Solar Energy the solar boat

[Parubilla 0]

Solar energy is a great solution for the energetic problems, it can be use for anything, and it?s great that people is coming out with new uses, and new forms of obtaining the energy and make it more efficient. A lot of people doubt of the solar energy because they say what about night time or what about when the rays are not very strong, but when you research a little bit more, you realize that the answer of those questions is a BATTERY. All the solar energy that is recollected from the panel goes to a battery that stores the energy so you can use it even if it?s night time, of course the whole system is going to be different depending on the amount of energy you required, even if a day the solar rays are not strong enough or if it?s raining it does not mean your are not getting any energy, because the solar rays are still coming to the earth but you will receive a lower amount of energy into your battery, but you will probably still have enough to live on those days. I think solar energy systems as we know it still need more development, but we are getting there. Because we still have fossil energy we (regular joes) just don?t think about alternative energies, but we are running out of these fossils are there will be the day when the alternative is not going to be a second option but the only options to obtain energy.

[Quatrux 4]

I can say that storing energy to a BATTERY is very expensive and it's ROI (Return of Investment) is negative or very small, unless maybe for personal use? But still it's expensive, it depends what you want to to, having a backup? How long it will the battery satisfy you with energy? It's much cheaper to have diesel generator as a backup, more efficient.As I said, it's very expensive to store energy to batteries, it's BEST to put the energy directly to power lines/grids for usage and finding a solution to do it quite cheaply using solar energy maybe is coming quite soon?Nevertheless, it's still a problem in winter for countries with lower temperatures, for example in my country in winter, having a solar collector when usually temperature is between -20 and +2 Celsius and it's often cloudy, such solar collector can give me only ~27 Celsius of heat at my house, so I can use it's heat for lets say floor heating, but not for creating hot water from cold water like I could easily do it at summer time.So at winter I need to use gas or firewood, coal to get hot water and heat.. But it really is good for countries and places without winter as the night time doesn't really matter, due to the hot water is in thermos bottle like storage and it will continue to be hot until morning and you can always use electricity to heat your water if it's very cloudy for several days and you don't get enough heat from your collector.Furthermore, as I know creating electricity from the collector by converting it, it's quite inefficient..

[Iniyila 2]

@ Quatrux: all the reason why people are using solar energy is because they don't want to pollute air and using our fossil fuels , if we use diesel generator then why we produce electrical power at home ? getting it from a gas based power plant is so much cheaper and much more efficient. if you want a backup then use your town power network. using batteries only is wasting money because as i have said before you have to replace them with new ones regularly and so you have to pay a lot of money every year, but now in modern countries they do not save the electrical power that they get from solar panels, they sell it to their power network, so in the daylight you will sell what you get from sun to local power network and in the night you will buy your needed energy from that network again, by this way you don't need any batteries any more but the main problem is amount of energy that you can get by those solar panels in your roof.i think those things like the solar boat we can see above only is a fake competition between countries trying to say we have more solar technology than you have, because they are not a practical things to use. solar energy sometimes really can reduce costs, i can see some traffics lights having a little battery and solar plate on their head so they do not need extra wires that comes from underground to provide their energy and here you can save the cost, but you can only use solar energy for those traffic lights which are only a warning light (like blinking yellow ones) because if you use them in a crossroad then if the weather goes cloudy for a week it will not function any more and can cause serious problems but for a warning light not working for a day or two is not a very important thing. another example of good use is the calculators, you can see many calculators based on solar energy and they even work with light bulb above your head so they don't need batteries any more and this is a great feature. i think solar energy should be used in its right way, we should not try to do every of our daily works using it otherwise we have just wasted our time and money. right now selling the solar gained electrical power to your local power network is a nice thing to do rather than buying batteries and trying to save it for using in night.

[jorge100 0]

In the every country make some good way for the create of solar energy in the his country for the better heath In the earth many tree through provide solar energy.

[Indego_Media 1]

Morning all, i'm very happy to see this topic on the forum today, only yesterday i was researching solutions for our new house in tasmania Australia. Currently in australia we rely heavily on coal based powerstations to provide the electrical needs of the country with small amounts provided by hydro electric plants. and some solar and wind farms. However the biggest push for alternative electricity has been with individual households commisioning Solar panels for thier homes, the system supliments the house holds electrical useage and reduces their need to draw from the main electricity grid, if per chance you manage to produce more electricity then the house hold is consuming at that time then the excess electricity is sold back to the power company and rebated off the households electricity bill. Just about all house holds especially new houses build since 2000 have been forced to use a non-electrical hot water heating system and 99% of those have chosen to use a solar solution to heat thier hot water. In the colder climates such as our new home in Tasmania, the most cost effective and low impact option for heating your home should be under floor heating powered by Geothermal core heating, simply put drill holes into the ground go down 30 - 40 feet deep in each bore then run a looped pipe to the base of the bore hole, then circulate further pipe through the floor connecting to the bore pipes, then circulate fluid thourgh these pipes the heat from the earths core at that depth will provide a stable heat source of 25 - 30 degree's this system requires very few parts and other then a circulation pump which can be powered by solar energy if you choose, would reduce most house hold heating requirements. couple this he energy effectient appliances, gas cooking, low voltage lighting and passive solar designs. Most house holds would have very low utility bills, ensuring that the average NEW household would reduce thier enviornmental impact as well as reduce thier overall operating costs...Given that most of the energy we use in the average household is to heat our water and our house then this solution would vastly reduce a household's draw on the electricty grid and as such reduce the communities reliance on fossil fuels.....I think that collectively we need to aproach all new developement both residential and commercial buildings with the same very stringent sustainability requirements, given that it costs a small percentage more to build a home that has a passive solar design to make the most of its environment, placement and regional climate conditions, along with an increased requirement to insulate the building and the useage of renuable / free energy sources to heat and cool the buildings, our constant demand on fossil fuels would be greatly reduced and this would allow us to develop a more price competitve efficient solar system.some of the work being done here in australia, looks at the sun to heat water to drive turbines just as the coal fired power stations heat water to drive turbines. We have also seen research in using the movement of waves to generate a presure force to drive turbines to create power. all of these opportunities are still in the research stage, but given the truely abundant sources of energy that this planet has to offer, if the worlds sources of fossil fuels suddenly dried up, I can guarantee you that we would not go with out energy to drive our vehiles or heat our houses, little own power our ipads, iphones, blackberries, pc's laptops and other essential items....On the note of using a desiel generator to provide an alternative power source, this is also an option using bio-desiel, BP for all thier faults are in development of a renuable source of Bio-fuel, utilising the manufacture of Corn and Sugar Cane based bio-desiel, so much so that they too have built and have sailed a boat around the world just using thier corn based fuel.So as you can see there is really no need to use fossil based fuels far less the need to build a nuclear power plant that will leave with us a much larger issue then the power it provides...Anyway just my thoughts on the issue.CheersJase

[anwiii 17]

rechargable batteries are definately the way to go for now, but all you're really doing is substituting one energy source for the other or just transfering energy. i doubt rechargable batteries will ever come that far down in price or the manufacturers would be losing tons of money.i remember a VERY long time ago, there was a tire company(i forget which one) came out with some special tire which was supposed to last the duration of the car's lifetime. it sure did do it's job and there was a lot of demand for this tire too(i forget what this tire was called too....it's been so long). well eventually the tire company had to stop manufacturing and promoting this tire because it was causing them to lose money.i can't wait til solar power becomes common place. it will cost more in the short run, but well worth it in the long run. as indego had said, any excess power, you can sell it back to the power company so instead of them charging you, you are charging them. probably at a heavily discounted rate, but you are effectively earning your money back from that power source.windmills is nothing new. i being originally from california was about 2 hours drive from a place called palm spring. 30 years ago they started building windmills in the desert on the outskirts of that town. you can't drive through there today without seeing hundreds of windmills and that town gets most of their energy from that power source. it's ugly as heck though. i'm in missouri now and there is so much land here to put windmills without it being too noticable or taking away from too much of the nature that surrounds the land with a farmer(land owner)/consumer co-op(joint venture), it would be easy to pull something like this off where everyone who buys in would have a share