Solar Power – Join The Wave

solar powerNot too many years ago, solar power looked to just be a very interesting fad. Oh, how things have changed.

Let’s start at the beginning, not with the birth of the sun, but with the invention of photovoltaic cells, which had been around since the late 1800s, but were developed by Bell Laboratories in the 1950s in order to help power satellites and long-distance space probes. Soon, the application of creating electricity from the sun was seen to have much wider applications – creating electricity for homes, cars and any other earth-bound applications.

From the start, there were some obvious financial and environmental advantages to using solar power. They could save homeowners money in the long run, as long as they maintained their investment over the course of 10 years or more. They could reduce the need for mining coal and natural gas and spare the atmosphere some deadly poisons – emitted by fossil fuels. After all, if you installed solar power in your house, then the electricity you used at home did not have to come from more pernicious sources, like coal-fired or natural gas-burning power plants or nuclear power.

Of course, the first major hurdle for solar power had to do with cost. New technology is expensive and generally less efficient than modern updates. Sure enough, solar power started out as a pricey option for homeowners in terms of start-up costs. But popularity – and the mass production that comes with it – brought initial costs down. The efficiency of solar panels and batteries used to store electricity also improved. Lower costs, better systems made solar panels even more popular – and the cycle begins: Popularity turns to mass production, which turns to lower costs and more companies jumping in and making improvements. A solar panel became an obvious win-win, even before the threat of global warming became the #1 environmental threat ever created by man.

You have likely heard the basics about global warming. More and more scientists through the 1990s and continuing to today have been clamoring louder and louder each year about the catastrophic climate change crisis that threatens the Earth’s wildlife, weather patterns, and the solar ice caps. Besides the increased possibility of extreme changes in weather events such as droughts, floods or damaging storms, even minor temperature changes across an ecosystem can wipe out thousands of species of plants and animals and potentially trigger a surge in new diseases.

Melting ice caps that store untold billions of gallons of water could flood much of the world’s low-lying coastal land. Projecting the changes in the not-so-distant future, try to imagine a safe evacuation of the multiple billions of people who live in coastal areas threatened by rising oceans. Even if that were possible, imagine the hundreds of billion dollars invested in roads, bridges, cities, homes, that would quite literally be washed out to sea if the ocean levels rose significantly.

Suddenly, solar power is no longer a quaint fad for those who can afford it. People are now seizing on solar panels for the myriad of obvious benefits: Cheaper power, a reduction in pollution, greater independence from fossil fuels and nuclear power. What’s the harm? Solar and wind power is now turning into an economic force and a creator of new jobs. The green economy is becoming a reality.

What does it take to convert to solar power in your home? Not as much as you might think. You need access to sunlight, either directly from your home’s roof or on a dedicated parcel of land on your property. If you have no property or your own home or both are too small for a solar installation, neighborhoods are banding together to purchase community solar installations in which neighbors chip in to buy a system they can share, which might be placed in a local vacant lot purchased for that purpose.

You also need a bank of batteries, a battery monitor, wire that brings the power to your home’s electrical system.

And, if you put the panels near the ground, you need someone to cut the lawn to ensure that the young trees or wild vines don’t begin to shade your solar panels. And then you need some sunshine.

It’s true: The sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, making solar and wind power a terrific way to go that falls short of perfection. But what if you could cut back on your need for fossil fuels by two-thirds or by three-quarters. Similarly, what if you could cut your electricity bill in half or by three-quarters? That would still be a sizable gain in your family’s discretionary funds.

And if millions of homes did this, that would put a considerable dent in societies use of electricity generated by polluting power sources.

Further, the answer to cloudy or windless days is something called batteries. Solar installations feed electricity to banks of batteries that store up juice, as the saying goes, for a rainy day. Batteries can only hold so much electricity at one time, but they still offer the best option yet we have for keeping the power on when the sun goes down or the clouds block the sun.

Shift Frequency © 2017 – Solar Power! Join The Wave

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