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A Brief History of Solar Power

By: John Patterson

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Solar power has been used for hundreds of years in varied forms and over time it has matured into a very economical type of energy for generating electricity and heating your home. The history of solar power has been one in all innovation and adaptation and started back in ancient times. The Greeks understood the power that the sun could give and really designed their homes to possess giant openings that faced the sun. These were later covered with glass or mica to improve the heating impact of the sun. This natural type of heating, that we visit as passive solar today, allowed them to burn less wood for the heating of their homes. This kind of passive solar heating remains getting used these days and may be a fundamental style criteria of any energy efficient home. These homes are designed with large windows facing south to capture heat from the sun. This idea is taken even more in fashionable styles that currently use special heat-retaining materials on the walls and floors of those homes to enlarge this passive heating effect. These materials can absorb a heap of of the sun's heat throughout the day and unleash it slowly during the colder evenings to keep the house at a constant temperature. This helps to extend the efficiency of this passive solar heating and permits homes that exploit this to wish less conventional heating.

Another major discovery in the history of solar power was the photovoltaic effect. This occurred around 1839 and it took additional than 40 years for the first solar cells to be created based on this phenomenon. These early solar cells had an potency of but two% however showed that industrial application of the PV impact was possible. Over the history of solar power this efficiency continues to boost as this PV technology matures. Trendy solar panels have efficiencies of close to 15% and give a great way for many owners to come up with free power from the sun. This same solar panel technology is being used commercially by large utility companies to help them generate power for their customers.
Early applications of the PV effect were additionally used for electrical generation on satellites and other area vehicles. Solar panels provided all the facility these satellites required to work in area while not the need to hold volatile fuels or heavy batteries.

More development in the history of solar power happened within the 1970's when less costly ways that of manufacturing solar cells from silicon cut the value of solar production dramatically. This new process made solar power solutions potential for the masses and enabled this boom in residential solar power systems.

Another branch in the history of solar power is predicated on solar heating for residential water systems. This started during the late 1890?s and was first used commercially about 10 years later. This technology continued to boost over the years and is available nowadays for each industrial and residential applications. There's even a version of this solar thermal heating that can be used to heat the water in swimming pools and has been put in in locations the world over.

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