Solar Energy - How Can We Use It?

Solar energy is energy that's created from our sun. Sunlight is generating about 3.9x 1026 watts, or 390,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts of energy. A few of this energy is now able to be captured and changed into heat or electricity.

There are 4 main techniques solar technology from sunlight is captured, they are:

Flat Plate Liquid filled solar technology panels

A flat-plate liquid solar technology collector is actually a metal box, usually insulated, which has a glass cover over a dark coloured metal plate (copper or cheaper aluminium). This plate absorbs the sun's heat and warms up. This heat is subsequently offered to water that passes through tubes within the plate. The warm water then passes to heat the residential warm water system..

A better variation of this is actually the vacuum tube system. With this particular system heat collectors are enclosed in a vacuumed glass tube, which significantly reduces heat loss, making the machine more energy conserving.

Flat Plate Gas filled solar technology panels

A flat plate gas solar technology collector is a lot exactly the same construction because the liquid version, but rather of water absorbing the solar technology that is collected, it really is air. The heated air is then pumped through right into a room or space, to heat that area. Without as efficient as liquid filled systems, the gas based systems have the benefit of needing less solar technology to warm-up, and therefore they start outputting heat early in the day and later at night.

Photovoltaic

Photovoltaic Energy is really a technology that uses crystalline silicon solar panels to convert sunlight, aka solar technology, into electricity. The uses because of this can range between large plants generating mains electricity right down to small cells that power your calculator.

Passive solar energy

Passive solar technology is where in fact the sun warms up an object and that object then provides heat after the sun went. Passive solar technology is a thing that most of us appreciate and reap the benefits of inside our houses. Employed in exactly the same way as a storage heater modern design is currently in a position to optimise the usage of solar energy in this manner.