Amazing Solar Power Fun Facts

Here is a collection of fascinating solar power fun facts. People have used the sun as a heat resource for thousands of years. It is only with the advancements in technology that have taken place in recent years that have helped us to fully harness this energy.

Families in ancient Greece designed their homes to get the most sunlight during the cold winter months. The ancient Greeks believed that the sun was the god Helios and he drove his chariot round the earth towards the sky in the morning and in the evening back again.

The discovery of the photovoltaic effect is attributed to the French physicist Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel in 1839.

In 1921 the Nobel Peace Prize was given to Albert Einstein for investigations with solar power and photovoltaics.

Back in 1955 The American Solar Energy Society held its first conference in Phoenix and attracted the first Russian scientist to the US following the second World War. There is film footage exhibiting early photovoltaics which was developed for NASA, solar cookers and solar heating panels.

The first solar flight took place in 1974 in California by an unmanned plane which was put together by two brothers Roland and Bob Boucher.

In 1975 the first solar vessel had been constructed in England and in 1996 Kenichi Horie from Japan made the first solar powered crossing of the Pacific Ocean in a catamaran.

The earliest World Solar Challenge took place in 1987. This is a solar-powered motor competition covering 3021 km over the Australian outback from Darwin to Adelaide.

Did you know it is possible to boost any solar panel productivity by 75% simply by placing a mirror which is approximately twice the size of the panel on the surface in front of the solar panel?

PV cells do not need direct sunlight to work - you may still generate some electricity on a gloomy day.

Solar electricity is a green, renewable power that does not release any harmful carbon dioxide or other pollutants. An average home PV system could help save around 1200kg of CO2 each year which is about 30 tonnes over a lifetime.

You can store the electricity that a solar power system generates in batteries for a cloudy day.

You can sell off any extra electricity you generate using your solar power back to the grid and make a little bit of money.

It takes only about 8 minutes for solar energy to travel from the sun to earth.

Around 30% of the radiation we receive from the sun at the upper atmosphere is reflected back to space. The rest is absorbed by the clouds, oceans and land masses here on Earth. Nevertheless even in these types of conditions, the power that our planet gets from just a single hour of sun exposure is equal to the amount of power that human beings use in a whole year.

Large scale solar projects which are being developed world wide show that sun powered clean energy technology are both attainable and profitable. Solar power plants generate Megawatts (MW) with one MW being sufficient energy to supply 1000 households. One of the largest solar power projects that the world has ever seen is the "Desertec" program to use the uninhabitable North African desert for a power grid of concentrated thermal power stations that could supply Europe with all of its energy requirements by the year 2050. So much progress in such a short period of time let us see exactly where solar electricity will go from here.

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