Amongst many ways of making solar power accessible is one way that has been researched by the researchers at Wake Forest University’s Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials. Through this they are trying to gain green and clean power with the help of pokeberries. What the scientists have done to achieve this is paint their low cost and efficient fiber-based solar cells with the red dye that is extracted from pokeberries. The result was that the red dye acted as an absorber by helping the solar cell’s tiny fibers to entrap more sunlight in them. This was converted to power later on.

Getting used to this process is also not a bad or expensive idea. The good thing about taking pokeberries in use is that there will hardly be any shortage of it. This is because pokeberries grow in infertile rocky soil and the users do not even need to worry during drought. This makes it an advantage for the Africans who can also grow them in their rural areas in their climate. Read the full story

With the increase in awareness about the depleting natural resources, the lookout for new, renewable, and cleaner energy sources has also gained pace.

Solar energy is one of the main sources of renewable energy. Being clean and free of cost, it can be utilized easily to generate energy. Solar panels are used to harness the sun’s energy, but it does not come without any pros and cons.

Advantages of Solar Panels

1. Accessibility

Solar panels allow you to obtain energy from an alternative source rather than the main power grid. This eliminates the need of having long power lines running to your home. This can prove to be especially beneficial for houses that are located in far off areas.

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Solar cells can be used to directly convert sunlight into electricity, making the home owners more energy independent. Most commonly, solar cells in homes are used through the installation of solar panels.

Solar panels can collect sunlight during the day and transform it into energy. The stored energy can be used to supply power to the home by heating water and producing electricity. Although installing the solar panels can be simple, but it can be physically demanding.

1. First of all, you need to purchase a solar panel mounting kit. Usually, kits contain the same types of materials, such as solar panels, mounts, hardware, an inverter, and a voltage gauge. You can purchase the kits at any home improvement store.

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With only a limited supply of oil and gas available on Earth, it is extremely important to find alternative sources of energy or else with the depletion of these natural resources, humans will be unable to fulfill a number of basic requirements.

Renewable energy can be defined as any form of power that is derived from a source that cannot be depleted. Wind, solar, geothermal and tidal are examples of renewable energy.

There are several benefits of using renewable energy. It has some dominant environmental, economic and societal advantages. Renewable energy sources do not need any fossil fuels to generate power, which makes them environment friendly. Following are the main sources of renewable energy.

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The trend of using solar power and wind power for base load electricity supply purposes is slowly increasing. This can be perceived as a result of the increase in the use of molten salt batteries, and the rapid development of gravel batteries. Several other types of technologies are also being developed and a number of other technologies have been proposed alongside more traditional ones such as solar pumping combined with hydro-storage.

Although natural gas is commonly converted into electricity, the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology have developed some means of renewable electricity. Solar energy can now be used as a substitute for natural gas, which is a source of power for electricity generation.

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After the launch of the solar boat, solar plane is here to play its part in the advancement of renewable energy. An experimental solar plane took its first test-flight this week. After the successful test flight, it has become possible for the Solar Impulse to plan of making a trip round the world.

According to reports, the test flight was expected to fly for about 90 minutes, reaching an altitude of about 1,000 meters.

The solar-powered airplane weighs about 1,600 kilograms and has four electric motors on board that supply the power to keep the plane up whether its day or night.

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Some time back, PlanetSolar presented the world with the 85-tonne catamaran boat equipped with 38,000 solar cells. The boat had been named Türanor, which means power of the sun.

Recently, the ship has started its first journey. The ship was first lowered by crane into the waters of the Kiel firth in northern Germany.

After a whole year of extensive testing, the Türanor will start off its voyage around the world in order to capture as much solar energy as possible, at a steady pace of 7.5 knots.

Wind energy is one of the biggest source of renewable energy. In order to understand the working of the wind turbines, it is important to know about the different components of the wind turbine.

Although there are different types of wind turbines that operate, but the simplest possible wind-energy turbine consists of three major parts:

1. Rotor blades

The blades are the main part of the system. The blades act as barriers to the wind, although recent blade designs do more than just act as a barrier. As the wind forces the blades to move, the energy gets transferred to the rotor.

The Ocean waves has been proved as a great source of energy. The power of ocean waves can be utilized in an effective way to generate electricity to meet the demands of the rising energy crisis.

If you have a quick look on the globe, you’ll immediately notice that there’s a very small part of dry land, as compared to the water. The water covers almost 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. Thus if we can make use of this 70% to generate power for the people living on the 30% land, it will more than enough to meet all the daily needs.

Wave energy is about exploiting the phenomenal power of water waves. Waves have an enormous amount of unused energy, some of which can be used to power at least a portion of the world’s everyday electricity.

Solar energy may be the most abundant source of energy, but many people avoid its usage due to the uncertainty of the weather. If you use solar energy to power your house, then what do you do on a cloudy or rainy day?

There are three main alternative options available that can provide unlimited power even if the sun isn’t cooperating. In case you want to live independently, completely off the grid, but can’t trust your PV panels to supply all the electricity you’ll need all the time, you can use a backup generator when the solar generation becomes low.

In my previous posts, I gave an overview about the composition of a solar cell, what it is made of and how it is used to transform sunlight into electric energy. In this article, I will illustrate the inside anatomy of a cell and how it really works.

In the last post, I explained the concept of a solar cell with two separate pieces of silicon, that were electrically neutral. However, it becomes much more interesting when you put them together. This is because without an electric field, the cell wouldn’t work; the field is formed when the N-type and P-type silicon come into contact. This makes the free electrons on the N side to rush to the openings on the P side.