Solar Power?

Question

What impact does solar power have on the environment?

Answer 1

Solar power is not "free power" as most people believe. For starters, it takes a large amount of energy just to fabricate the cells in the first place. Eventually, over their lifetime, the cells collect enough energy to pay back the cost of making them.

Also, solar power requires a lot of space if you are to get any truly significant amount of energy from it. There is only about 1Kwatt of power / square meter available in sunlight at the surface of the Earth in lower latitudes.

The 48 contiguous US states consumed about 2.045 Gigawatts of power per day in 2005. If you had 100%-efficient solar cells, you would have to collect the sunlight of 2045 square kilometers. That is about 790 square miles. Today's most efficient production solar cells are about 30% efficient, so let's divide that by 0.3 --> 2630 square miles. Now let's say that we could get 8hrs of full capacity production from these pannels, that means multiply it by another 3 times --> 7900 square miles.

This would be a square 88.9 miles on a side of pure solar cell - a lot wider actually, considering the space required by the electrical circuitry between each cell...

I haven't read any studies about this, but I feel like if we were to set up such a behemoth, that there would be an invironmental impact. Consider that you're taking 746 gigawatts of power per year out of the ecosystem. That's energy that affects things like the weather, the water cycle, the mean global temperature, etc. I think this would probably be enough of a drain on the natural cycle of things that we'd be changing the climate in some way. By comparison, we emit a pretty small amount of volume of pollutants compared to the total volume of the atmosphere, and look what it does to the balance.

I'm a big believer in the need to find alternate energy sources. But the more I look at solar power, the less I see it as the replacement of current energy sources. It can be a very viable suppliment, but it is obviously not the answer to total replacement. Even if we had the magic 100% efficient cells and reduced the land area of the solar collector to just under 800 square miles, we'd still be directly leeching the nearly 800 gigawatts of energy from the environment each year, which I feel could be enough to harmfully tip the balance.

Remember, there's no free lunch in thermodynamics. It's got to come from somewhere, and solar pannels would be intercepting what would normally be going to the earth and taking it for human consumption.

Answer 2

Things have changed over Decade. Now days, Solar Cell Manufacturing is efficient. Less Power Consumption in Manufacturing, Lot of Employment .
The Solar Cell Efficiency has improved to about 20%. Now,it make sense because less space is covered for generating same amount of power. Flexible Applications like : Canal Top , Roof Top, Barren Land Covered by Solar and many more.

Answer 3

Solar power can be converted into heat energy and electric energy,it can be used in many field such as hot water and electicity for home industry and business，it also can be used to cook food.Everything is going well with solar power instead of using electicity.Thus using solar power can reduce the emission of fuels and carbon so that protect our earth.

Answer 4

You raise an important point. Solar cells are made primarily of gallium arsenide in a matrix of silicon. Their manufacture generates heavy metal toxic waste. If we were to go solar in a big way one of the biggest impacts of Solar Cells is the massive amount of ground cover that would be necessary to generate power. They only convert sunlight at 5-7% efficiency. One of the things few people realize about solar cells is that because they are so fragile, they are easily damaged by severe weather, easily vandalized, and the potential of arsenic contamination is both real and a danger if these units are deployed in large numbers within densely populated urban areas

Answer 5

Solar power is a clean and free energy. It can protect the environment, because if you use solar energy to repleace electricity, it can avoid pollution from burning of coal.

Answer 6

The solar thermal power generation is the process of converting the sun’s rays into heat energy to produce steam and then electricity, using conventional turbines through solar receiver components. It is an integral part of solar thermal utilizations. Now there are four categories of solar thermal power generation system, including Parabolic Trough Line concentration system, Tower system, Dish Stirling system and Fresnel Power Generation system. We mainly introduce the Fresnel system and Parabolic system here.
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Answer 7

The potential environmental impacts associated with solar power — land use and habitat loss, water use, and the use of hazardous materials in manufacturing — can vary greatly depending on the technology, which includes two broad categories: photovoltaic (PV) solar cells or concentrating solar thermal plants (CSP).

Answer 8

Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the sun harnessed using a range of ever-evolving technologies such as solar heating, photovoltaics, solar thermal energy, solar architecture and artificial photosynthesis.
It is an important source of renewable energy and its technologies are broadly characterized as either passive solar or active solar depending on the way they capture and distribute solar energy or convert it into solar power. Active solar techniques include the use of photovoltaic systems, concentrated solar power and solar water heating to harness the energy.

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Answer 9

Actually none at all unless you count the structures that hold the solar array panels as an impact. Solar energy is completely no poluting and the best source of energy if we can find a good way of harnessing it.

Answer 10

Ultimately, we need the sun for all processes on earth. Production of electricity by solar cells is not very efficient. But using solar energy for heat is much better. Then we can burn less fossil fuels, and produce less green house gases.