Prospects for solar energy in the world
It has long been no secret that the energy consumption of our planet is growing and growing from year to year, and the growth rates are by no means disappointing. At the same time, as a hundred years ago, fossil fuels serve as the main source of energy for people around the world, and this is despite the fact that the energy of the atom has been mastered for more than half a century, but the share still does not exceed 10%.
When atomic energy was used by man, it seemed that now this fossil fuel would definitely be displaced as the main energy resource, but this, alas, did not happen.
Even the most optimistic projections suggest that if oil and gas production rates simply stay at current levels, this fuel will last only a few decades. There will be enough coal for a few more centuries, but eventually this road definitely leads to a dead end. And what will people have to do when there is simply no fuel in the earth's bowels, but the demand for energy will also continue to grow?
Fortunately, the most important source of energy for life on our planet — the Sun — is 150 million kilometers from Earth. The sun is constantly undergoing thermonuclear reactions, which in terms of energy intensity surpass any modern nuclear reactor. We owe this energy to the very origin of life, oxygen is released into the atmosphere, gas and oil acquire chemical energy, and significant reserves of helium-3 are formed on the Moon.
The sun gives our planet 15 thousand times more energy than is consumed by mankind every year. The main advantages of solar energy are general availability and inexhaustibility, and See also the safety of solar power plants for the environment environment (except for environmental damage at the production stage) these installations). To date, about 10 ways of converting solar radiation into electricity and heat have been developed and used (in different scales).
The energy that the Sun sends to Earth in the form of light radiation alone will provide more than all of humanity's energy needs. For example, at the equator, about 2.5 kW can be obtained from each square meter of the earth's surface. But why not use this bottomless resource right now instead of constantly burning oil and gas?
That's the thing methods of direct conversion of solar energy into electrical energy they are still very primitive at the moment. Despite the fact that science has made great progress in many directions, the use of solar energy is still not efficient enough.
Dull solar panels on the base silicon photodiodes allow today the most optimal conversion of light energy into electrical energy.
Solar panels can also be found in electronic watches, calculators, and other low-power devices. However, batteries of significant capacity have remained expensive and inefficient to this day, with a payback period of several decades.
But times change and new materials appear, production methods improve every year, cheap organic semiconductors appear compared to silicon, giving higher efficiency and a record of 37.8% has already been achieved.
They also promise other ways to capture the Sun's energy and turn it into electricity. For example, heating salt or water with the subsequent rotation of generator turbines. So, the solar power plant Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, near Las Vegas, generates up to 110 MW of electricity for 10 hours a day.
The tower-type structure, with a tower height of 165 meters, works on the principle of heating by focused solar radiation of a tank with molten salt, the temperature of which reaches about 1000 ° C. The infrastructure of the facility contains everything necessary, including a heat exchanger and a generating station.
Sunlight is focused on the top of the tower by ten thousand mirrors located around it at a distance of up to three kilometers. Each such mirror has an area of several square meters, and the focus is on a heat exchanger only 30 cm wide.
As you can see, there are prospects, as technologies do not stand still. This means that the time is not far when the energy of the sun will become one of the key sources for humanity.
See also on this topic: Types of solar power plants