All About Solar Power

With rising fuel costs, concerns of climate change and a staggering demand for electricity, sources of renewable energy such as solar power are becoming an increasingly pivotal part of the world's energy patterns. Several homeowners and businesses are trapping the power of the earth's most highly abundant natural resource, sunlight, to provide energy. We will take a deeper look at this renewable source of energy.

Definition:

Solar Power is the generation of electricity with the help of sunlight. This can be either direct as in photovoltaic (PV) or indirect as in concentrating solar power, wherein the sun's energy is used to boil water and then subsequently used to provide power.

Types of Solar Power Systems

Concentrating System

These types of system use mirrors, lenses or tracking systems to focus a huge area of sunlight into a small beam. The concentrated heat is then used as a source of energy for a conventional power plant. There are many concentrating technologies such as the recently developed parabolic trough, concentrating linear fresnel reflector, and the Stirling dish. In all these systems, a working fluid is heated by the concentrated sunlight and is then afterwards utilized for energy storage or power generation.

Photovoltaic System

In this type of system, solar cells are used to convert light into electricity. The system is made up of many components such as cells, mechanical and electrical connections. The cells produce a direct current of electricity from light that can be used to recharge a battery or to power equipment.

Solar power is the cleanest and the most abundantly available form of renewable energy. There are many benefits associated with solar power. You can use this renewable source of energy not only to power your house but also for other domestic tasks such as cooking food, heating water and so on.