Solar Energy facts
While investigating facts about Solar Energy Pros And Cons and Solar Energy Advantages And Disadvantages, I found out little known, but curios details like:
Japan aims to power the Tokyo Olympics with 100% renewable energy. They plan to use wind & solar energy to power the stadiums & athletes village. They also want to recycle the small amounts of gold, silver & copper from around 80,000 old phones by using the metals to create 5,000 medals.
how solar energy works?
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter had 32 solar panels installed on the White House roof and made a public commitment to 20% renewable energy by 2000.
What solar energy can be used for?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what solar energy is made of. Here are 50 of the best facts about Solar Energy Corporation Of India and Solar Energy In India I managed to collect.
what solar energy is used for?
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California generates so much solar energy that it has to pay other states to take the excess so their power lines don't overload.
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Sierra Nevada Brewing won the 2010 U.S. EPA “Green Business of the Year” award. The brewery is run by solar energy, processes used cooking oil for biodiesel in delivery trucks, is the largest buyer of organic hops in the U.S., and over 99% of the plant’s solid waste is diverted from landfill.
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The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum is powered by solar energy
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A Spanish woman claimed ownership of the Sun in 2010, using a loophole in the Space Treaty of 1967. Spanish courts validated her claim and she proceeded to charge companies that use solar energy. In 2015 she sued ebay after her account was blocked for selling plots of land on the Sun.
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A European engineer has created a liquid-filled, sun-tracking, energy-harvesting glass sphere is so powerful that it can not only collect solar rays as well as reflected lunar light. It can magnify this light by a factor of 10,000, turning illumination into heat energy.
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IBM has created a solar collector that distills water as a byproduct. If we covered just %2 of the Sahara with these, we could produce enough energy to meet the needs of the entire world.
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A town in North Carolina banned solar energy because they thought it would "suck up all the energy from the sun"
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Tesla runs an entire island on solar power. The island of Ta'u in American Samoa used to consume 300 gallons of diesel fuel daily to run generators, fuel that had to be bought and shipped, but Tesla's solar panels and power packs provide 6 megawatt-hours of energy storage
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R&B singer Akon founded a solar energy company in Africa. The company employs 5000 people recently closed a $1B credit line.
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Some sap-sucking sea slugs incorporate living chloroplasts from the algae they eat into their own bodies, allowing the slugs to temporarily live off of solar energy through photosynthesis. For this reason they are also known as "solar-powered sea slugs."
Solar Energy data charts
For your convenience take a look at Solar Energy figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.
Why solar energy is good?
You can easily fact check why solar energy is bad by examining the linked well-known sources.
The Japanese are working on developing technology to transmit electricity wirelessly. Their goal is to transmit energy from orbiting solar panels to Earth by 2030. They have successfully transmitted 10 kW of energy 500 meters away.
Switching to a national electricity grid instead of 130 regional grids would save $47 billion yearly and make utilization of solar energy more efficient - source
The 'Interplanetary Transport Network' is a collection of gravitationally determined pathways through the Solar System that require very little energy for an object to follow. - source
The Oriental Hornet's exoskeleton has the ability to convert solar energy into electricity
There is a "solar powered" species of hornet that uses a chemical in its exoskeleton to convert sunlight into energy - source
When solar energy reaches earth it is in the form of?
In 1999, Ben Stiller made a pilot starring Jack Black as a former astronaut. He was exposed to inappropriate levels of solar energy, giving him superintelligence. And Owen Wilson played Heat Vision, a talking motorcycle.
How solar energy is produced?
In 1913 the first practical thermal solar 'power plant' was built in Egypt, it generated power using polished steel to focus the sunlight. Unfortunatly WW1 broke out and the power plant was abandoned due to conflict in the area and oil became a much more attractive energy source.
Nuclear energy is the safest energy source in terms of human deaths - even safer than wind and solar.
There is a solar powered tomato farm in arid South Australia that uses solar energy for heating, electricity and to desalinate sea water to feed the crops.
There are plans to rebuild the Colossus of Rhodes that is being funded by donations and crowd sourcing. It's planned to be 5x the size of the original, include a museam, culture center, and be completely powered by solar energy!
Solar cells can directly use sunlight to generate electricity.
Solar energy infographics
Beautiful visual representation of Solar Energy numbers and stats to get perspecive of the whole story.