Sustainable Energy And Its Advantages

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

EAP-1851.002S13 Saturday

U-92703497

Sustainable Energy and its Advantages

Sustainable energy is the tenable provision of energy that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to provide their needs. Sustainable energy is the energy which uses natural sources to produce power so that it is called as also limitless energy. Sustainable technologies that promote sustainable energy include renewable energy sources, such as solar energy, wind energy and wave power. Solar energy, radiant light and heat which come from the sun, has been controlled by humans since using a range of ever-evolving technologies. Solar energy technologies which cover solar heating, solar photovoltaics(PV), solar thermal electricity and artificial photosynthesis can provide 5-10 kwh power as a daily.(Foster, 90) Solar Energy is known considerable contributions to solve some of the most important energy problems of the world to now faces. Unfortunately, solar energy provides less than 1% of the world's total energy (%7.3 for the USA) with using current technology, but it has the potential to provide much more than this value. The biggest and most important energy source is the sun for the world, because it has really huge power and it also will be great source for the future and green world. The sun can provide over 380 billion kWh/year energy just for the world. It out-powers anything which human technology could ever produce. Only a small percentage of the sun’s power output come the Earth, but even that provides 10,000 times as much as all the commercial energy that humans use on the planet. (Rahim, Mustamin, Jun Yoshino and Takashi Yasuda)

One of the biggest question is that why is solar energy too important for the world? Even though the efficiency of solar energy material is not good, the sun offers to human energy needs is important. Across the worldwide, solar electricity generation has been growing and the efficiency has been increased to maximize the producing amount of the energy. This is a multibillion dollar industry because of getting supported from the government, being nonpolluting and these systems have between 20-30 years life time. However, the solar energy has a place of the total energy market remains too small when you compare with oil, natural gas, and coal. These fossil fuels supply around 85% of total energy requirements (20,279TWh in 2008). The solar energy just supplies %1 of the total energy. Those fossil fuels cannot remain as the same sources of energy forever. Whatever their timetable for their depletion, oil and gas supplies will not keep growing energy demands. Coal is available in great amount, but it causes air and water pollution problems which are the most important disadvantages of coal. Coal produces carbon dioxide even more substantially than the other fossil fuels. For a long-term, sustainable energy sources like solar power provides an attractive alternative source. It will be available with the sun any conceivable future energy demands. It is a green source which is environmentally clean, and its energy is transmitted from the sun to the Earth without charging any money. You just need to pay money for the material which is to set up the device. Exploiting the sun’s power is not out of this procedure. Better solar power generation will require engineering innovations in several areas to capture the sun’s energy and convert it to useful forms, and storing it for use for unsuitable situations like the sun itself is ulterior. Many of the technologies have already been discussing this issue to maximize the efficiency of the solar energy. For example, dishes can use heat fluids which use the sun rays to drive the engine and produce electric power. Another important special is about direct production of electric with using captured sunlight. This can be done by photovoltaic which are one of the most important main parts of the solar energy devices. These reasons which are written above are some basic information about the solar energy and why the solar energy is too important for the world.

Other important question is that How efficient is solar energy technology? Unfortunately, today’s commercial solar cells which most often produced by using silicon have ability to convert sunlight into electricity with the efficiency around 10 percent to 20 percent. Although, some test cells do a little better, but it is not still enough to provide most percentage of the world energy or minimize the fossil fuels to protect the world from the pollution. Given their manufacturing price, modules of today’s cells in the power grid can produce electricity at a cost roughly 3 to 6 times more expensive than current prices, 18-30 cents per kilowatt hour(Khan, M. R). To make solar economically inexpensive, engineers have to find some other ways to improve the efficiency of the cells and to minimize their manufacturing costs. Improving solar efficiency are hopeful and one of the most important engineer areas during these days and in the future. Current standard cells have a theoretical maximum efficiency with 31 percent. These are all about the electronic properties of the silicon material. This efficiency can be improved over the 34 percent with using new materials and techniques to produce the solar power with using the solar energy. Experimental cells have expanded 40 percent efficiency. Another important idea to increase the efficiency involves developments on nanotechnology field. The engineering of these types of structures on these sizes comparable to atoms and molecules, measured in nanometers size which billion time smaller than meter. (Gevorkian, Peter, chp.3) Recent experiments have been reported interesting advances in the use of nanocrystal materials which are made from the elements lead and selenium. For the normal cells, the force of a particle of light which is a photon releases an electron to transfer electric charge; however it also produces some useless heat which has some negative effects on the material and the efficiency of the process (negative). Lead-selenium nanocrystals fix this problem with improving the chance of releasing a second electron rather than excising heat. Therefore it improves the electric current output. Other experiments conclude this phenomenon can occur in silicon as well. Theoretically, the nanocrystal can improve the efficiencies more than 60 percent. Even though it is smaller for practice, the efficiency will be improved very well.  Engineering advances have to create or find ways of using such nanocrystal cells into a system that can transfer the energy into a circuit. All these things show us how we can improve the efficiency of the solar energy and the solar energy is one of the biggest areas which are open to innovate and improve.

Not only are these questions important for solar energy topic, but also we have to answer this question:"How do you make solar energy more economical?" Other new materials for solar cells may help minimize manufacturing costs. According to the Nathan Lewis who is Caltech chemist "This area is where breakthroughs in the science and technology of solar cell materials can give the greatest impact on the cost and widespread implementation of solar electricity," (Ma, Zhongkun, and Guy A.E. Vandenbosch) A key issue is just about material pureness. Current solar cell manufactures need high-purity, and therefore these are expensive materials because of impurities band the flow of electric charge. This problem would be minimized, if charges just moved only a short distance through a thin layer of material. The problem is that thin layers could not absorb as much sunlight to begin. One way around that crisis would be about to use materials to absorb sunlight in one direction. Tiny cylinders or nano rods can be used to solve these problems. While charges could travel across the rods’ narrow width, light would be absorbed down the length of the rods. Another approach is about dye molecules to maximize absorbing sunlight with using titanium dioxide molecules to collect maximum electric charges. The main problem is that large improvements in efficiency will be needed to provide such systems combative. When you increase the efficiency, the solar energy consumption will be more economical for people. Not only does the efficiency increase, but also popularity of the solar energy increases.

Other important think is about storing solar energy. Advanced solar cells try to generate electricity cheaply and efficiently. In addition to the cost, other problem is about to widespread use of the sun’s energy remains which means the energy needs to be storage. Cloudy weather and nighttime darkness minimize solar energy’s availability. At times and locations where sunlight is plentiful, its energy has to be captured and stored to use at other times and places efficiently. Most technologies offer mass-storage opportunities. Pumping water (for recovery as hydroelectric power) or large banks of batteries are provided methods of energy storage. New materials could greatly improve the effectiveness of capacitors like superconducting magnets or flywheels. All of them could use convenient power storage in many applications.

Another important subject about the solar energy is government policies. The solar photovoltaic (PV) industry would not be living without government policies.( Haley, Usha C. V., and Douglas A. Schuler, pg.17) Governments around the world have realized policies to support consumption of solar energy and manufacturing of solar PV products. These policies vary with respect countries and across time, thus donating to regulatory uncertainty. This point has two related questions. First of them, how does regulatory uncertainty in the solar PV industry change firms' bazaar and non-market strategies? Second, how might firms' gives response to this public-policy environment affect technological development and the locus of producing? Government policies on solar PV, and firms' strategies to overcome regulatory unclear, may have unintended consequences. Firms' decisions on location and technology development may cause in loss of employment and national aggressiveness for developed countries; and firms' market strategies may maximize regulatory uncertainty if they do not involve non-market stakeholders.

Consequently, the solar energy is one of the sustainable energy types and has really huge advantage for the world. Unfortunately, we could not use it very effectively because of material qualities. Even though it is one of the most important environmental energy sources and has more reliable sources than others, we can just use with 31% efficiency. On the other hand, we can just provide %1 of total energies with solar energy. For the future, engineers have to use more efficiency material and increase using of solar energy for green world and to minimize the solar energy cost. Therefore, all people can use the solar energy to produce the energy. If we can use with 100%, we will not need to use any other energy sources. With using the solar energy, we will minimize the consumption of fossil fuels like coal. When we do that, we will decrease the population. Not only does the consumption of fossil fuels decrease, but also consumption of other sources like radiation can be decreased. Therefore, we will protect our lives better than now.