A device that converts sunlight into electrical current. Like wind power, solar power is intermittent and will not generate at night so energy storage is key to solar power. In many ways wind power and solar power are complementary as there tends to be more sun in summer and more wind in winter and vice versa. Enough sunlight falls to the earth every minute to meet the world's energy demands for a whole year. However solar power still actually only provides 0.02% of the world's energy and there are different technologies used commercially although photovoltaics is now the world's fastest growing renewable technology.
The world's largest solar plant is currently SEGS (Solar Energy Generating Systems) which consists of 9 solar power plants in the Mojave Desert, California (pictured). This plant is a parabolic trough solar thermal energy collector and not a photovoltaic plant. The largest photovoltaic plant in the world is currently in Spain and went live in 2008.
Domestically if you have a shed, summer house or anywhere you want to power that is not currently serviced by the national grid then
solar kits are a great environmentally friendly way of having a power source without expensive major work to get hooked to the national grid.
« Back to the green glossary