How Is Solar Energy Used

There are so many ways to make Solar Energy that even scientists have not discovered them all yet. People use solar energy for their everyday needs. You might even learn something you never knew, who knows maybe you might even come up with an idea of your own on how to use energy from the sun!

Solar Energy can be converted directly or indirectly into usable and renewable energy. Solar energy can also be converted into something we use constantly.. electricity! Solar Energy can be used for heating water and for domestic use. It is also used as space heating for buildings and can. To follow up with it can be used for drying agricultural products. It is also used for generating electrical energy, and electrical currents. Solar Power can also be used for lighting in houses and it can also be used to power everyday objects like watches and phones.

Scientist and everyday people created a way to even power, and heat pools. During the accurance of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 many people in New Orleans and many people in South Florida were left homeless after the category 1 hurricane hit. NASA made a new form of aluminum foil called mylar. Over more than 10,000 sheets of mylar were delivered to the homeless to warm them. The mylar collects energy from the sun adn warms the user. In the early 1800's around the 1830's their was a British astronomer called John Herschel used a solar collector box to use energy from the sun to cook for an expedition to Africa. Solar Energy can also be converted into electricity through a process called photovoltaics. Objects that have photoelectric cells can cvert light directly into electricity.

People are also using Solar Energy to prepare for the future if we ever run out of fuel. Just a minimum portion of the suns rays that hit the Earth (that is around a hundreth millionth of a percent) is enough to meet all of our power standards. If we could harness the Suns energy probably we every bit of the suns rays that hit earth can meet our demands for a whole year. In the summer or in a really hot climate when the sun is hitting earth directly with it's rays, you can power a 100W (W=wats) with just one meter of a Solar Panel. Solar Energy attracted by glass panels on the roof of your house can heat your water efficiently. That means you wont have to use a lot of gas or electricity. This is a very complicated process, but it will be simple if you have your water pipe connected to your window. You have to have a black surface under your window so yuor pipes with water get hot, then the shiny layer under the pipes will heat the water as it is passing through the walls. In Odellio, France there is a huge solar furnace covered with huge arrays of mirrors to concentrate the sun's energy, the mirrors transport the enrgy into a very small place where it can reach high temperatures. It can acheive temperature up to 33,000 degree celsius.

Solar cells provide provide the energy to run satellites in the sky, and satellites that orbit the earth. All this gives us satellite t.v., navigation, weather forecasting, the internet,etc. In California the Solar One power station uses heat from the sun to make steam, and drive a generator to make electricity. All of the energy from the power station is then turned into heat is used to heat oil to 3,000 degrees celsius, the oil is used to make steam, that then drives a turbine, which in turn drives a generator capable of providing 10kW of electrical power.

Those are the varied ways that solar energy can be used in everyday life!