You probably know the sun generates more than 10,000 times the amount of energy the entire world consumes annually. Yet, this “free” energy has remained greatly untapped. Conversely, the environment is being degraded by our current energy choices. The positives for using solar panels are obvious, but what few know is how it also helps our environment.
First lets look at what we are using currently to meet our energy needs, coal and nuclear energy, and how ecologically damaging they are.
Is solar energy capable of providing so much power that to offset the need for use of fossil fuels?
We want to look at the needs of energy of the United States and the world and compare with the practical size installations of solar power stations needed to replace that.
The question of completely replacing all fossil fuel or all other sources of electricity and other energy is much more complex than just looking at the numbers. Probably replacing the other sources in just electricity production is simpler but still in addition to simply adding capacity, changes of large scale are needed in the national grid configuration.
With us having to research so much information about solar and other renewable energy we came across an enormous number of articles in which no respect is given to the units of measure in which electric power and energy are being measured. In actual fact when the correct units of measure are not used the statements do not make any sense.
What do we mean? Much too often watt hour (Wh) and the derivatives kilowatts hour (kWh) and megawatts hour (MWh) – as a measure of produced energy – are used wrongly instead of watt (W) or it’s derivatives kilowatt (kW) and megawatt (MW) and the other way around.
We recently updated the Resources page. The SolarByTheWatt.com (Solar by the Watt) Resources page focuses on the most valuable information resources in the solar industry as opposed to the Renewable Energy Directory page which aims to be a more complete and extensive selection of a large list of Internet links to web sites of association, government agencies, commercial companies, news sites etc.
The rise in CO2 levels and global warming has raised the alarm in the need to look for alternative energy sources that don’t leave an environment impact. Even if government policies don’t support moving the country into a more environmentally friendly policies, we can take action on our own and do what we can to reduce our own environmental impact and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
