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Solar Energy - A Clean and Green source of Alternative Energy.

The movie “Race the Sun” staring James Belushi and Halley Berry, has for the first time introduced me to Solar Energy. It was a story about low- income and under achieving Hawaiian students encouraged by their teacher to join the Solar Car race. In the movie, a car shaped like a cockroach and covered with solar panels used the sun’s rays as an alternative energy source to run the car.

The energy poduced from sun’s light and heat is known as solar energy. Solar energy is a free and unlimited source of energy. There are no air and water pollution caused about by using solar energy. But there is still some impacts on the environment although indirect.

The efficiency of sun’s heat energy used as solar power for homes can be maximized with the use of daylight systems. This system helps in replacing the artificial lighting, by providing internal illumination of homes. Daylight systems include sawtooth roofs, light shelf, skylights, and light tube. Daylight systems when they are properly implemented can reduce lighting-related energy consumption by 25 percent.

The light from the sun can be converted into solar thermal technologies, and can be used for the purpose of heating water, space heating, space cooling and process heat generation. Solar energy can also be used to distil water and make saline or brackish water potable or drinkable.

Photovoltaics or PV is the method used to convert sunlight into electricity. PV has been mainly used to power small and medium-sized things like a calculator powered by a single solar cell. There are homes powered by photovoltaics. Using solar energy for water and space heating is the most widely use application of solar energy. While ventilation and solar air heating is also growing in popularity.

Although there are lots of benefits for using solar energy, but solar energy efficiency still has some downside. It does not work during night time. Although the cost of setting up a solar plant runs high, but the benefits are much more than the initial setting up costs.