by Nathan Thompson
Our planet receives about 174 petawatts of heat radiation from the sun. Solar energy is free energy we can use. About 30% bounces back to space while clouds, land and bodies of water absorb the remaining radiation. This totals to about 3,850,000 exajoules of sun energy absorbed by Earths atmosphere annually.
Ever since the ancient times, the heat that comes from the sun has been very useful to people. The solar energy is a free energy for mankind. Through this natural source, we save from using fuel and other means of power source that cost too much.
The heat production is double the amount compared to oil, natural gas and coal produced for a very long time. Due to this benefit, sun power is used nowadays through our modern technologies. Some of these sun powered applications include water heating, heating and cooling architectures, electricity production and satellites powered by heat cells.
Recently a lot of buildings are designed with the utilization of passive sun heating. The design usually includes huge windows created from materials that retains heat. The place of storage for the collected sun heat is in the walls and the floors. These continually release heat when it is cold especially when it is nighttime. With this development, the owners can now put aside some money for other uses.
Power plants are also taking advantage of sun power. Before they use fossil fuels but now they use power systems from sun heat. These include the parabolic-through, powered tower and dish.
Parabolic-through collect power from the sun with the use of skewed U-shaped mirrors. These focus light and heat to the pipes that has oil in it. The oil then in turn heats the water which is used by the generators to produce electricity. The dish system and power tower system has sort of the same concept in electricity production.
Another use of the heat from sun is through the sun collector. This is used in order to cool a building. The cooling system operates like that of an air conditioner. It uses the collector to get power from the sun. Evaporative coolers as well use this kind of power collection.
Water heating has also been a famous use of sun power. Glass panels in roofs are used to heat water. Through this, gas or electricity will be saved. Pipes in the panel contain water. Water is propelled from the bottom which helps hot water to be pumped from the top.
And lastly, our everyday use of satellite TV, telephones, internet and navigation systems make use of sun as well. In order to run satellites that orbit our planet, sun cells are utilized as a natural source of power. Once again, we are using heat from the sun as our free source of power.
We have been using solar energy is free energy ever since. We use it to dry clothes. Some even use it to dry food by natural means. However, in the past only a few amount of this vast resource is being used. Nevertheless, with the development of technologies, we are now able to harness this heat for better usage and still it is for free.
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