The Future of Solar Energy
At some point in the future of humans living on the Earth, the supply of fossil fuels, like coal and oil, will become scarce and eventually nonexistent. The people of this future time will be forced to find new energy alternatives to replace our current methods of producing energy. Fortunately for them, the people of today are already striving to create new methods of harnessing natural and renewable energy, such as the energy from the sun, so that future generations can be one step ahead.
All energy that is used by all living things on the planet at one point originated from our sun. The sun’s energy feeds plants, which produce oxygen and feed animals. Those animals then go on to feed other animals. The process is the same when it comes to fossil fuels. The sun’s energy fed prehistoric plants millions of years ago, which decomposed and over those years became the oil we use today. Solar energy gives us a method of collecting that energy directly from the source, making it a much more efficient method of gathering energy.
Most solar energy is collected by photovoltaic panels, which can be found in calculators, in solar power plants, or on the roofs of individual homes. A photovoltaic panel is created with two layers of silicon, one that has been treated with phosphorus and therefore has a negative charge, and another one beneath that layer, which is treated with boron and has a positive charge, just like the two ends of a battery. The two layers of silicon are then connected with a conducting wire.
In the long-term, solar energy would be much more cost-effective than burning fossil fuels. Energy costs would drop dramatically for the average consumer. Every nation would be independent in creating their own energy. The discontinued use of fossil fuels in favor of solar energy would also go a long way towards reducing the problem of air pollution. The difficulty in adopting solar power, however, lies in the short-term. The photovoltaic panels that harness energy from the sun are expensive, and most homeowners are not able to afford the cost of installing them on their roofs. However, new methods of concentrating greater amounts of sunlight onto smaller photovoltaic cells, called concentrated photovoltaics, are being tested and developed, and could be put into to practice in the very near future.
Solar energy very well could be the future of energy in our world. Scientists are constantly working to perfect methods of gathering solar energy so that they can fit in the budget of every consumer. In as little as ten or fifteen years, advances could be made that take practical solar energy out of our visions of the future and into our reality in the present.
Peter Wendt is a writer and researcher specializing Austin solar PV. For readers who are interested in learning more about this subject, Peter recommends they check out BuildNative.com.