Find Out How To Move Onward With Solar Power
It’s no secret at all that the earth is facing an power crisis. With fossil fuels prices rising, and need growing higher than ever, individuals are scrambling for alternatives. Sadly, much of the alternatives have some major drawbacks which stop them from being successful choices at this point.
Enter concentrated solar thermal. Though its certainly not perfect yet, this technology shows some huge promise for providing clean energy well into the future. Solar energy is not a new idea at all, and many solar energy based plants (standard “solar panels”) have already been built, these plants are quite expensive due to the cost of the panel resources, and take up huge amounts of earth to be effective. Even worse, as soon as the sun stops shining, the electricity stops being produced.
Solar energy solves these problem by taking a completely different design. Rather than converting the sunlight directly to energy, as solar energy panels do, solar thermal systems employ some sort of reflector dish to concentrate the sunlight into a little area. This concentrated sunlight is then used to heat fluid inside an absorber tube. Think of shining a magnifying glass onto a test tube of water. This excited fluid is then transferred to a heat engine, which converts the heat into power.
This system has several advantages. One of the most prominent advantages is that because the heat fluid can be store in insulated reservoirs until needed, solar thermal plants can create power at nigh and on overcast days, which is a enormous plus in an actual electricity system, where the load is 24 hours a day. Storing energy as heat is much more effective that storing it as electricity, so these plants will have a huge leg up in this area. Another cool feature of solar thermal is that it could be used to help desalinate salt water, making it a doubly useful resource in coastline areas.
Another advantage of solar thermal electricity is its great reliability. Because the system is quite straightforward, running a solar plant based on the technology will not take alot of an effort. Because of this, these electricity plants can last long into the future, providing energy for years to come.
It has been anticipated the the United States electricity requirements could be fulfilled by a 92 by 92 mile grid of solar energy generators. This is a enormous number in reality, but it does illustrate that this could be a practical technology. And certainly, its practicality has been recognized as private investors such as Pierre Omidyar are putting increasing amounts of funding into the industry. With this type of support, it will be interesting to see where this technology heads in the future.
Though it is certainly not perfect just yet, intense solar thermal power production has the promise to change the way we think about energy in this country. The dream of boundless, clean, alternative power may seem a little pie in the sky for some, but the solar thermal technology helps bring it one step closer to becoming a actuality. Keep an eye out, and I forecast you will see solar thermal electricity production becoming a enormous player in the upcoming energy revolution.
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