The sun, buddies, is not just a cool guy doing a hot item number in the vast sky, but also a powerhouse of energy. It’s odd that when we’ve had the sun beaming at us for millennia, we haven’t tapped it at all. We have apparently gone digging around for electrons and wired ourselves up into a fine mess called ‘global warming’.
Let’s do something prettier and less damaging to meet our energy needs. How about asking Mr Sun? He’s funky, warm, cool, and perhaps most important of all---Clean and Cheap. Or at least, cheaper in the long run.

We can generate solar thermal energy, or heat energy from the sun. Secondly, we can use the sun to turn light directly into electricity through sheets called solar panels. This process does have a big enough name to make it sound important: Photovoltaics.

Solar panels

When sunlight falls on a solar panel, it kicks the electrons in the silicon around a bit. Electrons are specks that are too tiny to view, even under a microscope. But they do flow neatly and obediently through the solar panel, which generates electricity.

Now, you can do whatever you want with this electricity–operate a calculator, a CD player, or, even a train–if the panels are big enough, that is.

But there is a problem with this. When the sun stops beaming, the electrons grind to a halt too, and so does the electricity. Now that is a tricky situation, isn’t it? What do you do at night, or during cloudy days? You need to store the electricity into batteries during sunny days. These are like boxed powerhouses. When the sun is shining, the electricity is flowing from the solar panel into these small storehouses. At night, you can use the charged boxes to get your electricity.

Cool, isn’t it?

Yes, that’s why you do see lots of solar panels these days. You can see them on tops of houses, or on traffic signals. If you’re lucky, you may see small strips of these on calculators. You even have them on satellites and space stations, and these are the charged panels that help them to zoom in the sky.

Applications

Currently, we do generate solar energy in large quantities. In some parts of the world---usually the hot, dry, desert places, there are power plants that manufacture electricity with the help of solar electric panels or solar thermal energy.

Now we still haven’t really managed to make efficient enough panels that can completely meet all our electric needs. If you turned totally solar with the current technology that is available, you wouldn’t be able to waste the amount of power that you do right now! And if you do install lots of solar sheets around your house, you would need so many of them that you wouldn’t be able to move around much. All you would be able to do is sit tightly in one spot---which is perhaps a good way of conserving energy too! Your entire house would be a mass of gleaming panels.

Anyway, after installation, how do you use them? One application you can put them to is to heat water for your washing and bathing, which is what people do in most houses. And secondly, use solar cookers. These are interesting and quite basic. A rough cooker would be: A shallow glass-covered chamber is coated black inside and insulated. When it is exposed to sunlight the temperature inside can shoot up to beyond 100 degree Celsius, which can cook food easily. You can achieve more heat by installing an exterior reflector.

Now what’s nice about solar cookers is that you won’t find ugly, black smoke rising from them to pollute the environment. Nor do they ask for firewood, or too much money in investment. Still, they can be used to cook a lot of dishes----anything in the world, claim some. The only problem is that they take much longer time to get done, and many people complain that they get to eat breakfast for lunch.

However, innovations are taking place all the time, so don’t be surprised if you get news of a super fast oven by the time you read this!