAT IS A SOLAR ENERGY CHARGE CONTROLLER?
Let us take a look at the charge controller, or charge regulator is basically a voltage or current regulator to keep batteries from overcharging. It regulates the voltage and current coming from the solar panels going to the battery. Most "12 volt" panels put out about 16 to 20 volts, so if there is no regulation the batteries will be damaged from overcharging. some batteries need around 14 to 14.5 volts to get fully charged. Your full chargered battery bank keeps the all round power supply at the given time or late in the night when the sun  may no longer be there!

 Solar panels are the beacon of renewable energy, yet they are not getting as much light as they could be. Joshua Pearce from Michigan Technological University and a team from Queen's University in Canada have found a way to get more sun to shine on the panels and crank up the output by 30 percent or more. "We expend a lot of blood, sweat and tears to make solar panels as efficient as possible," Pearce says. "We work so hard to get a fraction of a percent increase on the module level; double digit returns on the systems level was relatively easy." Such a large increase of efficiency at the system level then could greatly change how solar panels are installed, and with the economic payback, it could even mean major retrofits for existing solar farms. "We're looking at this from a systems perspective," Pearce says, who is an associate professor of materials science and engineering and electrical and computing engineering. He explains that the research focused on the system rather than individual panels mostly because the current set up for ground-mounted solar panel arrays is "wasting space." The iconic flat-faced solar panels installed in large-scale utility solar farms are spaced apart to prevent shading. As the sun shines on a photovoltaic system, sending electricity into the grid, a fair amount of that potential energy is lost as the light hits the ground between rows of panels. The solution is simple, says Pearce: Fill the space with a reflector to bounce sunlight back onto the panels and use the light-reflecting mathematical models of videogames and action movies to avoid temperature swings.

Is the sun the answer to Africa's energy problems? Analysts believe solar power could be the world's largest source of power by 2050.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31503424

SOLAR ENERGY CHARGER
Cell phones, tablets, ipad, digital camera, etc is our connection to the world but a dead battery will render them useless at a given time you do not expect it, Solar energy cell phone chargers give you that limitless power regardless of the circumstances up there. There’s likely one for your home and another in the car. There’s probably in your desk or locker, and another  that you keep with your laptop, thats power all over for you the SOLAR ENERGY CHARGER 24 HOURS POWER SUPPLY.

WHAT IS SOLAR ENERGY INVERTER

A solar inverter converts the electricity from your solar panels (DC, or direct current) into power that can be used by the plugs in your house for your TV, computer, and other wired products  (AC, or alternating current). Panels can’t create AC power by themselves; they need the helping hand of a solar inverter.