In the last post, I talked about what the Sun was. A giant nuclear fusion reactor. And since it is so good at being the Sun, it not only provides heat to our Earth, but also light. Lots of light. Hopefully, this isn't news to you (yikes!).
Light is an interesting thing we very much take for granted. Look around, there is light in the room you're in, light coming from the screen you're reading this on (unless you're psycho and still print things..) and light from outside. Even at night! The light from the moon, isn't really light from the moon, but a reflection of light from the Sun. Did I just blow your mind? Probably not.. I guess I'm failing as a writer.
There is a lot of light available, and all that light also carries energy, rather, it is energy. In reality, the light from your phone screen doesn't really have the potential to power anything, neither does a light bulb. But think about how many light bulbs it would take to equal the amount of light that the Sun emits! So if the Sun has all this energy and it's shining down on our Earth, all the time, how can we take advantage of it?
I'm sure you've heard of solar energy, or solar panels. They are pretty commonly talked about, but how do they work? And why aren't they everywhere yet?
Well as all other solutions to our growing energy problem, the root of our problem is storing energy, and doing so efficiently. What does that mean?
Well, think of a battery. How does it work? A battery stores energy, and releases that energy via a chemical reaction. Yay chemistry. There is a limit to how much energy we can store in a battery, much of which is due to the materials in use.
Side note.. a Drake song is on while I write this and what has he come to other than repeating the same line 40 times per song?.. I better stop before I lose my audience for that comment...
Anyways, without detailing all the specifics to batteries, we basically need giant ones to store solar energy if we want to use solar power for serious, large scale applications like powering cities. Why? Well when the Sun doesn't shine, those solar panels are kind of just sitting there. Don't get me wrong, the Sun emits enough energy in the 10 hours of usable "shine time" but if the system can't store that energy to use at night, it gets wasted.
I hate public places.. some people just smell, horribly.
So big problem #1 is batteries to store solar energy. What else may be holding this energy solution back? It has insane potential. I won't give you numbers since I don't research these posts (don't worry, the info is legit, well most of it), but the energy the world, yes the WORLD, uses in a day is less than the amount of energy the Sun shines onto the Earth in that same time. Let's explore that thought. If I had a perfect solar panel and perfect batteries and perfect sunshine, I could collect energy for a few hours and power EVERYTHING ON EARTH for a day. I mean this is very VERY unrealistic, but potential doesn't have to be realistic.
Sorry for the excessive caps lock emphasis...
So you may have gathered the other problems with solar energy in that last paragraph, but to spell it out for you lovely readers, because that's essentially the purpose of this, weather is a pretty big problem. Cloudy day? No solar energy. At least in the location that energy is collected. Since transporting energy is freaking hard, being realistic, a city powered by solar would need sunshine all the time to maintain that power.
I'll give one more example, efficiency. Our solar panels aren't very efficient yet. It has to do with a lot of factors but most of those again are due to materials, i.e. imperfect heat transfer from the materials in the solar panel. But there is great news on that front! Innovations in solar panels are becoming very very frequent and driving that efficiency up. So hey, maybe in 10 years, solar will be everywhere, that is, everywhere the sun shines.
Speaking of efficiency, most energy generation techniques aren't very efficient to begin with. We live in an imperfect world, so this is normal, but of course can improve. For example, your "efficient car" is much more efficient than an old muscle car (despite being much less fun) or big SUV, but still is not very efficient. We are talking less than or just around 50% efficient for those exceptional engineered cars. Half the power your car's engine makes it just thrown away. What a waste.
Maybe the next big innovation in energy is collecting wasted heat and somehow managing to transform it into usable energy. Just a thought.
I mentioned I would tell you how a solar panel works, it's fairly simple. If you take a magnifying glass, and tilt it in just the right way, you can focus the Sun's light and actually burn stuff! You are taking the Sun's light and concentrating it onto a small point, increasing the amount of energy in a tiny spot. Well solar panels do that too! They focus the Sun's light onto a tube carrying water, which gets heated up. Just like a lot of other energy generating methods, the water is heated to steam to turn a shaft thus generating electricity for those batteries, or power lines etc. It's a simple concept, most ways to generate electricity are (excluding that nuclear stuff), we just have to do it better.
I'm sure you assumed this, but there is no waste here! No CO2, no fossil fuels, no radiation, just clean, renewable energy.
Know you know, solar energy isn't perfect, but it's definitely something we as humans can harness and use to our advantage. Let the Sun do the hard part of creating the energy, let's just "pick up after it", per say.
Light is an interesting thing we very much take for granted. Look around, there is light in the room you're in, light coming from the screen you're reading this on (unless you're psycho and still print things..) and light from outside. Even at night! The light from the moon, isn't really light from the moon, but a reflection of light from the Sun. Did I just blow your mind? Probably not.. I guess I'm failing as a writer.
There is a lot of light available, and all that light also carries energy, rather, it is energy. In reality, the light from your phone screen doesn't really have the potential to power anything, neither does a light bulb. But think about how many light bulbs it would take to equal the amount of light that the Sun emits! So if the Sun has all this energy and it's shining down on our Earth, all the time, how can we take advantage of it?
I'm sure you've heard of solar energy, or solar panels. They are pretty commonly talked about, but how do they work? And why aren't they everywhere yet?
Well as all other solutions to our growing energy problem, the root of our problem is storing energy, and doing so efficiently. What does that mean?
Well, think of a battery. How does it work? A battery stores energy, and releases that energy via a chemical reaction. Yay chemistry. There is a limit to how much energy we can store in a battery, much of which is due to the materials in use.
Side note.. a Drake song is on while I write this and what has he come to other than repeating the same line 40 times per song?.. I better stop before I lose my audience for that comment...
Anyways, without detailing all the specifics to batteries, we basically need giant ones to store solar energy if we want to use solar power for serious, large scale applications like powering cities. Why? Well when the Sun doesn't shine, those solar panels are kind of just sitting there. Don't get me wrong, the Sun emits enough energy in the 10 hours of usable "shine time" but if the system can't store that energy to use at night, it gets wasted.
I hate public places.. some people just smell, horribly.
So big problem #1 is batteries to store solar energy. What else may be holding this energy solution back? It has insane potential. I won't give you numbers since I don't research these posts (don't worry, the info is legit, well most of it), but the energy the world, yes the WORLD, uses in a day is less than the amount of energy the Sun shines onto the Earth in that same time. Let's explore that thought. If I had a perfect solar panel and perfect batteries and perfect sunshine, I could collect energy for a few hours and power EVERYTHING ON EARTH for a day. I mean this is very VERY unrealistic, but potential doesn't have to be realistic.
Sorry for the excessive caps lock emphasis...
So you may have gathered the other problems with solar energy in that last paragraph, but to spell it out for you lovely readers, because that's essentially the purpose of this, weather is a pretty big problem. Cloudy day? No solar energy. At least in the location that energy is collected. Since transporting energy is freaking hard, being realistic, a city powered by solar would need sunshine all the time to maintain that power.
I'll give one more example, efficiency. Our solar panels aren't very efficient yet. It has to do with a lot of factors but most of those again are due to materials, i.e. imperfect heat transfer from the materials in the solar panel. But there is great news on that front! Innovations in solar panels are becoming very very frequent and driving that efficiency up. So hey, maybe in 10 years, solar will be everywhere, that is, everywhere the sun shines.
Speaking of efficiency, most energy generation techniques aren't very efficient to begin with. We live in an imperfect world, so this is normal, but of course can improve. For example, your "efficient car" is much more efficient than an old muscle car (despite being much less fun) or big SUV, but still is not very efficient. We are talking less than or just around 50% efficient for those exceptional engineered cars. Half the power your car's engine makes it just thrown away. What a waste.
Maybe the next big innovation in energy is collecting wasted heat and somehow managing to transform it into usable energy. Just a thought.
I mentioned I would tell you how a solar panel works, it's fairly simple. If you take a magnifying glass, and tilt it in just the right way, you can focus the Sun's light and actually burn stuff! You are taking the Sun's light and concentrating it onto a small point, increasing the amount of energy in a tiny spot. Well solar panels do that too! They focus the Sun's light onto a tube carrying water, which gets heated up. Just like a lot of other energy generating methods, the water is heated to steam to turn a shaft thus generating electricity for those batteries, or power lines etc. It's a simple concept, most ways to generate electricity are (excluding that nuclear stuff), we just have to do it better.
I'm sure you assumed this, but there is no waste here! No CO2, no fossil fuels, no radiation, just clean, renewable energy.
Know you know, solar energy isn't perfect, but it's definitely something we as humans can harness and use to our advantage. Let the Sun do the hard part of creating the energy, let's just "pick up after it", per say.
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